Introduction
The focus of this book is on the ways that different forms of media represent and make sense of everyday practices and values of sustainability but before we can examine such media texts we need to consider how we more broadly understand and evaluate the subject of sustainable everyday life. Initially, there is a requirement to outline definitions of key terms, such as sustainability and everyday life, or at the very least to highlight how various people differently approach these terms. Such an observation highlights that the terrain of sustainable everyday life is subject to vigorous contestation with different evaluations informed by a range of theoretical and political frameworks. This chapter seeks to show that there is not a singular, preferred evaluation of sustainable everyday life. This is partly because there is no one manifestation of sustainable everyday life and also because sustainable everyday life in modern western nations is âcaughtâ between participating in the contexts of contemporary existence in global consumer capitalism while also problematising such contexts and attempting to give expression to emergent ways of living. Nonetheless, this chapterâand this bookâis motivated by a belief that the site of everyday life matters in our individual and collective responses to the climate crisis and the task of moving towards greater levels of sustainability.
The chapter initially provides an overview of the concept of sustainability, charting the distinction between understandings of âsustainable development â and more radical understandings of the concept that challenge existing economic systems and expose them as environmentally âunsustainable.â Importantly, the normative basis of sustainability and its strength as an inherently contestable concept is established. Another significant feature of the understanding of sustainability is the way it is informed by the principle of interconnection and constituted through the collection and promotion of material and semiotic networks . The concept of everyday life is then unpacked, observing that it is a grounded phenomenon linked to particular places, most notably the home , but that it is also constituted and given meaning through processes of mediation as we consume and produce images and stories and interact with others. As such, everyday life may be conventionally associated with the private sphere but it is also informed by, and has an orientation to, the broader public sphere . It is noted how the temporality of everyday lifeâits âdailinessâ and routinesâcan help facilitate the creation of disciplined subjects and work to naturalise particular value systems but also that everyday life is the place where we can exercise greater degrees of self autonomy. The concept of lifestyles and the practices of ethical consumption are then discussed in the context of sustainable everyday life. Lifestyles are often considered as superficial expressions of identity linked to the appropriation and use of the objects of consumer culture and, as such, subject to critique when considered from an environmental perspective. We also though extend the understanding of lifestyles as more generalised responses to the exigencies of contemporary existence that can facilitate progressive as well as conservative identities and value systems. The limitations and potential of ethical consumption practices are also examined. On the one hand it is observed that forms of ethical consumption direct sustainable behaviour towards consumption rather than production , reinforcing our status as consumers , while on the other hand it is acknowledged that ethical consumption is motivated by a critique of consumer culture and an active engagement with forms of production. Finally, the chapter considers how expressions of sustainable everyday life are often exercised as strategies of distinction and how the identity of the subject who is working towards a sustainable everyday life can be captured in the concept of an âecological habitus .â
Defining Sustainability
Sustainability can be broadly understood as the ongoing viability of the complex interconnection between the environment and human activity. Sustainability is fundamentally concerned with the nurturing of the health and productive capacity of the environment and all its constituent elementsâland and soil, water, air, biodiversity, vegetation, and animal welfare. While there are types of environmentalism that argue that the environment has its own intrinsic value or worth independent of human ends or means of evaluation, most famously expressed in the so-called âdeep ecology â movement (Naess 1973), the term sustainability is informed by the belief that we should care for the environment because ultimately it is intrinsic to our human interests. Given that sustainability encompasses both the natural and social realms, it also refers to our modes of living and how they engage with and influence the environment. The nature of this relationship between the environment and the social and economic structures that govern human activity is subject to debate and contestation. We need to understand and evaluate the respective positions on sustainability but we also need to appreciate how sustainability is a process that involves the ongoing negotiation of the meanings of the concept. It is something of a paradox that we need to get sustainability ârightââthe future of the planet no less is involvedâbut equally that we never finally arrive at sustainability.
Understandings of sustainability are profoundly informed by its temporality: it refers to a future viability while also requiring that our current practices and values are informed by their future ramifications. Alternatively, for some, sustainability harks back to a romantic, non-industrial âEdenicâ state, and this understanding has led some to argue that the term is no longer useful and should be discarded. Steve Mentz (2012, 586), for example, has declared: âThe era of sustainability is over.â For him, such a statement is based upon an understanding of sustainability as a position of stasis, an unchanging, âpastoralâ view of human and environmental relations, while our current predicaments require a more tenacious orientation towards the environment based upon its growing unpredictable and chaotic character. While there is definitely a need to acquire such a tenacious character in the face of the effects of the climate crisis , it can also be argued that the concept of sustainability does encompass a dynamic engagement with the ongoing processes of environmental change. As Wendy Parkins (2016, 457) has written in response to Mentz: âSurely, just as the circumstances to which sustainability is a response â threats to elements of the environment deemed of value (whether species, landscapes, resources, cultural practices or communities ) â are dynamic and shifting, so too must any strategy that seeks to protect those elements be characterized by adaptation, reflexivity, and experimentation.â It is the sense of temporality within sustainability that informs its more general usage as an adjective meaning to endure without depletion. People can talk, for example, about the sustainability of propositions and relationships.
Sustainability is a popular term, publicly supported by seemingly everyone from radical activists to multinational corporations , and while such widespread support gives one cause to consider whether the term retains any efficacy, it can also be argued that any term of any significant import is always going to be subject to ideological struggle and the correct political response is not to walk away from such terms but to continue to fight for them. Sustainability is also a fraught term that has been theorised and discussed by a number of academic disciplines, each bringing particular perspectives on the subject (see for example, Cavagnaro and Curiel 2012; Gunderson and Holling 2002; Hardisty 2010; Morse 2010; Neumayer 2010; Thiele 2016). Simply put, for all the differences, this range of work on sustainability considers the interrelationship between environmental, economic, and social development although it is a legitimate criticism of some sustainability work that the environmental imperative informing sustainability is subsumed by particular economic interests. An interdisciplinary academic approach is to some degree necessary to generate the range of knowledge that is required to unpack and explain the complexity of sustainability and environmental change. As Leslie Paul Thiele (2016, 4) succinctly states: âSustainability is an adaptive art wedded to science in service to ethical vision.â In answering the question, âwhat is sustainability studies?,â Wood (2011) spans a wide range of critical inquiry, making a strong case for the humanities as a necessary companion of sustainability science, arguing for a systemâs literacy that âcombines the study of social history and cultural discourses with a technical understanding of ecosystem processesâ (2011, 5). He also defends science against accusations that its disciplinary rigidity, its decontextualised and instrumentalist approach to knowledge, and its disavowal of complexity and uncertainty, has made it at least a servant in the project of âmodernity â that has contributed to the environmental degradation that we now encounter. In response, Wood outlines how those domains of contemporary science that investigate the environment âbiocomplexity or sustainability scienceâhave âabandoned simple causal models and conventional disciplinary specializations for an integrated understanding of the natural world as an open, dynamic systemâ and that they are âexplicitly focused on the dynamic and tightly coupled relations between human and natural systems, recognizing the historical power of human commun...
