Practices of sustainability and the enactment of their natures/cultures

Ecosystem services, rights of nature, and geoengineering

Bibliographic Data

ID3087971
AuthorsFrank Adloff (0000-0002-8750-6973, Universität Hamburg), Iris Hilbrich (0000-0001-6165-5607, Universität Hamburg, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume60
Issue2
Pages168-187
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science Information (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0539-0184 • E-ISSN: 1461-7412
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0539018421998947
OpenAlexW3146999739
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited59

Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected

Anthropocentrism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Indigenous · Modernization theory · Political science · Sociology · Sustainability · Climate Change and Geoengineering · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Ecology

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