Sustainability Metamorphosis

An Inconvenient Change

Bibliographic Data

ID15445348
AuthorsErland Mårald (0000-0002-2291-9910, Umeå University, corresponding author), Janina Priebe (0000-0003-2038-0437, Umeå University)
Year2021
Volume16
Issue2
Pages1-12
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNature and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1558-6073 • E-ISSN: 1558-5468
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/nc.2020.160201
OpenAlexW4206785309
LanguageEN
References cited27

The institutionalization of sustainability agendas on the local and global levels has largely failed to deliver the promised change. In this essay, we develop the idea of sustainability metamorphosis as a way to break with the pathological paradigm of sustainable development that weakens society’s capacity to transform in the face of global crises. Sustainability metamorphosis, in our understanding, draws on the Bakthian perspective of carnivalization and dialogical truth. In this sense, sustainability metamorphosis is an outlook on change in society and a source of strategies for long-term societal change. Our understanding of metamorphosis is inspired by the historical and literary understandings that saw ungraspable forces, acting upon both inner and outer worlds, and suspended hierarchies as the sources of necessary but inconvenient change

Biology · Dialogical self · Environmental ethics · Face (sociological concept · Institutionalisation · Metamorphosis · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Ecology