As contemporary socio-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity preservation have become more important, the three pillars concept has increasingly been used in planning and policy circles as a framework for analysis and action. However, the issue of how culture influences sustainability is still an underexplored theme. Understanding how culture can act as a resource to promote sustainability, rather than a barrier, is the key to the development of cultural sustainability.
This book explores the interfaces between nature and culture through the perspective of cultural sustainability. A cultural perspective on environmental sustainability enables a renewal of sustainability discourse and practices across rural and urban landscapes, natural and cultural systems, stressing heterogeneity and complexity. The book focuses on the nature-culture interface conceptualised as a place where experiences, practices, policies, ideas and knowledge meet, are negotiated, discussed and resolved. Rather than looking for lost unities, or an imaginary view of harmonious relationships between humans and nature based in the past, it explores cases of interfaces that are context-sensitive and which consciously convey the problems of scale and time.
While calling attention to a cultural or 'culturalised' view of the sustainability debate, this book questions the radical nature-culture dualism dominating positive modern thinking as well as its underlying view of nature as pre-given and independent from human life.
About the Author: Inger Birkeland is Professor in Human Geography at the Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies at University College of Southeast Norway, where she researches cultural and learning aspects of sustainability in local and regional development.
Rob Burton is a Research Professor at the Centre for Rural Research in Trondheim, Norway. He focuses on farmer agency and, in particular, the influence of identity and cultural factors on decision-making.
Constanza Parra is Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She researches and writes on social sustainability, nature-culture interactions, governance of socio-ecological systems and sustainable tourism.
Katriina Siivonen is Adjunct Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies and Senior Lecturer and Discipline Coordinator in Futures Studies at University of Turku, Finland. She focusses on cultural sustainability, semiotic theory of culture, traditions, cultural heritage, heritage futures, cultural identities and ethnography as well as qualitative and participatory futures methodology.
