Cultural Sustainability

If the political and social benchmarks of sustainability and sustainable

development are to be met, ignoring the role of the humanities and social,
cultural and ethical values is highly problematic. People’s world views, beliefs
and principles have an immediate impact on how they act and should be studied
as cultural dimensions of sustainability.
Collating contributions from internationally renowned theoreticians of
culture and leading researchers working in the humanities and social sciences,
this volume presents an in-depth, interdisciplinary discussion of the concept of
cultural sustainability and the public visibility of such research. Beginning with
a discussion of the concept of cultural sustainability, it goes on to explore its
interaction with philosophy, theology, sociology, economics, arts and literature.
In doing so, the book develops a much needed concept of ‘culture’ that can be
adapted to various disciplines and applied to research on sustainability.
Addressing an important gap in sustainability research, this book will be of great
interest to academics and students of sustainability and sustainable development,
as well as those studying sustainability within the humanities and social sciences,
such as cultural studies, ethics, theology, sociology, literature and history.

Torsten Meireis is Professor of Theology, Ethics and Hermeneutics at Humboldt

University, Berlin, Germany.

Gabriele Rippl is Professor and Chair of Literatures in English at the University

of Bern, Switzerland.
Routledge Environmental Humanities
Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin

Editorial Board
Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK
Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia
Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, US
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US
Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK
Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia

International Advisory Board

William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK
Sarah Buie, Clark University, USA
Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA
Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of
Edinburgh, UK
Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technol-
ogy, Stockholm, Sweden
Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Cen-
tre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA
Kirsten Wehner, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia
The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recog-
nising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource deple-
tion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity
and environmental justice are all crises of culture.
The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future
environmental challenges has shifted the epicentre of environmental studies away from
an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human-
focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences.
We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for
an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international
readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars
and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned
about the human dimensions of environmental change.
Cultural Sustainability
Perspectives from the Humanities
and Social Sciences

Edited by Torsten Meireis

and Gabriele Rippl
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Torsten Meireis and Gabriele
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Contents

List of figures viii

List of tables ix
List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xiv

PART I
Concepts of culture and cultural sustainability 1

1 Introduction 3
TORSTEN MEIREIS AND GABRIELE RIPPL

2 Culture and sustainable development from a UN perspective 12

MICHAEL GERBER

3 The future of cultural heritage and its challenges 25

ALEIDA ASSMANN

4 Cultural sustainability in times of cultural genocide 36

WOLFGANG HUBER

5 Sustainable development and the concept of culture – an ethical view 47

TORSTEN MEIREIS

PART II
Philosophy, sociology, economics and cultural sustainability 61

6 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict: on Roger

Scruton’s conservative green philosophy 63
ANTON LEIST
vi Contents
7 Culture, consumption and sustainability in a sociological perspective 75
ULF LIEBE

8 Social happiness as a cultural value: an analysis of shared

values for ecosystem assessment 87
GALIT P. WELLNER

9 The challenges of cultural sustainability on an (inter)planetary scale 98

ANDREAS LOSCH

10 Sustainability’s promise of salvation?: A Kuhnian

reconstruction of sustainability from resource management to
contingency management 109
MARIUS CHRISTEN, PETER SEELE, LUCAS ZAPF

PART III
The arts, literature and cultural sustainability: theoretical,
historical and contemporary perspectives 125

11 Culture and the arts in sustainable development: rethinking

sustainability research 127
SACHA KAGAN

12 Cultural ecology and the sustainability of literature 140

HUBERT ZAPF

13 An entangled history of environmental and cultural

sustainability: satirical reflections on the German forest and
the German oak as resources of cultural energy 153
EVI ZEMANEK

14 The cultural sustainability of Victorian waste 183

URSULA KLUWICK

15 The moral dilemma of unsustainability: eco-dystopian fiction

as cultural critique 193
ALEXA WEIK VON MOSSNER

16 A tale of love and fallout: Lauren Redniss’ graphic narrative

and the ecological imaginary 208
TORSTEN MEIREIS AND GABRIELE RIPPL
 Contents vii
17 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis and the ethics of literary
description 220
GABRIELE RIPPL

18 Ecogames: playing to save the planet 232

JOOST RAESSENS

PART IV
Where do we go from here? 247

19 Conclusion 249
TORSTEN MEIREIS AND GABRIELE RIPPL

Index 256
Figures

7.1 Two perspectives on the relationship between culture and

consumption 78
7.2 Examples of two perspectives on the relationship between
culture and sustainable consumption 79
10.1 Overview of the sustainability conceptions as paradigm
candidates 120
13.1 Crassus (1873). “Elegie”. Fliegende Blätter, 58(1452), 159 161
13.2 Johnson, A. (1908). “Das Schweigen im Grune-Wald (frei
nach Böcklin)”. Beiblatt zum Kladderadatsch, 61(35), 1 (30
August 1908) 163
13.3 Anon. [signature unidentifiable] (1921). “Nieder mit dem
deutschen Wald!” Kladderadatsch, 74(42), 2 (16 October 1921) 165
13.4 Anon. (1898). “Die deutsch-österreichische Eiche”. Kikeriki.
Humoristisches Volksblatt, 38(8), 2 (27 January 1898) 167
13.5 Heine, T. (1907). “Ein Blatt aus der deutschen
Naturgeschichte”. Simplicissimus, 11(49), 1 (4 March 1907) 169
13.6 Heine, T. (1915). “Siege in Ost und West”. Simplicissimus,
20(7), 1 (18 May 1915) 169
13.7 Gulbransson, O. (1919). “Die Ratifikation”. Simplicissimus,
24(31), 1 (28 October 1919) 170
13.8 Anon. (1896) “Im Hochgebirge”. Kikeriki, 36(74), 4 (13
September 1896) 172
13.9 Lange-Christopher, K. (1932). “Deutscher Wald im Dritten
Reich”. Der Wahre Jacob, 53(12), 14 (4 June 1932) 174
13.10 Stuttmann, K. (2005). “25 Jahre Die Grünen. Schützt den
deutschen Wald!!” Der Tagesspiegel (13 January 2005) 176
13.11 Stuttmann, K. (2004). “Wenigstens der deutsche Wald ist
gerettet!!” Der Tagesspiegel (2 April 2004) 176
18.1 World Climate Conference 233
18.2 Walden, a Game 237
18.3 Model for the encouragement of sustainable action 240
18.4 Join the rebellion and turn VW away from the dark side 241
18.5 A circular Amsterdam 242
Tables

7.1 Three aspects of culture 76

10.1 Overview of the sustainability conceptions as paradigm candidates 111
18.1 Barriers, solutions, properties, and strategies 234
Contributors

Aleida Assmann is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Literary Theory

at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She held guest professorships at Rice,
Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Vienna, Mainz and Lucerne and received an Honor-
ary Degree from the University of Oslo (2008). Selection of prizes: Heineken
Prize for History of the Royal Netherland Academy of Sciences (2014) and
the Balzan Prize (2017, together with Jan Assmann). Main areas of research:
historical anthropology, media history and cultural memory (esp. Holocaust
and trauma). Recent Publications: Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Prac-
tices and Trajectories (ed. with Sebastian Conrad, 2010), Cultural Memory and
Western Civilization. Functions, Media, Archives (2012), Shadows of Trauma.
Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (2016).
Marius Christen studied Philosophy, Sustainability Sciences and History. His
first book analysed the axiological foundations of sustainability (Die Idee der
Nachhaltigkeit. Eine werttheoretische Fundierung, 2013). Currently, he researches
and teaches at the Sustainability Research Group, University of Basel, Swit-
zerland, focusing on sustainability governance and questions of inter- and
transdisciplinarity.
Michael Gerber is Switzerland’s Special Envoy for Global Sustainable Develop-
ment. In 2012, the Swiss Federal Council appointed him to prepare Swit-
zerland’s position in the UN post-2015 process. In 2015, he was mandated
to head the Swiss delegations in the intergovernmental negotiations at the
United Nations on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as
on the associated financing and implementation framework, the Addis Ababa
Action Agenda.
Wolfgang Huber is Professor Emeritus of Theology and Honorary Professor of
Systematic Theology at the Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, at Hei-
delberg University, Germany and Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He
served as Bishop of the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische-
Oberlausitz (1994–2009), was chairman of the Protestant Church of Germany
(2003–2009) and a member of the National and the German Ethics Coun-
cil. Publications: Konflikt und Konsens (1990), Ethik. Die Grundfragen unseres
 Contributors xi
Lebens von der Geburt bis zum Tod (2013), Handbuch der Evangelischen Ethik
(2015, co-edited).
Sacha Kagan is a Research Associate at the Institute of Sociology and Cultural
Organization, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany; Principal Investiga-
tor at the research project “The City as Space of Possibility”; Former Chair of
the Research Network “Sociology of the Arts” at the European Sociological
Association. Dr. Kagan has been researching at the intersection of the arts,
culture and sustainability for over a decade. He is the author of Art and Sus-
tainability: Connecting Patterns for a Culture of Complexity (2011).
Ursula Kluwick is Assistant Professor of Modern English Literature at the Uni-
versity of Bern. She has published on the nineteenth century, ecocriticism, con-
temporary and postcolonial literatures and cultures, as well as on Shakespeare.
She is the author of Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction (2011)
and has co-edited The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (2015).
Anton Leist is Professor Emeritus of Practical Philosophy of Zurich University.
He worked on applied and theoretical ethics. Presently he is engaged with the
epistemology of pragmatism and topics of social justice. He is co-editor of J.M.
Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature (2010) and author of
Action in Context (2007).
Ulf Liebe is Professor of Sociology and Quantitative Methods at the Depart-
ment of Sociology, University of Warwick. His fields of interest include
environmental sociology, economic sociology and experimental methods.
He has published in journals such as European Sociological Review, Socio-
logical Methods & Research, and Environment and Behavior. He is author of
Zahlungsbereitschaft für Kollektive Umweltgüter: Soziologische und Ökonomische
Analysen (2007).
Andreas Losch is a theologian who works with philosophers and space research-
ers. His current project on “Ethics of a Planetary Sustainability” combines his
expertise in the dialogue between science, philosophy and theology. He is a
member of the Center of Theological Inquiry (Princeton, NJ) and serves in
several societies dedicated to the study of the relation of science and religion.
Recent publications: What is Life? On Earth and Beyond (2017, ed.) and “Alles
in der Schrift ist echte Gesprochenheit”. Martin Buber und die Verdeutschung der
Schrift (2016, co-ed.).
Torsten Meireis serves as Full Professor of Ethics and Hermeneutics in the field
of Systematic Theology at the Humboldt University Berlin and as Director of
the Berlin Institute for Public Theology. Current research interests include
sustainability, political and economic ethics. Recent publications: Religion and
Democracy. Studies in Public Theology (with Rolf Schieder) (2017); Handbuch
Evangelische Ethik (with Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter) (2015).
Joost Raessens is Chair and Full Professor of Media Theory at Utrecht Univer-
sity and Scientific Director of the Utrecht Center for Game Research. His
xii Contributors
research concerns the ludification of culture, focusing in particular on games
for change in relation to global climate change and refugee issues. Among
his co-edited book publications are the Handbook of Computer Game Stud-
ies (2005), Playful Identities (2015) and Playful Citizens (2018).
Gabriele Rippl is Full Professor and Chair of Literatures in English at the Univer-
sity of Bern. Current research interests: cultural sustainability, narrative ethics,
intermediality. Recent publications: Handbook of Intermediality (2015); Towards
a New Monumentalism? Cultural and Aesthetic Perspectives beyond Postmodern-
ism (2013); Rippl is co-editor of Anglia. Journal of English Philology and the De
Gruyter series Handbooks of English and American Studies: Text and Theory.
Peter Seele is Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics at
USI Lugano, Switzerland. He publishes on sustainability with regard to corpo-
rate reporting, education and recently on digital sustainability and predictive
sustainability control. As principal investigator he conducts research projects
on behalf of the Swiss National Fund on the credibility of CSR reporting and
recently on Greenwashing.
Alexa Weik von Mossner is Associate Professor of American Studies at the
University of Klagenfurt, Austria. She has published widely on cosmopolitan-
ism, ecocriticism and affective narratology and is the author of Cosmopolitan
Minds: Literature, Emotion, and the Transnational Imagination (U of Texas P,
2014) and Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative
(Ohio State UP, 2017).
Galit P. Wellner, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the NB School of Design Haifa,
Israel, and an Adjunct Professor at Tel Aviv University. Her research area is
philosophy of digital technologies. She published several peer-reviewed arti-
cles and book chapters. Her book A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cellphones:
Genealogies, Meanings and Becoming was published in 2015 by Lexington
Books.
Hubert Zapf is Professor Emeritus at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Main
areas of research: literature and cultural ecology, literary history, literary and
cultural theory. Recent publications: Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable
Texts (2016) and Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (2016). He is
co-editor of Anglia. Journal of English Philology, of the Book Series of Anglia,
and of the De Gruyter Handbook Series English and American Studies. Text and
Theory.
Lucas Zapf combines in his research ethics, economics and studies of religion.
He researched the market economy’s hidden connections to Luther’s work
ethics, the deification of the markets and, most currently, the nexus between
business ethics and risk management. He works as a PostDoc and Lecturer at
the University of Basel.
Evi Zemanek is Associate Professor of German Literature and Media Studies at
the University of Freiburg, Germany, fellow at FRIAS (Freiburg Institute of
 Contributors xiii
Advanced Studies) and at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and
Society, Munich. She has published widely in the field of transmedia ecocriti-
cism. She is editor of Ökologische Genres. Naturästhetik – Umweltethik – Wis-
senspoetik (2017) and co-editor of Ecological Thought in German Literature and
Culture (2017).
Acknowledgements

Cultural Sustainability is a field that, by definition, needs inter- and transdis-

ciplinary approaches. This volume of essays is faithful to this prerequisite and
could not have been assembled without joint efforts by people from a range of
institutions.
In addition to all contributors to this volume, our heartfelt thanks go to our
colleagues and team members, Leona Goop, Camille Gray, Sibylle Hofer, Bet-
tina Schön, Malaika Sutter, Edward Wright, Clemens Wustmans, Hubert Zapf
and Anne Zimmermann, without whom the job of bringing this volume to pub-
lication would have been so much harder. With unflagging commitment, they
discussed our ideas with us, pushed us to develop our topic and helped us with
proof-reading and editorial work. A big thank you also goes to our MA and PhD
students of the seminar “Cultural Sustainability: Literary Ecology – Normative
Structures – Religious Imagery” and the research colloquium “Cultural Sustain-
ability”, co-taught at the University of Bern in spring term 2016 and autumn
term 2018 respectively. Likewise, the students of the seminar on “Cultural Sus-
tainability and Religion” and the Summer School on “Religion – Sustainability –
Politics”, taught at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in summer term 2016
and summer term 2017 respectively, have helped us to develop our ideas. We
are grateful to the University of Bern and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
for fostering interdisciplinary teaching. Our thanks also go to both the Swiss
National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of the Humanities and the
Social Sciences for generously supporting an exploratory workshop held at the
University of Bern in November 2016, some results of which have fed into this
volume. Last but not least, we would like to thank Charlotte Endersby and Leila
Walker at Routledge together with Libby Robin and Paul Warde for their support
in editing this volume in the Routledge Environmental Humanities series, as well
as our two anonymous reviewers whose helpful suggestions inspired us and helped
give the volume its final shape.
Part I

Concepts of culture and

cultural sustainability
1 Introduction
Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl

A long-neglected question: the cultural dimension

of sustainable development

Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it

meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable develop-
ment does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by
the present state of technology and social organization on environmental
resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human
activities. But technology and social organization can be both managed and
improved to make way for a new era of economic growth.
(WCED 1987: 16)

This quote from the famous “Our Common Future” report from the World
Commission on Environment and Development stresses the interdependence of
the ecological, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development – or
in short: sustainability. While the necessity of the relationship between the com-
ponents of sustainability has been highlighted time and again, the quote also
shows that one important aspect tends to be overlooked, to wit, the cultural. This
cultural dimension is usually omitted in the so-called triangle of sustainability or
the three-pillar model of ecological, social and economic capital propagated by
the World Bank (1997).
International debates on the function of culture in sustainable development
did, belatedly, gain ground. The UNESCO-organised Intergovernmental Con-
ference on Cultural Policies for Development in Stockholm (UNESCO 1998a)
as well as the UNESCO and UNEP 2002 Johannesburg Roundtable on Cultural
Diversity and Biodiversity (UNEP 2003) and the Johannesburg Summit’s deci-
sion for a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO 2002)
functioned as stepping stones, but they mostly concentrated on topics concerning
respect for cultural diversity and creativity (UNESCO 1998a: 13–14, UNESCO
1998b: 93–104; UNEP 2003). The overall significance of the cultural dimen-
sion of sustainability has only recently been acknowledged by the UNESCO’s
4 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
Hanghzou Declaration, which voices a commitment to “Placing Culture at the
Heart of Sustainable Development Policies” (UNESCO 2013). The road leading
from the UN division specialising in cultural questions to the UN at large has been
rockier still: as Michael Gerber in this volume convincingly demonstrates, corre-
sponding UN-Resolutions confirming this stance have been rather vague and late
in appearance (65/166, 2010; 66/208, 2011; 68/223, 2013; 69/230/2014; 70/214,
2015), although admittedly now the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals con-
tain elements expressly pertaining to culture, such as ‘quality education’.
In academia, debates on the cultural dimensions of sustainability in the wake
of the Brundtland report sprang up in the fields of educational sciences (San-
dri 2013; Sorgo 2011; Stoltenberg et al. 1999; cf. also Conclusion). In cultural
policy, culture was proclaimed as a “fourth pillar of sustainability” and calls for
a concerted effort in public and urban cultural development were made (Davies
2015; Böhm et al. 2014; DifU 2011; Banse et al. 2011; Duxbury and Jeannotte
2010; Nadarajah 2007; Krainer and Trattnigg 2007), because the “engines of cul-
tural production require a singular and co-ordinated setting within government
management structures” (Hawkes 2001: 38). However, it also became evident
that culture may act as a factor severely impeding sustainability awareness (Hoff-
man 2015). A recently completed European research network explored different
understandings of cultural sustainability (Dessein and Soini 2016). It analysed
scientific discourses on policy development (Soini and Birkeland 2014), and
showed that culture needs to be understood as an instrumental factor in sus-
tainable development for the very reason that it may act as an additional, sepa-
rate pillar in fostering sustainability, as a mediating agency between ecological,
social and economic aspects of sustainability and as a basic pattern establishing
a sustainability-friendly orientation (Dessein et al. 2015: 20–37). Even though
cultural sustainability has received growing attention, the ways in which culture
works in contexts of sustainability and how it is related to a system of values
which, in turn, influences understandings of sustainability, are yet to be scruti-
nised. It is worthwhile to highlight one important aspect: the sustainability dis-
course has had a history that started long before the 1987 report from the World
Commission on Environment and Development was published. It goes back as
far as the eighteenth century: the concept is usually attributed to Saxonian offi-
cial Hans Carl von Carlowitz, who proposed sustainable forestry within a deeply
religious framework (Carlowitz 1713). The concept has since undergone several
changes of meaning (Grober 2010). For that reason, a cultural understanding
of sustainability has to take this wide range of different conceptualisations into
account (Weigel 2010).

The significance of culture for sustainability issues: key

concepts and central questions
As a normative idea, the concept of ‘sustainability’ has profound implications for
the day-to-day cultural routines of societies. The way we consume and the way
we understand prosperity or ‘well-being’, what we see as ‘the good life’ and which
 Introduction 5
values we hold are closely related to our notion of sustainability. If, for instance,
the general idea of ‘well-being’ in a given society is connected to a lifestyle of
intensive resource consumption, then the idea of sufficiency, closely related to
a global sustainability strategy accepting planetary boundaries (Rockstrøm et al.
2009) will be hard to implement politically in those regions already leaving the
largest ecological footprint (Schneidewind and Zahrnt 2014). For that reason, it
may be necessary to change those cultural concepts. On the other hand, evolving
cultural ideas – like conservation (Engels 2006; Grober 2010) or new concepts of
urbanisation (MoMa 2014) – may further global sustainable development. More-
over, the principle of sustainability may affect the cultural organisation of scien-
tific research and the conceptualisation of scientific knowledge (Schneidewind
2014). Cultural studies and the humanities in general not only tackle norma-
tive questions but also reflect on visions of (non)sustainable action, which have
the potential to influence the public perception of environmental issues that
are linked to moral questions, as negotiated in works of fiction (literature, films,
graphic narratives, computer games, etc.), religious or other cultural narratives.
Thus, cultural sustainability has a double impact. Firstly, ecological, economic
and social questions of sustainability can only be understood within the horizon
of culture, rooted as they are in the ideas, imagery and concepts employed to
describe sustainability. Secondly, and following from this observation, cultural
sustainability is a topic in itself, as it necessitates research into traditions, modes
of perception, methods of cognition, the conceptualisation of knowledge and
the concept of sustainability itself, for instance, when its close connection to the
idea of development is challenged as a colonial way of thinking (Mignolo 2011).
To look into the ways culture ‘works’ with regards to sustainability questions,
we heuristically distinguish a wider and a narrower concept of culture. In a wider
sense, ‘culture’ signifies the human activity of symbolising (Cassirer 1953–1957),
thus denoting any way of communicating and coming to terms with the world by
means of language, images, concepts and so forth, spanning a range from the most
elaborate composition to the ordinary interactions of everyday life. In a narrower
sense, ‘culture’ means the act of expressly producing, reproducing or modifying
cultural symbols in performance, artistic, scientific or scholarly production (Wil-
liams 1989).
While the focus has been on the economic, social and ecological dimensions
of sustainability, research on cultural aspects has mostly been limited to praising
and protecting diversity and to describing cultural policy. In current political
and academic debates, the important contribution of the humanities – theology,
literary, media and cultural studies, social sciences as well as philosophy – to a sus-
tainable world has not been adequately acknowledged. The contributions made
by the arts and the humanities along with religious and philosophical discourses
have received insufficient attention by politicians and social agents. While the
externally visible signs of sustainability – scientific evidence – are necessary for
long-term solutions to environmental crisis, equally relevant are those interior
dimensions (Horlings 2015), i.e. the internal narratives and images that we use
to make sense of the world and explore moral space (Nussbaum 1995). Deploying
6 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
the concept of ‘social imaginaries’ (Taylor 2004), it is our claim that cultural
products such as literary and religious narratives, visual works of art and films
have an enormous impact on people’s world views, beliefs and values. They func-
tion as important means for the representation and mediation of societal prob-
lems and cultural anxieties.

The book and its structure

It has become clear that in existing discourses, culture – and with it cultural sus-
tainability – has been conceptualised within narrow frameworks focusing solely
on questions concerning cultural diversity, indigenous cultures, the significance
of local identity and the role of creativity for community development. In many
academic disciplines, however, much wider and more comprehensive definitions
of culture are available which include complex concepts of human symbolic
systems (see Meireis’ Chapter 5 in this volume). Yet to date, these extensive
definitions of culture have had almost no impact on discussions of cultural sus-
tainability. This is also true of scientific approaches to values and conceptualisa-
tions of sustainability not focused solely on the Brundtland report. Indeed, one
upshot of our own research into the term ‘cultural sustainability’ is the realisation
that values are central to the term and should figure prominently in future dis-
cussions of it. Actually, it is precisely these values that determine what we may
understand as ‘sustainable’. Last but not least, historical, diachronic analyses (cf.
Assmann’s Chapter 3 in this volume; Schliephake 2017) are indispensable when
discussing cultural sustainability. While the general understanding of sustainabil-
ity is oriented towards the future, cultural sustainability needs to take the past
into account and thus deal with questions regarding cultural memory, cultural
heritage and institutions such as archives, libraries and museums as vessels of
conservation which help to hand down knowledge and cultural information to
future generations.
All contributions to this book investigate the potential of cultural products
to sharpen people’s awareness of their own actions and feelings of responsibility
for their environment. Literature, visual works of art, film, graphic narratives,
philosophical or religious narratives and images, all enable us to try out ideas in
our imagination; they stimulate us to imagine possible alternative worlds and to
identify with others (Ricoeur 2005). If the political and social benchmarks of
sustainability and sustainable development are to be met, ignoring the role of the
humanities on the one hand and that of social, cultural and ethical values on the
other is highly problematic. After all, societal change toward more sustainable
lifestyles is by no means solely caused and implemented by political decisions.
Rather, such change is linked directly to people’s world views, beliefs and cultural
values, which have an immediate impact on how we act – hence the need to
study them as cultural dimensions of sustainability. Culture, however, is not a
one-dimensional phenomenon easily harnessed towards a certain normative goal,
but a multi-dimensional entity in itself. The complexity of the concept demands
careful study, if its significance for sustainability discourse is to be explored.
 Introduction 7
Possibly, the benchmarks mentioned above also need changing. For that reason,
this collection of essays maps the field of cultural sustainability, by discussing and
bringing together a range of fundamental concepts of culture, and by taking stock
of the contributions from across the humanities and social sciences. Of course,
the broadening of the discourse on cultural sustainability engenders a wide vari-
ety of scholarly and practical approaches, styles and methods.
The book comprises three main parts, the first of which introduces different
concepts of cultural sustainability, thus combining different perspectives. Michael
Gerber, who acts as Switzerland’s Special Envoy for Global Sustainable Develop-
ment, sketches the role of cultural sustainability as a political term in debates at
the United Nations, this, from the view of a participant in political processes.
Spanning a period from the 1960s up to the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals,
Gerber describes the political and conceptual challenges that sustainability has
endured. In her seminal contribution, literary scholar and cultural theoretician
Aleida Assmann argues that the concept of ‘sustainability’ adds a new important
meaning to our understanding of the future in terms of limited resources and a
new understanding of human stewardship towards our planet. Other meanings
of ‘future’, however, continue to be applied to political and economic contexts.
She draws attention to the pluralisation of our time’s regimes and links the term
‘cultural sustainability’ to the theory of ‘cultural memory’ which she has devel-
oped. Theologian Wolfgang Huber then illuminates the ethical background of
the debates on cultural sustainability by pointing to the importance of human
rights in this context. In fleshing out the concept of ‘cultural genocide’ and by
exploring the cultural dynamics of international law development, he presents
an idea of cultural sustainability rooted with respect to diversity. Concentrating
on the meaning of ‘culture’ in the concept of cultural sustainability, ethicist and
theologian Torsten Meireis claims that an instrumental understanding of culture –
common in sustainability debates – is dysfunctional as it treats normative
assumptions as self-evident and does not take the agonal and productive aspects
of culture into account. Meireis pleads instead for an explicit debate on norma-
tive questions and a stronger regard for the production of cultural assets and the
traditions maintaining them.
The second part of the book brings together contributions from philosophy
and the social sciences that explore the conditions and challenges of cultural
sustainability. Philosopher Anton Leist questions the popular notion that sus-
tainability issues are firmly rooted in cultural narratives and images pertaining
to a politically liberal, progressive or social democratic and green agenda. By
sketching the position of the philosopher Roger Scruton, Leist discusses the
merits of a distinctly conservative concept of cultural sustainability. Examining
consumption behaviour, sociologist Ulf Liebe looks at the behavioural mecha-
nisms furthering or hindering sustainability and distinguishes between a culture
as a constraint, which works through social norms, from culture as an enabling
force which is embodied in rituals and practices. While social norms have only
a short-term effect, the operation of rituals and cultural practices tends to be
long-term. Philosopher Galit P. Wellner explores the intersection of the social
8 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
and the cultural dimension of sustainability by presenting social happiness as a
cultural value, which implies good social relations, a rich cultural environment
and fair institutions, thus favouring a long-term eudaimonic rather than a short-
term hedonistic perspective. Starting from the NASA’s definition of ‘planetary
sustainability’ and the existing practices of space travel to the Moon or Mars,
theologian and ethicist Andreas Losch argues that cultural sustainability is at the
core of any understanding of interplanetary sustainability, dealing for instance
with the dangers of forward or backward contamination of microbial life forms.
Economists and scholars of cultural studies Marius Christen, Peter Seele and Lucas
Zapf investigate cultural sustainability by applying Thomas S. Kuhn’s concept of
paradigm shift. They identify three paradigms of sustainability that offer solu-
tions to different problems: resource crisis, environmental crisis and system crisis.
As a fourth paradigm, they suggest contingency management, which responds to
the more recent multi-crisis and which carries religious overtones of salvation.
The third part of this essay collection comprises contributions that investigate
how the visual arts, literary texts and computer games scrutinise the relation-
ship between social imaginaries and sustainable development. Cultural studies
researcher Sacha Kagan sketches the development of the sustainability discourse
in the performing and visual arts as well as in cultural studies. He argues that
aesthetic and art-based practices and discourses of research provide not only
instrumental cultural resources for sustainable development, but also imagina-
tive approaches and a transdisciplinary methodology for sustainability studies in
general. Americanist and literary theorist Hubert Zapf introduces the theoreti-
cal concept of cultural ecology, which helps to describe how literature feeds into
sustainable development. Zapf argues that literature contributes to a complex,
ethically responsive form of cultural sustainability by combining cultural memory
and cultural creativity in ever-new scenarios of embodied culture-nature interac-
tion, thus extending the semantic range of ‘sustainability’ by emphasising the
experimental, non-systemic and creative aspects of literary sustainability. German
literature scholar Evi Zemanek challenges the distinction between environmental
and cultural sustainability by focusing on their entanglement in nineteenth-
century satirical texts and drawings in German magazines. She discusses how
prominent ethnographers and writers established the ‘German forest’ and the
‘German oak’ as symbols of cultural identity by popularising these natural-cultural
symbols among a greater audience. However, in a climate of growing nationalism,
the ‘German Oak’ lost its innocence when it was associated with racist ideas. The
contribution of literary scholar Ursula Kluwick approaches cultural sustainability
by focusing on debates concerning the utilisation of human excrement as manure
in the context of sanitary reform in Victorian Britain. The public health issues
relevant in this respect were discussed in a significantly broader cultural domain
(for instance in Charles Dickens’ novels), thus lending themselves to the explora-
tion of the cultural dissemination of the notion of sustainability. Literary scholar
Alexa Weik von Mossner takes the recent resurgence of interest in dystopian fiction
as a starting point for an investigation into the relationship between speculative
storytelling and the cultural discourse on sustainability. Drawing on the work of
 Introduction 9
sociologists Shai Dromi and Eva Illouz, she suggests that eco-dystopian texts such
as Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower are cultural critiques in the sense that they
present readers with a dilemma and then imbue that dilemma with emotional
value. Literary scholar Gabriele Rippl and ethicist and theologian Torsten Meireis
explore the genre of the graphic narrative and its contribution to cultural sustain-
ability. In connection with their example, Lauren Redniss’ Radioactive – Marie &
Pierre Curie. A Tale of Love and Fallout, they investigate how this graphic narrative
presents a popular and widely accessible narrative ethics, which provokes an ethi-
cal reflection within readers, instead of simply offering particular morals or values.
Gabriele Rippl then investigates literature’s potential to sharpen readers’ awareness
of their own values and to foster feelings of responsibility for the environment.
As an undertaking in narrative ethics, novels such as Margaret Atwood’s The
Year of the Flood are concerned with the underestimated (but crucial) inner, sub-
jective dimension of sustainability. With the help of descriptions of nature and
eco-ekphrases, Atwood introduces ecological concepts into the ‘social imaginary’
(Charles Taylor). Media theorist and game researcher Joost Raessens looks into
the dynamics of contemporary digital eco-games and how they frame the cultural
dimension of sustainability. His analysis aims at offering a conceptual clarifica-
tion of the strategies these games use to raise awareness about the issue of climate
change and to change or reinforce the player’s world views, beliefs and values.
Part 4 consists of the editors’ Conclusion. Gabriele Rippl and Torsten Meireis
summarise the significance of the concept of cultural sustainability as presented
by the volume’s contributors, explore some ways to teach the subject and refer to
further areas of research.
This volume is bent on fathoming the hitherto neglected ‘inner’ dimensions
of sustainability: the values, beliefs, ideas and images which the various disci-
plines within the humanities and social sciences investigate and which have
consequences for the exterior dimensions, too. The collection of essays addresses
research desiderata, trying to ignite more exchange between the disciplines and to
contribute to a comprehensive approach to the concept of cultural sustainability.
In showcasing a wide range of previously underexplored facets of sustainability,
the authors highlight the role of the humanities in achieving and transforming
the goals of sustainable development. They focus on important issues such as
social and cultural values, well-being, quality of life and happiness, thus encour-
aging further inter- and transdisciplinary research, the results of which will hope-
fully reach the relevant social and political agents.

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2 Culture and sustainable
development from a UN
perspective
Michael Gerber

Introduction
In September 2015, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in
New York, all 193 UN member states successfully adopted the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda) with its 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). The 2030 Agenda serves as a new global reference framework for
sustainable development until 2030. It covers the three dimensions of sustainable
development (social, economic and environmental) in a balanced way and is
universally applicable to all countries. Not least due to the inclusive elaboration
phase, the 2030 Agenda can be considered the latest and politically most widely
agreed upon description of sustainable development.
In the respective elaboration and negotiation processes from 2012 to 2015, the
concept of culture gained political relevance. Some observers and commentators
even defined it as the fourth dimension of sustainable development, in addition
to the three dimension concept, politically accepted since the definition given in
the Brundtland report (“Our Common Future”) in 1987 (World Commission on
Culture and Development 1995).
This contribution1 aims at discussing the role and position the concept of
culture assumes in the sustainable development discourse at the multilateral
level. After a brief historic overview on the relevance culture was ascribed
in relevant UN processes, I will elaborate on a range of specific inputs in the
political debate about culture and sustainable development, mainly stem-
ming from important human rights treaties, the most relevant UN conven-
tions and declarations as well as resolutions by the UN General Assembly.
Eventually, I will discuss key contributions during the negotiations on the
2030 Agenda, and outline the relevance of culture in the final outcomes
document.
Herewith, I contribute a political perspective to the academic debate around
culture and sustainable development. I reveal and discuss the existing gap
between the academic discourse, which usually tends to be more advanced, and
the political reality at an international level, thus spurring an in-depth debate
about the notion of cultural sustainability in multilateral practices.
 Culture and sustainable development 13
The role of culture in (sustainable) development
The understanding of the role of culture in development processes has altered
significantly over the last few decades. In conjunction with the steady evolu-
tion of development theories, culture has become increasingly important and is
nowadays widely acknowledged as a factor that needs to be integrated in develop-
ment policies and actions (Maraña 2010: 3). This relation between culture and
development is highly complex and a detailed historic analysis would require the
integration of diverse academic perspectives, an ambition that cannot be met
in this short contribution. Instead, a brief overview of the most important mile-
stones, mainly based on the UNESCO Working Paper by Maider Maraña (2010)
and the respective primary resources, will be given in the following paragraphs.
The contemporary understanding of the role of culture in development stands
in stark contrast to the early theories of development of the 1960s, which strongly
focused on economic growth and did not take culture into account. Even worse,
culture as a way of life was declared an obstacle to development by many traditional
development economists (Streeten 2006). This econometric concept of develop-
ment was gradually replaced by more complex ones, though not necessarily leading
to the acknowledgement of the role of culture. The work of ecologists and envi-
ronmentalists contributed to the conceptualization of sustainable development in the
1970s, which went beyond pure economic growth and also included concerns about
the impact of economic activity on the physical environment. At the same time,
various experts started pointing to the importance of cultural factors in develop-
ment processes. Nevertheless, according to Maraña, culture remained side-lined
until the 1980s or even 1990s, when the first international bodies and aid agencies
started exploring the relations between culture and development, however still with
little effect on the work of the international development community (2010: 4).
The difficulty of finding agreement on a clear definition of the term culture
is likely to have contributed to the exclusion of the concept from development
policies for such a long time (Maraña 2010: 4). It is a term that can mean eve-
rything and nothing and the problems arising from the lack of a definition are
exacerbated in the discourse on cultural sustainability, as shown later on. Some
understand culture in a narrow sense and thus focus on the promotion of arts
or the creative industries in general. This approach differs substantively from
trends in the 1990s towards a more human-centred development that stressed
the need for culturally sensitive, participatory approaches and capacity building.
This humanistic understanding of development, which was inspired by the work
of Amartya Sen, led to the creation of the Human Development Index (HDI) by
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
It did not however trigger a more systematic inclusion of cultural aspects in
development cooperation, despite the advocacy of non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs).
This exclusion of cultural aspects also applies to the domain of multilateral
development cooperation. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which
14 Michael Gerber
were launched by the UN in 2000 aimed at halving hunger and poverty by 2015,
did not include culture in their targets and indicators. This decision was taken
despite a growing recognition of culture’s role in development during the elabora-
tion phase, which also led to important initiatives and further research. One of the
reasons for not including culture in the goal and indicator framework of the MDGs
was the difficulty of precisely measuring culture’s impact on development. As we
shall see later, the same issue was raised in the negotiations of the 2030 Agenda,
which was adopted in 2015 and consolidated the two work streams of the Rio-pro-
cess and the MDGs to constitute a global framework for sustainable development.
In the 2030 Agenda, again no dedicated goal on culture exists. Nevertheless,
the concept of culture is strongly integrated and explicitly mentioned several
times in the declaration as well as in specific targets of the SDGs. However, in the
period between the two agendas, a lot of work on culture and sustainable devel-
opment was conducted by international development or research bodies and was
fed into the negotiations on the 2030 Agenda.
Against this background, the previous political debate will be elaborated on in
the following chapter before turning to a more detailed description of the role of
culture in the 2030 Agenda.

Political discourse prior to the 2030 Agenda

Human rights documents

An important basis for the debate around culture and development is provided
by the most important human rights documents. The “Universal Declaration of
Human Rights” by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 (UN General
Assembly 1948) includes two key references to the protection of culture-related
individual rights. Article 22 protects cultural rights that are indispensable for the
dignity and development of personality. Another aspect of the complex concept
of culture is protected in article 27, which states that “[e]veryone has the right
freely to participate in the cultural life of the community” and the right to “the
protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, lit-
erary or artistic production of which he is the author” (UN General Assembly
1948: Art. 27). These individual rights were further codified in the “International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” from 1966 (UN General
Assembly 1966). The most important articles regarding culture guarantee the
right of all peoples to self-determination (article 1) and operationalize the provi-
sions made in article 27 of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, namely
the right of everyone “[t]o take part in cultural life”, the right “[t]o enjoy the
benefits of scientific progress and its applications” as well as the right “[t]o ben-
efit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any
scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author” (UN General
Assembly 1966: Art. 15(1)).
As described above, these international human rights documents were adopted
in an era, when culture did not play an important role in development processes.
 Culture and sustainable development 15
It was largely ignored or even considered detrimental to economic development.
Nevertheless, the aforementioned documents also laid out the basis for the work
of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNE-
SCO), which is the only United Nations body entrusted with culture in its man-
date (Maraña 2010: 6), and which provided much input to the debate.

UNESCO conferences and declarations

UNESCO is mainly concerned with the protection of cultural heritage, but
has also been a driving force behind raising attention for the interconnection
between culture and development. It was in the 1960s that UNESCO started
promoting culture as an important element of development processes, mainly by
organizing inter-governmental conferences and preparing reports on the subject
matter (Maraña 2010). A first milestone was achieved in 1966 with the adoption
of the Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Cooperation (UNESCO
1966), which states in article 1 that “[e]ach culture has a dignity and value which
must be respected and preserved” (UNESCO 1966: Art. 1). In 1970, the first
Inter-Governmental Conference on the Institutional, Administrative and Finan-
cial Aspects of the Cultural Policies took place in Venice (Italy) and enabled a
discussion of the cultural dimensions of development. Surprisingly for that time,
the final report states that “cultural progress is an essential component of eco-
nomic and social progress” (UNESCO 1970), even though it must be assumed
that this notion was shared within a comparatively small circle of experts and
academics, without any real impact on development practice.
In 1982, Mexico hosted the World Conference on Cultural Policies (Mon-
diacult), where the link between culture and development was explicitly made.
The Mexico Declaration stated in paragraph 16 that “[b]alanced development
can only be ensured by making cultural factors an integral part of the strategies
designed to achieve it” (UNESCO 1982: para. 16). It also established a definition
of culture, which is still valid today. It goes beyond the understanding of culture
as marketable artistic products and includes

the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emo-

tional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not
only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the
human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.
(UNESCO 1982)

Two further milestones were achieved with the proclamation of the World
Decade for Cultural Development from 1988 to 1997 and the elaboration of the
report Our Creative Diversity by the World Commission on Culture and Devel-
opment in 1995. Both acknowledged and strengthened the interdependence of
cultural aspects and economic and social development. The report Our Creative
Diversity even states that “[d]evelopment divorced from its human or cultural
context is growth without a soul” (UNESCO 1996: 15), thereby pointing to
16 Michael Gerber
the fact that development efforts had often failed because cultural factors were
underestimated (22). This same report started using the term sustainable develop-
ment, based on the definition introduced by the Brundtland Report 1987, which
acknowledges culture as an essential determinant thereof (World Commission on
Culture and Development 1995).
One of the most important landmarks was reached in 2001 with the adop-
tion of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO 2001). Even
though the declaration was of a political nature and not legally binding, it was
“pioneering in promoting cultural diversity as world heritage and identified cul-
tural diversity as a development factor” (Maraña 2010: 11). Article 3 states that
“[c]ultural diversity widens the range of options open to everyone; it is one of the
roots of development, understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but
also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and
spiritual existence” (UNESCO 2001: Art. 3), and is thus to be seen as a continu-
ation of the 1948 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. Furthermore, the
declaration mentions the concept of sustainable development in article 11, affirm-
ing that cultural diversity is the key to achieving it (UNESCO 2001: Art. 11).
However, due to the non-binding nature of the declaration, it was necessary
to go one step further. It was against this background that the Convention on the
Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was elaborated and
adopted in 2005 (UNESCO 2005). As an international treaty, the convention is
of a legally binding nature. It allows states to take measures to protect and pro-
mote the diversity of cultural expressions (article 1) and acknowledges the role
that international cooperation can have in promoting the relationship between
culture and development (Maraña 2010: 12). Furthermore, the Convention
makes several explicit references to the relationship between cultural diversity
and sustainable development. The preamble states that “cultural diversity creates a
rich and varied world, which increases the range of choices and nurtures human
capacities and values, and therefore is a mainspring for sustainable development
for communities, peoples and nations” (UNESCO 2005). It also recognizes
“the importance of traditional knowledge as a source of intangible and material
wealth, and in particular the knowledge systems of indigenous peoples, and its
positive contribution to sustainable development” (UNESCO 2005). Moreover,
sustainable development is one of the guiding principles of the whole convention
(article 2) and is again explicitly mentioned in article 13: “Parties shall endeav-
our to integrate culture in their development policies at all levels for the creation
of conditions conducive to sustainable development” (UNESCO 2005: Art. 13).
Given these trends, it has become evident that the number of references to
sustainable development in landmark documents constantly increased and that
the importance of culture in the discourse on development grew over the course
of decades. However, the claim to integrate culture as a defining dimension of
sustainable development was not made until 2013, when the Hangzhou Dec-
laration, entitled “Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development
Policies” (UNESCO 2013a), was adopted by over 100 leaders in the field of cul-
ture and development on the occasion of the Hangzhou International Congress
 Culture and sustainable development 17
(UNESCO 2013b). The declaration states that culture is a fundamental enabler
of sustainability and has great potential to be a driver of sustainable development.
Therefore, culture should be placed at the heart of future policies for sustain-
able development and “be included as the fourth fundamental principle of the
post-2015 UN development agenda, in equal measure with human rights, equal-
ity and sustainability” (UNESCO 2013a). Following this reasoning, the partici-
pants of the congress called for the inclusion of a dedicated goal on culture in
the post-2015 UN development agenda (later the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development”).

United Nations General Assembly resolutions

Similar developments, from acknowledging the value of culture in development
to explicitly demanding the integration of culture in the post-2015 development
framework, can also be tracked in several resolutions adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly. The period from 2010 and 2014 was especially
remarkable in that regard.
Five resolutions on culture and (sustainable) development were adopted
between 2010 and 2014. Four of them (UN General Assembly 2010, 2011, 2013,
2014) belong to a series of reoccurring resolutions, which build on each other,
recall earlier commitments and keep the topic on the political agenda. Neverthe-
less, it can be observed that the statements on the relationship between culture
and sustainable development become slightly more pronounced over time. The
2010 and 2011 resolutions (“Culture and Development”) recognize that culture
is an essential component of human development and that cultural diversity is
important for sustainable development. Furthermore they acknowledge culture’s
important contributions to sustainable development and the Millennium Devel-
opment Goals (MDGs), which formed the guiding development framework from
2001 to 2015. The ensuing resolutions, which are explicitly entitled “Culture and
Sustainable Development”, explicitly mention that culture is both an enabler and
a driver of sustainable development, that it contributes to all three dimensions
of sustainability (social, economic and environmental) and that it needs to be
given due consideration in the elaboration phase of the post-2015 development
agenda. The 2013 resolution even recalled the Hangzhou Declaration and states
that its recommendations should be taken into account in the post-2015 process.
The 2012 resolution (UN General Assembly 2012) entitled “The Future We
Want”, adopted on the occasion of the Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable
development, cannot be compared with the other four resolutions on culture
and development mentioned earlier. With the adoption of this resolution, the
United Nations General Assembly decided to elaborate a post-2015 develop-
ment agenda, which shall include Sustainable Development Goals as a follow-up
framework for the Millennium Development Goals that were about to expire in
2015. “The Future We Want” is much less vocal on the importance of culture for
sustainable development than previous and subsequent resolutions. It recognizes
the importance of cultural heritage and diversity (UN General Assembly 2012:
18 Michael Gerber
para. 30/41/58) and that culture can contribute to sustainable development (para.
41). However, apart from these short references, culture is only mentioned in
the context of sustainable tourism (para. 130/131), sustainable cities (para. 134)
and biodiversity (para. 197). This is important to note, as the way and degree
to which culture is included in the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development
mainly reflects the language of the 2012 resolution. Interestingly, subsequent res-
olutions with stronger language on “Culture and Sustainable Development” (UN
General Assembly 2013, 2014) had less influence on the 2030 Agenda.
The final outcome document “Transforming the World: The 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development” is the result of long political negotiations between
governments of all UN member states. Yet other groups, such as NGOs, the pri-
vate sector, academia, minority groups, sub-national and regional actors and even
the public had a voice in the process. Thus, mainly non-state actors were advo-
cating for the integration of culture as a central concept in the 2030 Agenda.

Inputs by other groups and networks

Among the most vocal networks were the International Federation of Arts
Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), the Agenda 21 for Culture, the
International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (IFCCD) and Cul-
ture Action Europe. Together, these networks of organizations and global cultural
actors started advocating for a strong role of culture in the 2030 Agenda in 2014.
They demanded to put culture at the heart of a positive transformative change
(International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies et al. 2014).
Based on the recommendations made in the Hangzhou Declaration (2013a), they
argue that culture is a means to foster development in all three dimensions of sus-
tainability (culture as an enabler) but also a development end in itself. Therefore,
they call for a specific goal on culture in the 2030 Agenda, “in order to reinforce
the potential of cultural resources for sustainable development and to achieve
their long-term sustainable use for current and future generations” (International
Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies et al. 2014: 7). The suggested
title for a SDG on culture was “Ensure Cultural Sustainability for the Wellbeing
of All”. Together with this suggestion, the networks proposed ten specified targets
that relate culture to all dimensions of sustainable development and focus, among
others, on a normative institutional framework, cultural and creative industries,
education and training systems as well as cultural heritage (International Federa-
tion of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies et al. 2014: 8–9; Swiss Confederation
2014).
During the same period of inter-governmental negotiations, an informal group
of countries, the “Group of Friends on Culture and Development”, was established
in New York. It was chaired by Peru and comprised 29 countries from all the dif-
ferent regions. The group worked towards ensuring that the role of culture is fully
acknowledged in the 2030 Agenda, however not taking such a strong position
as the cultural networks mentioned above. As Switzerland was part of this group
of friends and because the author was Switzerland’s lead negotiator during the
 Culture and sustainable development 19
elaboration process of the 2030 Agenda, the Swiss position with regard to culture
and sustainable development will be outlined in the following paragraph.

The Swiss position

Although the integration of culture was not a top priority of Switzerland in the
negotiations on the 2030 Agenda, the Swiss delegation incessantly argued in
favour of a strong integration of culture in the emerging universal goal framework
(Swiss Confederation 2014). It thereby referred to the UN General Assembly
Resolution of 2013 (UN General Assembly 2013), which stipulated that due
consideration be given to culture in the elaboration of the post-2015 develop-
ment agenda. Switzerland acknowledged the role of culture as an enabler and
driver of sustainable development and gave three main reasons for the prominent
integration of culture in the 2030 Agenda.
First, culture is understood as a critical component of human rights. Not only
is guaranteeing cultural rights (as mentioned earlier in this chapter) central
for “forging inclusive and equitable societies, and an effective, people-centred
approach to sustainable development” (Swiss Confederation 2014: 2). Culture
is also strongly linked to other human rights, such as the right to education, the
right to freedom of speech or the right to peaceful assembly (Swiss Confederation
2014: 3).
Second, cultural diversity needs to be protected and promoted, as it contributes
to sustainable development. Universal policies and one-size-fits-all approaches to
development, which do not take into account the cultural context, are doomed
to failure and are to be considered unsustainable. Only people-centred, participa-
tive and culturally sensitive development processes can foster endogenous devel-
opment and empower populations by building their cultural assets. Moreover,
cultural diversity also produces social capital and strengthens resistance to unfair
treatment by the authorities. It is therefore a source of resilience and stability.
The promotion of cultural diversity can even enhance tolerance and prevent
conflicts between and within nations (Swiss Confederation 2014: 3). This last
point is particularly important, as the 2030 Agenda is the first universal sustain-
able development agenda that also comprises a dedicated goal on peaceful and
inclusive societies (SDG 16), and acknowledges that there is no development
without peace and no peace without development.
Third, cultural and creative sectors have to be considered in shaping the sus-
tainable development agenda. They are both resilient and rapidly expanding
sectors in developing and developed countries (e.g. cultural tourism) and thus
contribute to creating decent jobs and economic growth. They can also cata-
lyse social change in that artistic expression can help fight against exclusion and
inequality or support healing the scars of violence (Swiss Confederation 2014: 4).
Despite the importance Switzerland assigned to culture in sustainable develop-
ment processes, it did not advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated standalone
goal in the 2030 Agenda. One reason for this position was the ambition to cre-
ate an agenda with a limited number of goals covering all three dimensions of
20 Michael Gerber
sustainability. At the same time, a certain lack of clarity around the concept of
culture prevailed, which is why cultural aspects tended to be eclipsed by social,
economic and environmental issues. Moreover, many negotiators were sceptical
with regard to the goalability of culture because of the lack of adequate indicators
to measure concrete targets on culture. Lastly, the inclusion of culture as a stan-
dalone goal bore the risk of opening doors for cultural relativism with regard to
the other goals of the agenda and human rights aspects in particular. For Switzer-
land, a strong human rights framework was the pre-condition for any discussion
on culture.
On these grounds, even Switzerland, a country fully in favour of integrating
cultural aspects into the new framework, and recognizing culture as a powerful
resource for sustainable development and peace, was therefore not in a position
to support a standalone goal on culture. Instead, the objective was to ensure that
“the principle of a people-centred, culture-sensitive approach to development
cooperation is taken into account within the human-right-based implementation
framework of the Post-2015 Agenda” and that “the specific roles of culture, cul-
tural diversity and/or artistic and cultural expressions in contributing to sustaina-
ble development are accordingly reflected in the goals or transversal approaches”
(Swiss Confederation 2014: 4). The next section will summarize to what extent
these objectives have been achieved and how the concept of culture was eventu-
ally integrated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The role of culture in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development
The final outcome document of the 2030 Agenda (UN General Assembly 2015a)
was adopted on September 25, 2015 at the Sustainable Development Summit
in New York. All 193 UN member states agreed on the text and more than 140
heads of state and government were present in person, along with Pope Francis
and celebrities from all over the world. The universally applicable framework
with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets covers all
three dimensions of sustainability in a balanced way. At the same time, it also
puts a specific focus on peace, security and governance as well as on a renewed
global partnership to achieve the goals (i.e. the “five Ps”: People, Planet, Prosper-
ity, Peace, Partnerships). As described above, inputs influencing the elaboration
and negotiations of the 2030 Agenda had been numerous and positions on the
integration of culture were diverse.
In the end, a paradigm change was achieved insofar as, for the first time in
history, culture was integrated in a global sustainable development agenda. Sev-
eral references to cultural aspects are made in the political declaration as well
as in some of the targets. The declaration explicitly mentions cultural diversity
as a goal, along with respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of
law, justice, equality and non-discrimination, as well as the respect for race and
ethnicity (UN General Assembly 2015a: para. 8). In paragraph 36, the member
states “pledge to foster intercultural understanding, tolerance, mutual respect and
 Culture and sustainable development 21
an ethic of global citizenship and shared responsibility” and they “acknowledge
the natural and cultural diversity of the world and recognize that all cultures and
civilizations can contribute to, and are crucial enablers of, sustainable develop-
ment” (para. 36).
At the target level, four explicit and two indirect references to culture are
made. Target 4.7 on education for sustainable development mentions culture’s
role in contributing to sustainable development by demanding that, by 2030,

all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustain-
able development, including, among others, through education for sustain-
able development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality,
promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and
appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable
development.
(UN General Assembly 2015a: Target 4.7)

Target 8.9 mentions culture as a factor for economic development in the context
of sustainable tourism by stating that states have to “devise and implement poli-
cies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture
and products” (UN General Assembly 2015a: Target 8.9). In the context of sus-
tainable tourism, target 12.b suggests that states “[d]evelop and implement tools
to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates
jobs and promotes local culture and products” (UN General Assembly 2015a:
Target 12.b). Furthermore, target 11.4 explicitly calls states to “[s]trengthen
efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage” (UN
General Assembly 2015a: Target 11.4).
Besides these explicit references, two targets indirectly mention specific aspects
of culture and their contribution to sustainable development, namely traditional
farming knowledge and the creative industries as a source for entrepreneurship
and job creation. Within SDG 2 on hunger, food security and sustainable agri-
culture, target 2.5 requires “fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the
utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge” (UN Gen-
eral Assembly 2015a: 2.5). Within SDG 8 on economic growth and decent work
for all, target 8.3 asks states to “[p]romote development-oriented policies that
support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity
and innovation” (UN General Assembly 2015a: 8.3).
Despite the progress made by anchoring a culture-sensitive perspective in a
universal sustainable development agenda, the ambitious claims of the aforemen-
tioned groups were not taken into full consideration. Neither was a standalone
goal on culture established, nor could culture be positioned as the fourth dimen-
sion of sustainable development (next to the social, economic and environmental
dimensions). The level of integration thus largely reflects the position of the 2012
General Assembly resolution “The Future We Want”. More recent and compre-
hensive claims were not fully taken into account. At the same time, the term
cultural sustainability was not used in the outcome document of the 2030 Agenda.
22 Michael Gerber
It does not figure in any important UN declaration or treaty and it is yet to be
seen if and how it will make its way into the international political discourse.

Conclusion
The importance of culture in the (sustainable) development discourse has
increased remarkably since the 1960s. Culture has come from being considered
an obstacle to economic development in early development theories to being
recognized as a crucial contributor to, and an enabler of sustainable development
in the 2030 Agenda. The main drivers of this evolution at the international
political level have been UNESCO and the UN member states in their capacity
as actors in the UN General Assembly, not least during the negotiations of the
2030 Agenda. Non-state actors have also been actively involved, as illustrated
by the example of several networks that promoted a standalone goal on culture
in the 2030 Agenda. However, precisely this objective could not be achieved and
the concept of culture is thus still not acknowledged as fourth pillar of sustain-
able development. On the contrary, the widely accepted definition of sustain-
ability with its three dimensions – social, economic and environmental – was
reinforced by the UN member states, and not complemented by a fourth, cultural
dimension. In order to establish an even stronger interlinkage between culture
and sustainable development in the political discourse, more research as well as
active academic engagement is needed.
Among the reasons for not including culture as a dedicated goal in the SDG
framework was the lack of clarity regarding its concept, definition and interpreta-
tion, as well as doubts with respect to the measurability of progress on cultural
goals. Improvement on these two issues would help make the cultural dimension
more explicit and prevent it from being eclipsed by the politically agreed social,
economic and environmental ones.
Despite the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and its explicit enhancements with
regard to the inclusion of culture, the discussion about its role in the context of
sustainable development will continue. Only a few months after the Sustainable
Development Summit in New York, the UN General Assembly adopted another
resolution on “Culture and Sustainable Development” (UN General Assem-
bly 2015b), thereby affirming culture’s contribution to all three dimensions of
sustainable development and confirming that this contribution shall be taken
into consideration in the follow-up and review framework of the 2030 Agenda
(UNESCO 2015).
However, the term cultural sustainability has up until now not been used in any
major policy document at the UN level, revealing a gap between the academic dis-
course, which tends to be more advanced, and the political reality. This might also
be owed to the lack of an accepted definition. It remains unclear what the concept
intends to preserve. Does it relate to cultural heritage, cultural liberties and rights,
different modes of life, the creative industries or encompass all these aspects?
Yet, the topic seems to have gained relevance in the past few years, not only
at international, but also national level. The UN System Task Team on the
 Culture and sustainable development 23
Post-2015 UN Development Agenda (2012), which was comprised of experts
from over 50 UN entities, found that in 2012, culture was mentioned in 70 per-
cent of all UN Development Assistance Frameworks (UNDAF). Five years
before, this number had been at a low 30 percent only. The Task Team also
found that by 2012, 18 different UN organizations were working on culture or
regularly adopted cultural-sensitive approaches (UN System Task Team on the
Post-2015 UN Development Agenda 2012). Precisely because of this momen-
tum, it would be worthwhile to concretize the notion of cultural sustainability
in a way that it is both applicable to the international political discourse and
relevant to sustainable development practitioners around the world.

Note
1 This contribution is based on a presentation held by Switzerland’s Special Envoy for
Global Sustainable Development, Ambassador Michael Gerber, in the context of the
workshop “Cultural Dimensions of Sustainability” at the University of Bern, 10–12
November 2016. In composing this article, Michael Gerber highly profited from the
assistance of Stefan Luegstenmann, Advisor in the 2030 Agenda team, whom he sin-
cerely thanks for his valuable support.

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3 The future of cultural heritage
and its challenges
Aleida Assmann

Introduction: three meanings of ‘future’

Today we are witnessing a radical shift in the structure of our temporality: While
the future has lost much of its luminosity, the past has more and more invaded
our consciousness. In this context, the meaning of the word ‘future’ has changed
considerably and widened its semantic range. Let me start with three meanings of
future that are commonly used today and exist peacefully side by side. If looked at
more closely, however, they contradict and exclude each other. As they are all in
use, we may conclude that they are all needed.

First meaning of future: progress, utopia and novelty

A first meaning and vision of the ‘future’ is linked to the narrative of progress.
The future is the time when the world is expected to become a better, healthier,
more just and freer place. This narrative of progress is bound up with the project
of modernization and is based on constant innovation in the fields of science and
technology, harbouring the universal promise of transforming the old into the
new, with the new always standing for the better, the more satisfactory, the more
advanced option. Hegel’s philosophy in the nineteenth century was built on this
plan of history as a long-term, linear process, in which civilization evolves over
centuries from less conscious to more conscious stages of freedom. Even though
the end of history is endlessly deferred, the ‘telos’ of history has already been
revealed and contains promises of material fulfilment, aesthetic perfection, or
spiritual transcendence.
This positive concept of the future as a time in which our hopes and expecta-
tions of a better world will be fulfilled, clearly prevailed after the Second World
War. After 1945, the determination to turn one’s back to the catastrophic cata-
clysm of the twentieth century, to mark a new beginning and to embrace a bright
future was a general hope in both Eastern and Western Europe. “Risen from rub-
ble and ruins and turning to a bright future” (Auferstanden aus Ruinen und der
Zukunft zugewandt) were the first lines of the National anthem of the GDR. This
first meaning of future is connected with concepts like revelation, discovery and
the emergence of the new. To fully grasp the new, we have to forego the old; to
embrace the future, we have to let go of the past.
26 Aleida Assmann
Second meaning of future: uncertainty and risk
In post-war West Germany, I grew up with the first concept of a bright future. By
the 1980s and 1990s, however, it was rapidly losing much of its glamour and was
replaced with a concept of the future that was less optimistic and far-reaching.
This second concept of future is much older than the first, and can be traced back
to many ancient cultures. In the second meaning, the word future stands for what
is unexpected and unthought of, what comes towards us as a pleasant or unpleas-
ant surprise. Que sera, sera – some of us remember the words of the song in which
Doris Day looked into the future in an American film of the 1950s.1 This concept
of the future is linked to fate, fortune, contingency and coincidence. It is often
accompanied by a fatalistic attitude towards time: que sera, sera. The old wisdom
that the song conveys is that one has no other choice but to wait, see and accept
whatever the future brings. There are, however, also other ways of responding to
the veiled and hidden dimension of the future. In ancient cultures, techniques of
divining were created to be prepared for the unknown and to back up decisions.
Already in the early modern age, the negative quality of uncertainty was trans-
formed into the positive quality of risk-taking, transforming the fickle mediaeval
goddess Fortuna into the modern goddess of Chance. In the form of challenge,
experiment and productive risk, uncertainty was built into the temporal structure
of innovation. In modern societies, new methods like opinion polls and financial
insurance systems have been devised to reduce the invisibility and unknowability
of the future and have achieved some degree of security in anticipating failures
and minimizing losses.

Third meaning of future: sustainability

There is, I want to claim, a third meaning of ‘future’ that is generally accessible
and is equally obvious but had totally disappeared from consciousness until it was
recovered in the 1970s in the framework of a new ecological awareness. Know-
ledge about the limits of growth and the finitude of natural resources has radically
changed our relation to the world and our orientation in time. With the shift
towards ecological thinking the meaning of future changed radically: Nature was
no longer considered to be an inexhaustible source of change and renewal or the
telos of all our wishes and hopes, but became the object of serious concerns, care
and a new temporal ethics of responsibility.
This third concept of future is linked to the term ‘sustainability’, which dates
back to the 1980s. It arose in the ecological discourse and, so far, has only reluc-
tantly been applied to the humanities. Sustainability, however, can be conceived
both in terms of natural and cultural resources (cf. Rehling 2014). In both cases,
the idea of future is no longer linked to surprise, change or innovation, but
applies to objects and values that have already existed for a shorter or longer
time and are meant to be preserved. Future in the sense of sustainability refers
to the preservation and continuation of what we already have, know, value and
cherish. This concept of course also applies to cultural texts, objects, buildings
 The future of cultural heritage 27
and monuments that have existed for some time and are deemed worthy of being
preserved to have a future. The Early Modern poet John Milton, for instance, had
hoped that he “might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they
should not willingly let it die” (1641: 37).2 And 180 years later, the Romantic
poet Percy Bysshe Shelley reminded his readers that “all language, institution and
form, require not only to be produced but to be sustained” (1962: 238).

Cultural sustainability
The third meaning of future involves a cultural pact between past, present and
future generations, based on an assertion that here is something that we will
not give up, lose, forget or ignore but continue to invest with interest, value
and affect. Future in this context does not refer to progress or an eternal craving
for the new, but is related to cultural memory, heritage and identity. This third
meaning of future is no longer the opposite of the past but intimately linked to
something in the past, which is to be ensured for the future. While the categori-
cal imperative of the time regime of modernity had been: ‘break with the past!’,
the categorical imperative of the time regime of sustainability is ‘care for the
past!’ applying interest, diligence and responsibility – of course not to all objects
of the past but only to what has been selected for further re-use. Such a relation
to selected objects of the past can be based on material value, aesthetic value,
scientific value or identity value: This object is important because it is part of
my extended past, history and tradition, and I understand and respect that the
same affective link is active in other communities of culture. This kind of future
demands financial resources, attention and curation; it requires specialists who
are engaged in preserving an afterlife for certain cultural objects. This form of
cultural sustainability has existed for centuries; a more recent variation is the
concept of ‘cultural heritage’ or‚ ‘world heritage’ as established by UNESCO,
emphasizing a vital link between culture, history, memory and identity.
What can we learn from this short overview of three different concepts of the
future? It helps us to realize that the words we use to describe temporal relations
are not neutral terms that can be taken for granted, as if invested with stable and
unequivocal meaning. Quite the contrary: These terms are related to different
time regimes that are connected with different world-views and consequently
prescribe different values and forms of action. Past and future, therefore, are not
safely situated behind us or before us on a perennial temporal axis. Rather, they
are dimensions of time that are created according to cultural patterns and per-
formed within human frames of action. While the natural sciences and technol-
ogy constantly produce the framework of a new future through their exclusive
emphasis on inventions and innovations, the humanities produce a different
framework of future by also recovering, maintaining and transforming the cul-
tural memory of a group. Cultures depend on forms of transmission, backed up by
memory, they exist in a constant process of transformation through recovering,
reworking, revaluing, reanimating and restructuring the collected and collective
heritage of the group. But this also means that the future of cultural memory
28 Aleida Assmann
and heritage is always precarious. It relies on renewed acts of attention, inter-
est, remembering, preservation, transmission and discussion. As such, cultural
memory can be easily neglected and destroyed.
Until very recently, the topic of cultural heritage and the work of UNESCO
were hardly topics of intellectual interest or common concern. Even though
there exists today a growing number of university chairs and academic depart-
ments with the denomination ‘heritage studies’, the term is still controversial
and unpopular among many historians. For this group, the polemic term ‘heritage
industry’ stands for the exploitation of the past for economic purposes fostered
by the state and city tourism, for a world wide competition of national symbols,
elitist concerns and identity politics. This sweeping dismissal of a huge sector
of global cultural concerns and practices, however, can hardly be considered an
adequate approach to these problems. After a long series of brutal assaults by
Islamic State (IS) troops on sites of Western and Eastern cultural history, the
fashionable criticism of ‘heritage industry’ seems grossly out of date. Let us take
an imaginary visit to an actual site of destruction in order to rethink the concept
of heritage in this time of acute heritage-crisis, to recover a glimpse of its history
and to try to assess its future.

The discovery of Palmyra by Robert Wood

The sites of antiquity that we cherish today have not always been part of Euro-
pean cultural memory. After ostensibly valuable materials had been robbed and
plundered from ancient temples in antiquity, such sites were abandoned to the
slow destructive work of time. For many centuries, they existed in a state of com-
plete negligence and dilapidation. But during all these years, the lack of attention
and sheer bulk of these monuments were also a reason for their survival.
It was in this ruinous state that Robert Wood and two of his friends discov-
ered the ancient city of Palmyra in the Syrian dessert with its temples, theatres,
arches and amazing streets lined with pompous columns. An enchanted reader
of Homer, Wood had gone looking for the geographic sites of former civiliza-
tions. Writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, he belonged to the Age
of Enlightenment, but was also a forerunner of Romanticism. He combined both
sentiments, the classical spirit of Hellenism and a Romantic passion for the sub-
lime quality of picturesque ruins. He was the first to do what many were to do
after him: He travelled to the historical sites of the ancient Mediterranean world,
described in detail what he saw there and produced and circulated images of the
site. Wood was convinced that the legacy of Homer and the Greeks was not only
transmitted through words but that there were also material places and palpable
traces in geographical space that could be visited, recovered and estimated. His
fascination with ruins was animated by the idea that what was far away and lost
in time could be rediscovered and accessed in space.
We owe our vision of Palmyra to Robert Wood, the pioneer who rediscovered
the historic site and shaped its imaginary recovery. His description and the images
of the early artists who travelled with him created the cultural pattern through
 The future of cultural heritage 29
which succeeding ages and generations accessed these ruins after him (cf. Wood
1753).3 The love for ancient Greek civilization, its history and culture became a
living tradition and an influential part of Western cultural memory. Wood’s visual
discovery of Greek art and his enthusiasm are at the roots of Western historical
consciousness, identity construction and the canon of its art.

The rise of the concept of cultural heritage

The concept of ‘cultural heritage’ emerged in the European nations in a process
throughout the long nineteenth century. In the context of this new historical con-
sciousness, the interest in heritage became a growing occupation, involving official
administrative efforts from above as well as civic movements from below. The con-
cept ranged from simple retro-fictions and mythical fantasies to modern endeav-
ours valuing ‘authenticity’ and guarding the monuments of the past. It was rooted
in the spirit of historicism, a new branch of historical scholarship established at
nineteenth-century universities including the disciplines that we sum up today
under the label ‘humanities’. Within the context of historicism, an empirically
grounded interest in and investigation of a nation’s culture emerged, becoming the
object of scientific scrutiny that was focused on topics such as the nation’s history,
its art, landscape, local traditions and folklore. This academic interest in one’s own
culture and its past transcended also the elitist aesthetic canon and included more
and more local and vernacular elements. It was propelled by scholarship, measures
for public education and museum presentation. It was by no means confined to
these institutions, however, but soon spilled over and reached a growing public
through popular novels, local commissions, exhibitions, courses and excursions.
The central motor behind this new interest in national cultural heritage was
the French Revolution that had violently cut off the French past by destroy-
ing the institutions of the monarchy, clergy and aristocracy. Together with these
institutions it destroyed its traditions, abolishing the past in the name of radical
modernization. This abrupt change had a huge impact on forms of life and local
milieus. The past was cut off in acts of violent ‘culturoclasm’, but it was not
destroyed and abolished altogether. It was preserved as ‘history’ and delegated
to the care of new professions such as historians, archaeologists and curators of
museums. In co-evolution with a forceful break, the past was reconsidered as
an object of professional scholarship and public veneration. The revolutionary
origin of the concept of cultural heritage explains its complexity, involving a
number of tensions and paradoxes such as that between

destruction and preservation

top down and bottom up processes
modernist and traditionalist interests and
the national and the international.

While the nineteenth-century concept of heritage helped to invent, demarcate

and highlight national differences, it also turned into a common European and
30 Aleida Assmann
even global project built on a consensus and practical rules that transcended the
aims and purposes of the national collective. From its very beginning, it was a
process that developed on a local, a national and an international level, and as
such was not only a European but also a global movement, creating transnational
networks that promoted common standards on the basis of shared values and
concerns. In other words, there is such a thing as a common culture of heritage
that is only being discovered and historicized today.
A first manifestation of a universalizing spirit of heritage consciousness was
the term ‘vandalism’ as coined by the Abbé Henri Grégoire during the French
Revolution. The term summed up a new historical sensibility, criticizing violent
acts against material monuments, irrespective of national points of view. There
were two new ideas in particular that became influential after the French Revo-
lution and developed in co-evolution: “that nations had a heritage” and “that
preservation was a sign of civilized governance” (Swenson 2013: 46). National
heritage, in the long run, came to be seen as the particular share of a common
world heritage, owned, valued and protected by ‘mankind’. Thus, from the start,
patriotism and internationalism were intimately linked in the creation and pro-
motion of this new concept, in which the respect for time and the past became a
new universal religion, promoting, as it was hoped, “peace and goodwill among
the nations” (Swenson 2013: 194).4
Only “barbarians and slaves”, Grégoire had written, “hate the sciences and
destroy the monuments of art. Free men love them and conserve them” (Swenson
2013: 34). The act of vandalism was understood as a lapse from the newly shared
and internationally ratified principle of the sanctity of cultural heritage. Violent
seizures of monuments and works of art had been condemned as ‘crimes against
humanity’ as early as 1800 (Swenson 2013: 39). To consciously act against these
standards meant a serious breach in the common bond of civilized nations (or
‘Kulturstaaten’).
The concept of heritage was not only built on values and sentiments, but also
on an evolving process of international legislation. In parallel with rules protect-
ing civilians and wounded soldiers in times of war (The Geneva Conventions),
rules were drafted for safeguarding cultural property in armed conflict (The Hague
Conventions). We have experienced many times that these laws proved sadly
inadequate to the task of protecting cultural heritage, but we have also witnessed
that every new atrocity was answered with further statutes involving new legal
measures, values and standards.5

War on culture
It is quite obvious that the two world wars have dramatically ignored and acted
against the humanitarian principles established by the various conventions. We
have to add, however, that these conventions were also confirmed and consoli-
dated through the devastating losses. Until recently, many states in the world
were ready to act against these principles, but none of them would go so far as to
expressly veto them and to proudly present transgressive acts to the global public.
 The future of cultural heritage 31
This is, however, exactly what the IS is doing. It is leading a symbolic warfare
not only against Western civilization but also against the normative and regula-
tive idea of an inclusive concept of humanity based on a shared consensus of
values. The recent IS attacks on world cultural heritage are painfully spelling out
through the channels of global communication that such an inclusive concept
of humanity based on universal values and supported by all states and nations no
longer exists.
The role of culture in war is complex and changing, but culture has always
been implicated in one form or another. Imperial wars were aimed at conquering
other countries and incorporating the culture of the other as a trophy into one’s
own treasure, exploiting and exposing it symbolically as a representation of the
superior power. Religious and nationalist wars aimed at destroying the culture of
the other as a blasphemous contradiction to one’s own beliefs (Loewenthal 1987).
In colonial wars, the so-called ‘civilizing mission’ played an important part not
only in camouflaging the scramble for new territories and material resources, but
also for forcefully exporting religion and culture and imposing it on indigenous
populations. More recently, civil and religious wars have continued this bloody
legacy of war against culture in the Balkans with the destruction of ancient cities
and the burning of the library of Sarajevo.
“The destruction of cultural heritage of world-historic value by the IS is break-
ing with everything that we hitherto knew” (Schmickler 2015: n.p.). This com-
ment by Sönke Neitzel, historian at the London School of Economics, is perhaps
a bit rash. Unfortunately, there is a long record of the intentional destruction of
world-historic objects and buildings of culture. Leo Loewenthal has written an
important essay on the burning of books and libraries, in which he listed various
motives behind the destruction of cultural heritage.6 According to Loewenthal,
the central motive driving this kind of violence against cultural objects is the
extinction of history. After a political regime change, there is often the desire to
eliminate the past and to replace it by a new foundational narrative. As history is
always long, complex and composed of different strands and layers, it is also poly-
vocal and complex, undermining the construction of a single legitimizing myth.
To wipe the slate of history clean by creating a tabula rasa was a common strategy
for a new political power to prevent contradictions and claims to another reality
in the act of starting over and inventing itself as new. Under these circumstances,
the destruction of cultural relics goes hand in hand with acts of purification. What-
ever jars with the absolute truth imposed by the regime in power has to disappear.
These politics of damnatio memoriae have been fostered by all regimes built on
absolute truth and totalitarian power. Purification was also the strong motive
behind acts of iconoclasm in the early time of the Reformation.
The Western veneration for antiquities and heritage was a secular and modern
project starting with the Enlightenment around 1750 and was consolidated on an
institutional basis around 1800 after the French Revolution. The cult of antiqui-
ties, the value of heritage and the high esteem for extinct cultures became part of
modern Western civilization. We may even refer to the veneration of this complex
of aesthetics, art and historical consciousness as a new secular religion. Libraries,
32 Aleida Assmann
theatres and museums became the modern temples of this religion, archaeolo-
gists, art historians and literary scholars became its priests, and the touristic sites
of historic relics and ruins became the sacred places of modern pilgrimages.
It is exactly this secular heritage religion of the West against which the ‘blas-
phemous acts’ of IS terror are aimed. This is indeed a new dimension of age-old
vandalism. We are witnessing today violent acts of ‘purification’ and the destruc-
tion of history with brutal force, deleting in one stroke Western aesthetics and
centuries of historical thinking and heritage consciousness. But this is not only
the time of nameless destroyers but also of the courageous preservers who deserve
to be named, such as Abdel Kader Haidara, curator of one of the most important
libraries in Timbuctoo, a position handed down in his family for generations. It was
he who clandestinely organized the evacuation of 350,000 precious manuscripts
to the south of Mali to safeguard them against Jihadist violence. The collection
contains books on art, philosophy and science, documenting the mediaeval Ara-
bic enlightenment. The Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad (1934–2015) was
director and devoted curator of antiquities in Palmyra for 50 years, before he was
publicly executed at the age of 82 by IS militants on 18 August 2015. His succes-
sor in office, Maamoun Abdel-Karim and his staff had managed to transfer before
the arrival of the IS in Palmyra thousands of antique works of art to the national
museum in Damascus, including many statues and precious funerary objects.
The world is in a continuous state of shock watching the slow and inevitable
work of destruction produced by the threatening and alien violence of the IS.
Since UNESCO is finally bringing together the West and the rest of the world in
agreeing to value and protect cultural heritage for future generations, we are faced
with a radical non-synchronicity of the synchronous (‘die Gleichzeitigkeit des
Ungleichzeitigen’). Humanity, as now becomes painfully manifest, is living in a
globalized world that is unified through the channels of media of communication,
but internally torn apart in its values. We are no longer talking about ‘cultural
differences’ but about living in different worlds and time zones, the values of
which have drifted apart and become utterly untranslatable and non-negotiable.
Today, we do not just live in a world characterized by a ‘clash of civilizations’ but
by a temporal chasm between the ‘archaic’ and the ‘modern’. The new war on
culture is being conducted without a minimum shared consensus.

Conclusion: the future of cultural heritage

The great shock that we are experiencing today is well captured in the words of
another famous song, Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”.7 We have all made the
experiece that loss heightens the value that we attach to things. The words of
Mitchell’s song can be equally applied to ecological resources and cultural heri-
tage, emphasizing once more the double meaning of the term ‘sustainability’.
This new world-historical situation also demands a new perspective on cultural
heritage in the past, present and future.
To come back to Palmyra: This is an ongoing story. During the Syrian civil war,
the ancient site changed hands several times. Eventually, the Syrian Army retook
 The future of cultural heritage 33
the city, but considerable parts of the site had been destroyed between May 2015
and March 2017. These new acts of vandalism had been visually staged by the IS
as a symbolic triumph. Just as the destruction of Palmyra had been very public, so
is the debate about its reconstruction. It even reached my own town Konstanz,
in which in July 2017 an exhibition opened under the title ‘Rebuild Palmyra?’
(Hauser and Reiterer 2017). It was prepared by students of two universities and
three professors from different disciplines such as communication design, archi-
tecture, history and computer science.8 The exhibition was planned and designed
by the students themselves. It was highly mediated, using the most advanced
equipment of interactive digital technology including holograms to engage the
visitors in a reflection about the past, present and future of cultural heritage.
It was displayed on four floors: The ground floor presented a plethora of media
reports on Palmyra, indicating its importance as a public global issue. The first
floor showed the history of Palmyra from its beginning in the first century B.C.
as a node of trade for the exchange of luxuries, mediating between East and West
in the outskirts of the Roman Empire, and its rediscovery in the eighteenth cen-
tury. The second floor focused on the destruction itself by offering a digital archi-
tectural model and a telescope for 3D visualizations that allowed a virtual walk
through the undestroyed archaeological site. The last and third floor rounded up
the presentation by initiating a discussion about the future of this site. Here the
question ‘Rebuild Palmyra?’ was raised again and the visitors were invited to vote
yes or no for a reconstruction of the site.
The fate of Palmyra is far from unique. The site has become a symbol for the
precarious state of cultural heritage in general as it is oscillating between pride
and terror.9 Sites of cultural heritage are exceptional in that they are venerated
and attract many visitors, but they can also become the target of violence that
turns them into sites of trauma and destruction. In the age of terror, a paradigm
shift may occur in the approach to Cultural Heritage from a policy of conserva-
tion to a policy of reconstruction. As any site can become the target of destruction,
curators and managers of the UNESCO now face the new responsibility to care-
fully document a site to provide evidence for a possible future assault and recon-
struction. We are dealing here also with a new twist in our concepts of ‘future’,
as ‘cultural sustainability’ may include the temporary absence of what we wish to
keep continuously present. This has also an impact on our concept of ‘authentic-
ity’. “Today, authenticity is back on the agenda and turns out to be a complex
topic of different definitions and perspectives brought to bear on a variety of
contemporary reconstructions of the past” (ICOMOS 2017: n.p.).
So what will the future of cultural heritage be like? Que sera, sera? If we take
the precarious status of these sites seriously, there are two scenarios. The first is
digitization. When Palmyra will be totally destroyed, one may argue, it will not
have been erased from Western cultural memory. Such sites from which we have
no material relics can survive in texts, in stories, in discussions and in the cir-
culation of images. There is a paradox involved here: While the city of Palmyra
is dwindling in material substance, its archive of images is growing and growing.
There is always a revival on the Internet.
34 Aleida Assmann
The second paradox concerns reconstruction. If not only natural disasters
but also violent human destruction are now more and more inscribed into the
concept of cultural heritage itself, new guidelines are needed concerning a care-
ful documentation for post-trauma appraisal and interventions. Whatever the
option will be in a specific case, with their exhibition ‘Rebuild Palmyra?’, the
students of Konstanz have spelt out these pressing problems and given us much
food for thought for both scenarios.

Notes
1 The song was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and made popular through
Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring Doris Day and
James Stewart (Roberts 2006). Due to copyright restrictions, a stanza from the song
‘Que sera, sera’ had to be eliminated from the text.
2 James Joyce picked up this quote in his short story “The Dead” in which the protagonist
Gabriel nostalgically meditates on the fragility of cultural memory: If the dead “are gone
beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of
them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and
gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die” (Joyce 1976: 201).
3 See also Veyne (2017).
4 This slogan had been coined for the Great World Exhibition of 1851 and was taken
up and repeated for the preservation of national cultural heritage (cf. Swenson 2013:
195–197).
5 There was a rapid fall of esteem for the status of a civil nation after the beginning of the
Great War. Marinetti and Mussolini both praise the new cultural value of barbarism. In
his book Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Alan
Kramer cites German sources that prefer barbarism over civilization: “That may be
barbarism, but then it is a piece of healthy barbarism for which we will never want to be
ashamed” (2007: 27–26).
6 Loewenthal, L. (1987). “Caliban’s Erbe. Bücherverbrennungen und kulturelle Verdrän-
gungsmechanismen”. In Aleida und Jan Assmann (eds.). Kanon und Zensur. Munich:
Fink, 227–236.
7 The relevant lines come from the song “Big Yellow Taxi”, written, composed and
recorded by Joni Mitchell in 1970 and first released on her album Ladies of the Canyon,
had to be eliminated from the text due to copyright reasons.
8 The exhibition in the Konstanz ‘Bildungsturm’ from 30th June to 17th September 2017
under the supervision of Professors Eberhard Schlag, Harald Reiterer and Stefan Hauser.
See also the film that shows a walk through the Konstanz exhibition: http://rebuild-
palmyra.de.
9 The exhibition was transferred to Braunschweig, where it was shown until 29 April 2018.
It is hoped that this innovative experiment will make it all the way to Berlin where it
could attract and engage many more visitors.

References
Hauser, S. and Reiterer, H. (2017). Rebuild Palmyra? (30.06.2017–17.09.2017). http://
rebuild-palmyra.de [Accessed 08 February 2018].
ICOMOS (2017). Introduction to the ICOMOS University Forum Workshop on Authenticity
and Reconstructions (13–15 March 2017). Paris: (s.n.).
Joyce, J. (1976). Dubliners. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
 The future of cultural heritage 35
Kramer, A. (2007). Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Loewenthal, L. (1987). “Caliban’s Erbe. Bücherverbrennungen und kulturelle Verdrän-
gungsmechanismen”. In Aleida und Jan Assmann (eds.). Kanon und Zensur. Munich:
Fink, 227–236.
Milton, J. (1641). The Reason of Church Government Urg’d against Prelaty. London: Printed
by E. G. for Iohn Rothwell.
Rehling, A. (2014). “ ‘Kulturen unter Artenschutz’? – Vom Schutz der Kulturschätze als
Gemeinsames Erbe der Menschheit zur Erhaltung kultureller Vielfalt”. Jahrbuch für
Europäische Geschichte, 15, 109–137.
Roberts, D. (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World
Records.
Schmickler, B. (2015). “So gefährdet ist das Weltkulturerbe”. Tagesschau.de (24.08.2015).
www.tagesschau.de/ausland/faq-zerstoerte-kulturgueter-101.html [Accessed 8 February
2018].
Shelley, P. B. (1962). “A Defence of Poetry (1821)”. In D. J. Enright and E. De Chickera
(eds.). English Critical Texts: 16th Century to 20th Century. London: Oxford University
Press.
Swenson, A. (2013). The Rise of Heritage: Preserving the Past in France, Germany and Eng-
land, 1789–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Veyne, P. (2017). Palmyra: An Irreplaceable Treasure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Wood, R. (1753). The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmore, in the Desart. London: (s.n.).
4 Cultural sustainability in times
of cultural genocide
Wolfgang Huber

Introduction: culturecide
“Culturcide” is the name of a Punk Band based in Houston, Texas. But “Culture-
cide” is at the same time an abbreviation for “Cultural Genocide”. This new term
is not yet very well established. The only article I could find under the heading
“Culturecide” was published in the Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, edited
by Ellis Cashmore (Stein 2004: 99). Just as the condensed form and the longer
“cultural genocide” are yet to take hold in the Anglosphere, the German transla-
tion, “kultureller Völkermord”, is also rarely used.
There are good reasons to approach the term with hesitation. I myself had pre-
viously felt that “Cultural Genocide” was an exaggeration. Its use carries with it
the danger of diminishing the exceptionality of physical genocide and its associ-
ated atrocities, not only characteristic for the twentieth but also for the twenty-
first century. Yet physical and cultural genocides are inevitably intertwined.
Historically, the burning of books, the destruction of synagogues and many com-
parable attacks against cultural values were all too often immediately followed by
murderous attacks against those for whom those cultural artefacts formed a part
of their personal or collective identity.
The interconnectedness of cultural and physical destruction suggests that they
are a part of the same phenomenon, and therefore ought to be treated collectively
through the use of the one term, for it is clear that the term “genocide” means the
murderous aggression against groups whose unity has ethnic, religious, political or
cultural roots. And the extermination of the cultural self-expression of individu-
als or groups violates them deeply in their identity as well as in their integrity.
Cultural genocide is an intentional attempt to negate human dignity. But at the
same time, it negates culture as such, because every expression of culture forms a
part of the cultural heritage of humankind, and not just those cultural witnesses
explicitly acknowledged as parts of the world cultural heritage by UNESCO.
Indeed, the proof of this is before our eyes. Today we see the intertwining
of forms of physical and cultural genocide in acts perpetrated by the terrorist
organization “Islamic State” (IS), which include not only brutal violence against
groups that do not belong to the Umma in the fundamentalist Sunnite under-
standing, which is taken by IS as the only legitimate form of Islam, but also
 Cultural sustainability 37
the demonstrative destruction of buildings, statues and other witnesses of former
non-Islamic cultures and religions in, for example, Mossul, Nimrud, Hatra and
Palmyra. The exclusion of the other refers not only to persons and their physi-
cal integrity but also to the symbolic cosmos of other convictions, world views
or forms of cultural expression. The negation of any kind of legitimacy, worth
or dignity of persons as well as of cultural entities finds its expression in brutal
violence against subjects as well as against objects. The destruction of culture and
the destruction of human lives are inextricably intertwined.
What we experience is not a clash of civilizations but a struggle over culture.
This struggle is the form, or at least one of the forms, in which the problem of cul-
tural sustainability becomes apparent. And there is no reason for the assumption
that cultural sustainability, compared with the seemingly classical elements of
“Brundtland-sustainability”, namely economic stability, ecological balance and
social security, is only of secondary relevance. Humans are cultural beings. This
is something we realize when their cultural world is destroyed, or they become
alienated from the symbolic means of their possible self-interpretations. The
genocidal atrocities in Syria, Iraq and other places are dramatic demonstrations
of this. But of course, there are many other places in which people suffered, and
continue to suffer, under this twofold form of genocide.

‘Genocide’ as a concept: a brief history

The evidence of suffering moves us and its contemplation may stir us into
action, but it does not lead to conceptual clarity. Despite a protracted debate
over whether or not to include the destruction of culture in the moral and legal
concept of genocide, little progress has been made. People lament what they see
as a cultural decline, and they use the term “cultural genocide” as a means of
dramatization. Or they want to defend a specific kind of cultural separatism or
immobility, and they call the challenge for cultural adaptation or transformation
simply “cultural genocide”. The terms “cultural genocide” and “culturecide” can
easily be used to characterize and accentuate all kinds of cultural integration, not
the least of which would be “assimilation”. The term is inclined for a more or less
ideological use, working to immunize prejudice by attacking opposing positions
with a politically loaded term.
At this point a brief history of the term “genocide” and its relationship to
“cultural genocide” is warranted. A useful starting point would be a court case
heard in Berlin 1921. The Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirjan was accused
of murdering Mehmet Talaat Pascha, the former grand vizier and Minister of the
Interior of the Ottoman Empire on Hardenberg-Street in Berlin- Charlottenburg
on March 15, 1921. Talaat Pascha was well known as one of the organizers of the
Armenian massacres of 1915. In his absence he was sentenced to death by an
Ottoman court in Istanbul in 1919. But in Germany he could live without any
restrictions – and even be killed on an open street.
The procedures before the court had many implications. I name only three of
them. They refer to three different persons, namely Johannes Lepsius, Robert M.
38 Wolfgang Huber
W. Kemper and Raphael Lemkin. Johannes Lepsius, the Christian advocate of the
Armenians, was one of the experts before the court. He succeeded in convinc-
ing the jurors that the cruelties against the Armenians, including 89 members
of the Tehlirjan-family, influenced the psychological situation of the defendant
so deeply that he was not responsible for his actions. The jury therefore decided
for an acquittal, because Tehlirjan had committed his act in the heat of the
moment and was mentally not responsible for what he did. The fact was rather,
that Tehlirjan executed an order that he had received already months before in
a Boston coffeehouse. But under the influence of Lepsius, the court’s judgement
addressed the Armenian massacre rather than the assassination of Talaat Pascha.
That was at least the impression of another person present in the courtroom,
namely Robert M. W. Kempner, a 21-year old of Jewish descent studying law and
political science. He later interpreted the Berlin legal proceeding as the first case
in the history of law in which a crime against humanity committed by a govern-
ment is combatted by a foreign state. He drew the conclusion that this ought not
to be understood as an intervention into the internal affairs of another country.
That was of course an exaggerated interpretation of the action of the judiciary
in Berlin. But for Kempner his participation in the Tehlirjan court case was evi-
dently a preparation for his later role as deputy chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg
trials between 1945 and 1948, the first trials on crimes against humanity executed
by foreign countries. Born in 1900 as the son of a Polish-Jewish family, Raphael
Lemkin was in 1921 a young student of linguistics in Lemberg, where he became
aware of the Tehlirjan court case. His reaction differed from that of Kempner. He
asked himself, why it was not possible to prosecute somebody who committed
crimes against humanity outside of his own country. Lemkin changed the subject
of his studies to law and committed himself to the question how these crimes
could be made justiciable internationally.

‘Ludobójstwo’, or: terms matter

Lemkin’s first effort in this direction was a proposal that he presented to an inter-
national conference of the League of Nations in Madrid in 1933. Lemkin himself
summarized his proposal as follows: The intention of his two articles was

that actions aiming at the destruction and oppression of populations . . .

should be penalized. The author formulated two new international law
crimes to be introduced into the penal legislation of the thirty-seven par-
ticipating countries, namely, the crime of barbarity, conceived as oppres-
sive and destructive actions directed against individuals as members of a
national, religious, or racial group, and the crime of vandalism, conceived as
malicious destruction of works of art and culture because they represent the
specific creations of the genius of such groups. Moreover, according to this
draft these new crimes were to be internationalized to the extent that the
offender should be punished when apprehended, either in his own country,
 Cultural sustainability 39
if that was the situs of the crime, or in any other signatory country, if appre-
hended there.
(Lemkin 2005: 91)

Lemkin’s proposal did not succeed. The author had much reason to regret that
in the following years. He was convinced that the lack of an appropriate term
was one of the reasons for his failure. At the same time, he experienced the Nazi
atrocities himself, having not persuaded his family members to emigrate from
Poland early enough. He himself went first to Sweden, then to the USA. In
both places, he continued to work for the introduction of crimes against human-
ity into the international penal law (cf. Mayers 2015). In 1943, he gave advice
to the Polish government in exile to use the Polish term “ludobójstwo”, newly
coined by himself, for the German crimes against the Polish people, a compound
word from lud (people) and zabójstwo (murder). In the following year, he finally
found the equivalent “genocide” from the Greek genos (people) and the Latin
caedere (kill) and he used it consistently in the following years (cf. Lemkin 2005:
79). He ceaselessly campaigned for his idea to develop a legal instrument for the
international penalization of what he now called “genocide”. Consistent with his
earlier proposal, his definition of genos was not restricted by ethnicity or nation-
ality. Moreover, it included religious and cultural as well as political groups. In
Lemkin’s understanding the facts of genocide were not only realized by policies
of outright extermination of Jews, Gypsies or other groups, but also by policies of
demographic reconstruction or – as it was called later during the Balkan wars – by
“ethnic cleansing”. And he included the cultural aspects of genocide, namely the
destruction of the “culture, language, national feelings, religion” of the respective
groups (Lemkin 2005: 79). His tireless activity was especially motivated by the
conviction that the victims of Nazi barbarism were killed twice, once by the Nazi-
Regime itself and a second time by the Anti-Hitler coalition, because the member
governments knew about Hitler’s crimes but refused to publish their knowledge
or publicly decry them. Thus, Lemkin became the architect of the first covenant
related to human rights and crimes against humanity. It was adopted by the Gen-
eral Assembly of the UN, namely the “Convention on the Prevention and Pun-
ishment of the Crime of Genocide”, on December 9, 1948, the day before the
promulgation of the “Universal Declaration on Human Rights”.

The ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of

the Crime of Genocide’ (1948)
The draft for the Genocide-Convention explicitly included cultural genocide.
It defined genocide as such, as “a criminal act directed against any one of the
aforesaid groups of human beings, with the purpose of destroying it in whole or
in part or of preventing its preservation or development” (Draft Convention on
the Crime of Genocide, 5). Under this general definition it introduced the distinc-
tion between physical, biological and cultural genocide. Physical genocide was
40 Wolfgang Huber
defined as “causing the death of members of a group or injuring their health or
physical integrity” (ibd.), biological genocide was understood as restricting births
by different means.
Cultural genocide was explained as

[d]estroying the specific characteristics of the group by:

(a) forced transfer of children to another human group; or
(b) forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a
group; or
(c) prohibition of the use of the national language even in private inter-
course; or
(d) systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of
religious works or prohibition of new publications; or
(e) systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their
diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and
objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used
in religious worship. (Draft Convention on the Crime of Genocide [28
March 1947: 6f.])

This distinction between physical, biological and cultural genocide disappeared

on the way to the final version of the convention. Now Article 2 defines genocide
as follows:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing members of the group;

b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [9 December 1948: 309])

The difference to Lemkin’s draft is remarkable. Political groups are now excluded
from the definition. Outside of the national, ethnical or racial coherence only
religious groups are mentioned. Cultural coherence disappears under the cat-
egories of national, ethnical or racial unity. The former category of “biological
genocide” is included in the item “Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group”. The former category of “cultural genocide” appears only in
the item “[f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. All
other aspects of violent attacks against the cultural identity and self-expression
of a group disappeared during the deliberations and debates on the Conven-
tion. That was perhaps helpful for the clarity of the convention, but the double
restriction – the elimination of the political as well as the cultural aspect of
 Cultural sustainability 41
group identities – remains regrettable and, regarding the forms in which these
kinds of crimes developed over time, even deplorable.

The failure to include cultural genocide into international

human rights law
In this case there is good reason to look at the fact that in the further devel-
opment of human rights instruments, cultural rights are only seen as rights of
the individual. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a good
example for that. Its Article 27 says: “Everyone has the right freely to participate
in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific
advancement and its benefits” (Its Article 27 says). The International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 has cultural rights in its title, but is
more specific only with respect to education. In all other dimensions it repeats in
slightly different words simply the Declaration of 1948 in saying:

1 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:
(a) To take part in cultural life;
(b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications;
(c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests result-
ing from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the
author. (Art. 15,1)

The Article adds some duties of the member states in stating:

2 The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to

achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for the
conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.
3 The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom
indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.
4 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the benefits to be
derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts
and co-operation in the scientific and cultural fields. (Art. 15,2–4)

There is no mention of the prevention or punishment of cultural genocide and

therefore also of a common task of the international community of law in this
respect.

The rights of indigenous peoples – another chance missed

An occasion to revitalize the concept of cultural genocide was the preparation of
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of September 13,
2007. During the 24 years of preparation for that Declaration the term was intro-
duced. And indeed the preservation and protection of the cultures of indigenous
42 Wolfgang Huber
peoples formed an especially important aspect of the work on this declaration.
Already the Vienna Declaration that summarized the outcome of the United
Nation’s Vienna Conference on Human Rights of 1993, had emphasized respect
for the value and diversity of the cultures and identities of indigenous peoples,
and had emphasized the elaboration and protection of the rights of indigenous
people and other minorities as a high priority. However, the prevention or even
the punishment of cultural genocide is not addressed in the final text of the Dec-
laration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as adopted in 2007. Importantly,
the issue is not dealt with in a Covenant, but only in a Declaration. It has only
been adopted by the General Assembly and not ratified by the member states,
and lacks, therefore, a legally binding force, comparable with the Covenants of
1966. That may be a reason for a concentration on rights on the one hand and
obligations of the respective states on the other. It is a declaration of those rights
and obligations without any instruments of legal enforcement. No measures of
prevention or punishment regarding violations of those rights are mentioned.
That may be one of the reasons why the topic of cultural genocide or culturecide
does not appear.
The issue of culture itself, however, plays an important role in the 46 articles of
this rather lengthy declaration. The relevance of culture for the identity of indig-
enous peoples is mentioned repeatedly (Art. 8, 11–16, 24, 25, 31). Although they
are not restricted to the traditional cultural forms in which indigenous peoples
preserve and represent their identity, those forms play an important role, as Art.
31.1 shows in an exemplary manner:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop
their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expres-
sions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cul-
tures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge
of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports
and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the
right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property
over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural
expressions. (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peo-
ples [13 September 2007]: 301)

It is worth mentioning that the chairperson of the Global Indigenous Cau-

cus, Les Malezer, after the adoption of the Declaration by the General Assembly,
emphasized that the intention of the declaration was not to separate indigenous
cultures off from other cultures but to understand them as a part of the cultural
diversity – evidently understood in parallel to biological diversity or biodiversity –
of humankind. And he added: The “message is not about secession . . . but about
co-operation and partnership to ensure that all individuals, regardless of race or
beliefs, are truly equal and that all peoples are respected and allowed to develop”
(Malezer 2007: 2).
 Cultural sustainability 43
Conclusion: human rights universalism – the basis of cultural
sustainability
Culture is about diversity. Cultural sustainability has to do with the interaction
between cultures in their differentness. The debate on the rights of minorities, espe-
cially of indigenous people is a good test case for that insight. But the diversity of
cultures can be used either in a spirit of co-operation and togetherness or in a spirit
of separation and opposition. In this respect, it is important to address for a moment
new forms of cultural separatism applied to the issue of human rights themselves.
Recent decades have seen new kinds of cultural exceptionalism with regard to
human rights. Binding the idea of human rights exclusively to “Western” values
became a good argument for constructing exceptions from the obligatory charac-
ter of human rights on cultural grounds.
The debate on “Asian values” was of specific importance in this respect. With
growing intensity after 1990, Asian participants in the debate opposed the idea
that human rights could really appeal for universal validity. They saw in them a
one-sided emphasis on individual rights and freedoms to the detriment of family
values and the rights of communities. They wanted to emphasize the role of local
leaders replacing the autonomy of the individual. Or, to quote the president of
Singapore, Wee Kim Wee, who became a spokesperson for “Asian values” in the
early nineties:

If we are not to lose our bearings, we should preserve the cultural heritage
of each of our communities, and uphold certain common values which cap-
ture the essence of being a Singaporean. These core values include placing
society above self, upholding family as the basic building block of society,
resolving major issues through consensus instead of contention, and stress-
ing racial and religious tolerance and harmony. We need to enshrine these
fundamental ideas in a National Ideology. Such a formal statement will bond
us together as Singaporeans, with our own distinct identity and destiny.
(Wee Kim Wee 1989: 12)

That at least is a clear understanding of ‘cultural sustainability’: the formal estab-

lishment of a “National Ideology” or of ‘Asian cultural values’. In a comparable
manner representatives of Islam argue for the father’s right to decide on questions
regarding his wife or his children, especially his daughters. Arranged marriages
for instance are interpreted as not interfering with women’s rights. You have to
address comparable problems when it comes to the inclusion of vernacular rights
into the rule of law. The way in which different cultures deal with the problem
of human rights is a good litmus test for the understanding of ‘cultural sustain-
ability’. The idea can easily be used as a legitimation for cultural exceptionalism
putting into question the universality as well as the indivisibility of human rights.
In critically discussing this kind of exceptionalism on cultural grounds it is nec-
essary to look back to the challenges that determined the atmosphere in which
44 Wolfgang Huber
the first international human rights documents were formulated after World War
II. Genocides on the one hand and the situation of refugees on the other were
the most challenging experiences. Hannah Arendt summarized those experi-
ences in asking for the right to be treated as human beings, or more precisely
“the right to have rights” (Arendt 1949: 754–770; Arendt 1993: 452–470). The
Convention on the Prohibition and Punishment of Genocide of 1948 was fol-
lowed in 1951 by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Brownlie
and Goodwin-Gill 2010: 312–326). It is true that the idea of universal human
rights emerged from the abysses of the moral history of the twentieth century
(Glover 2012). It is this history that lends Jonathan Shay’s statement its sever-
ity: “The understanding of trauma can form a solid basis for a science of human
rights” (Shay 1994: 209).
From a theological perspective there are strong reasons to support this approach
to the universality of human rights. A Christian understanding of the human per-
son takes into account the vulnerability of humans and looks on the status of a
society from the perspective of its most vulnerable members (Koopman 2007). It
considers the inviolability of human dignity with the eyes of those whose dignity
is endangered by hunger and illness, poverty and loneliness, flight and migration,
violence and war. The preferential option for the vulnerable and the suffering is
mandatory for a Christian perspective on human dignity and human rights. This
option forms the theological starting point for a critical evaluation of human
rights exceptionalism on cultural grounds.
Seyla Benhabib, in her essays on human rights (2011), keeps up Arendt’s for-
mula of the “right to have rights” and brings her into dialogue with Lemkin.
Whereas Arendt understands the “right to have rights” primarily as a “right to
membership in a political community,” Benhabib conceives this basic right as
“the claim of each human person to be recognized as a moral being worthy of
equal concern and equally entitled to be protected as a legal personality by his or
her own polity, as well as the world community” (Benhabib 2011: 62). She sees
the basis of moral universalism rooted in the demonstration of “equal respect for
the other as a being capable of communicative freedom” (Benhabib 2011: 64).
And she endorses a statement by Rainer Forst, who writes: “Human rights secure
the equal standing of persons in the political and social world, based on a funda-
mental moral demand of respect” (Forst 2010: 718). If cultural sustainability is
to remain distinct from justifications for cultural separatism and exceptionalism,
then its proponents have to ask how the fundamental moral demand of respect,
mutual recognition and equal treatment of moral beings may be used as a basis for
the interaction of cultures – i.e. diversity – on common ground.
But it is also the other way around. Moral universalism is only taken seriously
if it opens the way to respect for diversity, including cultural diversity. Arendt
learned from her experience as a refugee from a totalitarian regime what Lemkin
learned from his confrontation with genocide: Whoever wipes plurality off our
life-world destroys this world itself. This is because our perception of the world
per se depends on a plurality and diversity of perspectives. In extinguishing one
of those perspectives we damage this world. Just as we might mourn the victims
 Cultural sustainability 45
of violence or the casualties of war, we should also lament the loss of a perspective
on the world, a part of the world as such.
Therefore, we ought to defend a plurality of perspectives on the world, rep-
resented by people both in their individual diversity as in the variety of their
cultures and religions. Equality, therefore, means the equality of the different.
The inherent dignity of every human person provokes our recognition of dif-
ference (Huber 2011). Culture is nothing else than the ensemble of symbolic
forms through which we represent those diversities on the ground of mutual
recognition.

References
Arendt, H. (1949). “Es gibt nur ein einziges Menschenrecht”. Die Wandlung, 4, 754–770.
Arendt, H. (1993). Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. 3rd Ed. München: Piper.
Benhabib, S. (2011). Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Turbulent Times. Cambridge –
Malden: Polity Press.
Brownlie, I. and Goodwin-Gill, G. (eds.) (2010). Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights.
6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (9 December 1948).
GA Res. 260 (III). In I. Brownlie, and G. Goodwin-Gill (eds.). (2011). Brownlie’s Docu-
ments on Human Rights. 6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 308–311.
Draft Convention on the Crime of Genocide (28 March 1947). UN Doc. E/447. www.un.org/
ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=E/447 [Accessed 17 January 2017].
Forst, R. (2010). “The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification:
A Reflexive Approach”. Ethics, 120, 711–740.
Glover, J. (2012). Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. 2nd Ed. New
Haven, London: Yale University Press.
Huber, W. (2011). “The Dignity of the Different: Towards a Christian Ethics for Pluralistic
Societies”. In L. Hansen, N. Koopman, and R. Vosloo (eds.). Living Theology: Essays
Presented to Dirk J. Smit. Wellington: Bible Media, 427–440.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (16 December 1966). GA
Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 UN GAOR Supp. (No.16) at 52, UN Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993
UNTS 3, entered into force January 3, 1976. In I. Brownlie, and G. Goodwin-Gill
(eds.) (2010). Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights. 6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 370–379.
Koopman, N. (2007). “Some Theological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human
Dignity and Human Rights”. Scriptura, 95(2), 177–185.
Lemkin, R. (2005). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Govern-
ment, Proposals for Redress (1944). Clark: The Lawbook Exchange.
Malezer, L. (2007). “Statement by the Chairman, Global Indigenous Caucus to the United
Nations General Assembly” (13 September 2007). https://www.humanrights.ch/upload/
pdf/170130__07-09-13IPCaucusStatementAdoptionDeclaration.pdf [Accessed 29 June
2018].
Mayers, D. (2015). “Humanity in 1948: The Genocide Convention and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights”. Diplomacy & Statecraft, 26, 446–472.
Shay, J. (1994). Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New
York: Scribner.
46 Wolfgang Huber
Stein, S. (2004). “Culturecide”. In E. Cashmore (ed.). Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic
Studies. London, New York: Routledge, 99–100.
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Res/61/295. In I. Brownlie, and G. Goodwin-Gill (eds.) (2010). Brownlie’s Documents
on Human Rights. 6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 293–303.
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President Wee’s Address at the Opening of the Seventh Parliament”. The Straits Times,
10 January, 12.
5 Sustainable development and
the concept of culture – an
ethical view
Torsten Meireis

Introduction: cultural sustainability as an ethical problem

Sustainability, or more precisely: sustainable development, is an inherently nor-
mative concept as it implies the presupposition and evaluation of desirable ends.
The key sentence of the 1987 Brundtland report defines sustainable development
as a process that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the abil-
ity of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987: 27). While the
fulfilment of needs might be understood as an articulation of particular interests –
even though the language of interest is probably already transgressed by a proc-
lamation of the obligation to look to the needs of future generations, the report
makes use of even stronger moral language: “Poverty is not only an evil in itself,
but sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending
to all the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations for a better life” (WCED 1987: 16).
The second part of that proposition might even call Amartya Sen’s version of the
capability approach (1999) to mind.
However, from an ethical viewpoint, moral claims need to be argued for as
ethics is a critical reflection upon morals and ethos. The sustainability discourse,
however, seems to be riddled with implicit moral claims that are not fully exam-
ined, thus contributing to the vagueness of the concept (cf. Diefenbacher 2001:
58–72). In the following paper I’ll try to show that this also applies to the dis-
course on cultural sustainability that has been developed since the turn of the
Millenium. However, my aim is not the obliteration of moral language from the
sustainability discourse, but to reflect upon its application. As a remedy to the ills
I detect, I will propose an understanding of culture as an agonal arena, an instru-
ment and a horizon of the sustainability discourse that allows for ethical distinc-
tion and implies measures to further the discourse on cultural sustainability.

Tainted love: moral bias in sustainable culture discourse

The first thesis I want to defend states that concepts revolving around the idea
of cultural sustainability often imply strong moral convictions. However, due to
their implicit nature, they usually tend to be taken for granted, thus tainting the
concept of culture in a problematic way. To exemplify this, I’d like to consider an
early example and a more recent one.
48 Torsten Meireis
For the early discourse on cultural sustainability, the contribution by Hilde-
gard Kurt and Michael Wehrspaun (2001) may be paradigmatic. It appeared in
the Gaia journal’s 2001 volume and argued succinctly for more consideration
to be given to the cultural aspects of sustainability discourse, especially in pub-
lic policy, thus arguing in the same vein as cultural policy advocates elsewhere
(cf. Hawkes 2001). Kurt, a scholar in cultural studies, and Wehrspaun, then an
official in the German government department for environmental affairs, first
observe a lessening of public interest in the environment, as indicated by a com-
mon ignorance of the concept of sustainability in Germany. They then connect
this development to the absence of cultural topics in the official sustainability
discourse and the absence of sustainability topics in cultural policy. In their anal-
ysis, this gap is rooted in cultural history leading back to the Age of the Enlight-
enment when the concepts of culture and nature became separated. Although
the reasons differed, the concepts converged in outcome: While for the Kantian
tradition, the cultural emancipation from nature was the precondition of free-
dom, Rousseau’s nature-friendly philosophy could be read as a program for the
liberation of an alienated nature through human culture. For that interpretation,
Kurt and Wehrspaun turn to the works of Marx and the Frankfurt School, while
relying on ethicists Günter Altner and Klaus Meyer-Abich for their diagnosis
that the cultural ‘forgetfulness of nature’ and the ‘homelessness of modern man’
must be overcome and the question of culture therefore move to the centre of
the sustainability triangle. Consequently the authors claim the necessity of a
new image of the world, a new understanding of man’s role in the universe, the
facilitation of which they expect from the arts. Even though the authors dismiss
any instrumental use of the arts, their plea boils down to an instrumental under-
standing of culture itself:

If the thesis presented here contains any plea, it’s directed at the intensified
dialogue with those segments of the art world that can be seen as . . . avant-
garde . . . of a culture of sustainability. For isn’t the search for sustainable
ways or styles or a new prosperity an essentially aesthetic challenge?
(Kurt and Wehrspaun 2001: 21)

This chapter is not the place to discuss the claims in philosophical history or
the positions of the ethicists mentioned. The point in question seems to be that
culture here is invoked as a normatively loaded concept instrumental to further-
ing sustainability. But this instrumentalism comes at a price: Kurt and Wehrs-
paun reduce the reach of the cultural dimension of sustainability by focusing on
a specific narrative, which, albeit supposedly universal, is actually based upon
Western paradigms of philosophy. The fact that all cultural narratives consist of
situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) and are therefore particular does not imply
that striving for the universal significance of a certain narrative by feeding it into
discourse is prohibited. But the identification of the dimension of culture with
one certain narrative, to my mind, does not allow for the plurality of culture.
This identification proceeds a little too fast, ignoring other narratives and their
 Sustainable development 49
impact, let alone the critique of universality mounted by postcolonial cultural
theory (Mignolo 2011: 118–120).
A second example is more recent – it has been devised in the context of a
European research project expressly directed at cultural sustainability (cf. Dessein
et al. 2015) and uses a very different, discourse-analytical and policy-oriented
approach. Starting out from a wide concept of culture, understood as “the mean-
ing content of human communities, the symbolic patterns, norms and rules of
human communities that divide humans from nature” (Soini and Birkeland 2014:
214), the authors screen scientific, peer reviewed English articles from disciplines
like geography, tourism management, agricultural studies, political science and so
on, which are making use of the term ‘cultural sustainability’. They try to discern
the storylines within these research papers by posing the following three ques-
tions: What representations of culture are being made, what problems are being
addressed, and which interests are involved? Subsequently, they describe seven
storylines which are then contextualized politically. Storylines focusing on the
conservation of cultural heritage against globalization (1) and the preservation of
such heritage in contexts of globalization (2) are assigned to a conservative pat-
tern. The use of culture as a way of sustaining economic viability (3) is character-
ized as neoliberal, while articles stressing cultural diversity (4) or local cultural
development (5) are attributed to communitarian tendencies and ones which
focus on the interdependence of cultural and ecological practices (6) or demand
an ecological turn in values and behaviour (7) are filed under an environmen-
talist header (Soini and Birkeland 2014: 219–220). Whereas the conservative
uses of cultural sustainability are understood as furthering the preservation of
certain particular cultures, the neoliberal and communitarian ones are described
as using culture as instrument to achieve different aspects of sustainability. Envi-
ronmentalist storylines in particular are characterized as treating culture as the
foundation of sustainability (Soini and Birkeland 2014: 220–221). As the focus
on policy development with the search criterion ‘cultural sustainability’ suggests,
all the approaches include normative principles, but as the study concentrates on
the description of the storylines in a political context, those normative dimen-
sions are not explicitly discussed. Due to the policy perspective, culture tends to
appear as a means to an end, that is, ecological, economical or social sustainabil-
ity. This is not only true for the storylines expressly labelled as seeing culture as
instrumental, but also for those who are understood to see culture as a foundation
of sustainability. The conservative storylines, on the other hand, are understood
to use culture as a way of preserving particular identity. Even if the merits of that
approach to the survey of how the concept of cultural sustainability is actually
used in policy reflection are granted, still the concept of culture appears as a
means to an end: political identity, social, economical or ecological sustainability
or all of those at once.
Now we might ask: What is so bad about using culture as a means to achieve
worthy goals? My answer would be twofold. Firstly, understanding culture solely
or even predominantly as a means to an end might be seriously flawed considered
the nature of what we usually understand by the concept. Secondly, normative
50 Torsten Meireis
evaluation of political goals necessitates the discussion of the moral principles
involved, implying an open consideration of what might count as a ‘worthy goal’ –
which of course is a necessary step in the implementation of such goals. Failure
to stand up to moral debate boils down to moral resignation or moral domina-
tion, both of which are problematic for policy development in democratic civil
societies. Consequently, my thesis then would be: Understanding culture as a
means to an end and thus implying normative positions that are somehow taken
for granted or not discussed at all taints sustainability discourse on culture with a
claim-overload that cannot possibly be made good on.

The concept of culture in contexts of sustainability

But how should we conceive of culture in contexts of sustainability? First of all, a
look at the classical theories of culture may be helpful. As suggested prominently
by Ernst Cassirer, culture may be seen as a symbolic system proprietary to humans
(and up to a point to certain primates) involving the use of language to repre-
sent, signify and thus symbolically reconstruct not only the physical world, but
also poetic fantasies, myths and religious ideas, emotions (Cassirer 1944: 44) and
abstract relations (Cassirer 1944: 59). This symbolic structure has to be seen as
dynamic: “A genuine human symbol is characterized not by its uniformity but by
its versatility. It is not rigid or inflexible but mobile” (Cassirer 1944: 57). In that
line of thinking, culture therefore cannot be reduced to a certain social sphere
or to the elaborate products and performances of art but is deeply embedded in
ordinary life. The ordinary is culture and culture is ordinary, it encompasses “a
whole way of life – the common meanings” as well as “the arts and learning – the
special processes of discovery and creative effort” (Williams 1989: 5). The social
nature of that dynamic symbolizing has been explained by Clifford Geertz in his
essay on thick description. We can draw here on his famous example of the wink-
ing eye. Given a room with more than two people, the winking of an eye triggers
a cascade of interpretation. The person who winks not only moves a muscle, but
in doing so draws on a culturally given set of symbols, a meaning attached to that
gesture. Usually, the winking is addressed to another person and may indicate
some secret understanding. People watching, however, through their interpre-
tation of its meaning, may add to the stock of symbols culturally belonging to
that gesture. A second person may wink, and, in performing the same gesture,
parody the action of the first as clumsy. The meaning, then, is not conspiracy,
but ridicule (Geertz 1973: 10–12). A third may then understand the wink of the
second not as parody, but as an unintentional twitch triggered by the cognizance
of a conspiracy and so on. Another person may then practice her satirical abili-
ties at home before a looking glass, so the gesture becomes part of a rehearsal of
an expressive repertoire. A fifth person may add to the interpretational network
by twitching the eye in response to a physical irritation, its gesture, however,
being understood by a sixth as parody of the clumsy satirist and so on. A wink
of the eye may thus symbolize a signal of affection, a token of ridicule, the idea
of conspiracy, an element of rehearsal and so on; it draws on a cultural pool of
 Sustainable development 51
meanings which are continuously interpreted and becomes independent from the
intention of the author instantaneously. What applies to gestures most certainly
applies to more complex or abstract symbols: to concepts like ‘love’, or ‘faith’, or
‘sustainable development’ or ‘cultural sustainability’, for that matter. If we then
understand culture as a network of symbols, the content and relation of which
are continually interpreted and reinterpreted by all people involved intentionally
and unintentionally, the idea of a fixed meaning becomes something of a chi-
mera. Of course, the durability of certain interpretations is a matter of gradual dif-
ference depending not least on resources. If I have the means to repeat a certain
interpretation of a certain symbol a thousand times a day, reaching a million peo-
ple and relying on everyday use, on psychotechnical tools like emotional bonding
and mnemotechnic instruments like rhyming, I may make that interpretation
stick for a while. Exercises in commercial branding rely not least on those effects,
making ‘cellotape’ or ‘kleenex’ household words. However, even such powerfully
amplified interpretations are subject to time and reinterpretation: The German
detergent brand name ‘Persil’ was used to ironically label the slip granting the
dropping of charges in the denazification trials after World War II in Germany,
insinuating that the person in question had been washed white – on the outside.
If culture is thus to be understood as an ongoing and dynamic process of symbol-
interpretation and reinterpretation in which everybody in the context of given
cultural manifestations – personal or medial – takes part in the measure of his or
her symbolic, social and economic capital (Bourdieu 1983), and if the durability
of interpretations gradually differs according to various parameters, then at least
three different sociological dimensions of culture can be discerned (Nassehi 2011:
145–161). Firstly, a given – if dynamic – pool of symbols may be used as an instru-
ment of ascription, assigning certain traits to groups of people identified by cer-
tain index markers. A woman’s headscarf worn in summer in a certain way may in
a Western European context act as a signal which leads agents to ascribe certain
traits to the person wearing it: She’s a Muslim, she’s of Turkish origin, she’s very
restricted by a patriarchal set of customs, subject to her husband’s rule, doesn’t
go to public pools and so on. Stereotyped markers like this may well lead to false
conclusions. The woman may in fact be a Christian of self-proclaimed German
ethnicity and cultural belonging, having recently emigrated from Kazakhstan. Or
such markers may of course be faulty in themselves: Muslim women of Turkish
origin may understand the headscarf as a sign of personal identity in a Western
context which goes well with the lifestyle of an independent professional. What
is more, they are subject to change: A woman with a headscarf in summer would
have been perfectly usual in 1950s Germany or maybe even understood to just
have stepped out of an open sports car. ‘Culture’ is then used as an ascriptional
marker of difference and understood to comprise group traits adhering to ethnic-
ity, stratum, class, lifestyle and so on. It is relatively recent, as it implies a plurality
of legitimate pools of symbols and cultures existing alongside each other.
Secondly, the concept of culture is used to denote a pool of symbols in the con-
text of a given group or society that are taken for granted, even though they’re
subject to change, including changes in their concepts, rituals and images. Rather
52 Torsten Meireis
than bowing, Western Europeans ritually shake hands when they meet formally.
They take for granted that the question ‘what do you do’ at informal gatherings
refers to activities related to gainful employment in a market environment, just
as they use the term ‘work’ in a way that implies positive recognition rather than
a manifestation of a lower class membership. Knowledge of those pools of sym-
bols relevant for interpretation is usually latent. Assumptions about the nature
of those symbols are only disrupted only when the group of reference, the ‘we’ is
changed: either by travelling to places where a majority of people adhere to sig-
nificantly different latent codes or by changes in a given society itself.
Because cultural codes work as ascriptional signals and latent knowledge in
relation to given groups, they can also work as signals of distinction. Certain
aesthetic preferences may be the index marker of a social milieu characterized
by disproportional social power or wealth, or, vice versa, of a lower stratum.
If the powerful declare their codes to be the normative ideal (‘high culture’),
that pool of symbols may also be used as a basis to discard values and prefer-
ences of subcultural groups as crude or even immoral, thus at the same time
discharging that group’s claims to equal social power or prosperity – thus popu-
lar music derived from African pentatonic musical traditions was understood
as immoral or even destructive and sensual spectacles were often discarded as
the cheap thrills of the lowly. On the other hand, subcultural symbolic codes
may be utilized to draw emancipatory or identity-related distinctions between a
cultural minority and a majority culture or the codes of those perceived to be in
power. In such cases, ‘discarded’ markers, values or concepts become signals of a
counter-culture striving for socially countervailing power which may even try to
achieve cultural hegemony (Kebir 1991:74–89, 187–217). Slogans of this kind
are familiar: “Black is beautiful”, “no future” – or just see Roland Barthes (2010)
on wrestling. In this sense, culture can be understood as an agonal arena, where
cultural codes are means of distinction used for the purpose of identity forma-
tion, gaining recognition, manifesting social power and accumulating material
resources.
If culture is properly understood as a dynamic symbolic social system and con-
stantly changing interpretational network in which every person capable of the
use of language, symbolic thinking and symbolic actions is actively and passively
involved, and if it works as an ascriptional mechanism, as latent knowledge and
as an agonal arena of distinction, then the idea of using it as a means to an end,
to me, has a very reductionist flavour. Of course, it is possible to strive for cultural
hegemony in the name of a certain normative concept of sustainability, but we
need to understand that any such concept will be contested on various grounds:

1 Any concept will be understood very differently depending on the respec-

tive cultures of reference. To use a somewhat imperfect example, while in the
1970s and 1980s ecological sustainability was seen by many as a crucial issue
in the global North, the global South suspected it to be a ruse to keep it from
developing economically and in terms of political power – an issue still vis-
ible for instance in South African debates (cf. de Gruchy 2007).
 Sustainable development 53
2 The chance of creating a universal, monocultural notion of sustainabil-
ity ingrained in everyday latent knowledge across cultures is rather remote,
because cultures are inherently different and changing fast.
3 Any hegemony in the agonal arena of distinction will – in the context of social,
political and economical inequality – most certainly produce counter-cul-
tures. Take, for example, the ‘coal rollers’ in the US; people who deliberately
modify their truck engines so as to emit unburnt diesel in thick clouds of
smoke to protest against what they understand to be a liberal and well-to-do,
ecologically minded establishment (Tabuchi 2016), may be only an extreme
version of the anti-elitist stance manifested in Trump supporters who asso-
ciate the idea of ecological sustainability with comparably rich, well-con-
nected and intellectual liberals threatening their way of life.
4 As culture is an ever-changing network, any such hegemony will be temporal
at best.

That doesn’t mean that any attempt at sustainable development or cultural sus-
tainability is futile. The human rights discourse is an example of the challenges,
but also of the opportunities inherent in such an effort. But conceiving of culture
as but a means to an end (1), associating it to a set of fixed moral principles that
are taken to be self-evident (2) or dissociating cultural sustainability from the
sustainability of cultural traditions (3), all fail to account for the complexity of
culture.

Culture as horizon, agonal arena and instrument of

sustainability discourse – a proposal
To avoid the traps of instrumentalist or undercomplex concepts of culture in
contexts of sustainability, I would like to propose that culture be understood in
three ways – as horizon, agonal arena and instrument in the sustainability dis-
course. Cultural sustainability then means turning to the horizon of the interplay
of preserving, importing, interpreting, reinterpreting, inventing and testing cul-
tural patterns that take the form of moral or ethnic traditions, of literary fiction,
religious narrative or poetic imagery. It furthermore necessitates entering the ago-
nal arena, facing the cultural, social and moral struggle, accepting the conflict
that goes with it and understanding it not only as a nuisance but also as a crea-
tive resource for cultural sustainability. Finally, it refers to the instrumental use
of particular cultural elements to further contested moral principles, procedures,
institutions and practices of sustainability.
As a theologian and ethicist it is that idea of culture as a horizon for sustainabil-
ity discourse that I will turn to first. As Sigrid Weigel (2010), a German scholar
in literature and cultural studies has contended, concepts like sustainability not
only have a normative basis which needs to be explored and cannot be sup-
planted by seemingly objective quantification, but are also rooted in historical
contexts, bodies of traditions and experiments in literary fiction exploring the
implications of cultural patterns. Thus Weigel shows that the moral idea of each
54 Torsten Meireis
generation’s right to its own decisions, which is closely connected to today’s sus-
tainability discourse, is a quite recent one related to the Western modern shift
towards civil societies with capitalist economies. Bodies of tradition and cultural
patterns, however, are not to be understood as monolithic blocks or fixed enti-
ties, but are constantly on the move as they are interpreted and reinterpreted
in the light of changing situations, new ideas imported from other cultures or
according to the views of groups new to the tradition. For that matter, culture
as a horizon isn’t limited to traditions of the past and can’t be reduced to ques-
tions of heritage, but also implies literary imagination or technical invention.
Just one example from the Christian realm: The concept of a ‘responsibility
towards creation’ which was quite effective in spurring on environmentalism,
has an immense scope depending on the persons asked. European theologians
may dismiss it as imprecise and misleading because it insinuates that humans can
preserve creation (Honecker 1999: 353); Swiss citizens may see it as an appro-
priate expression for the notion that there is more to nature as a resource pool
as the notion has been integrated into the Preamble of the Swiss constitution
(BV 1999); African Christians may understand it as God’s statement against a
capitalist sell-out of their fields (LenkaBula 2000: 18–19) and some American
born-again Evangelicals may take it to imply a strong stance against evolution
theory. Principles and concepts, narratives and images, however, are not propri-
etary to a certain culture or specific groups of people, but are continuously on
the move and form the pool from which the social imaginaries (Taylor 2004) are
fed. To care for that pool, a preservation of bodies of tradition or the nurturing of
particular cultures is necessary for the whole of cultural sustainability, but it’s not
enough by far. The creative processes dealing with the preservation, interpreta-
tion and reinterpretation of cultural patterns, including their concrete and fic-
tional application in different settings, need to be furthered. That in turn means
that moral principles relating to sustainability must be reconstructed and tested
in different cultural and religious languages. As there is no abstract human reli-
gion, morality or culture, we cannot suggest an objective and universal ‘sus-
tainability paradigm’ that then only has to be translated in different particular
languages. The upside is that we may expect creative and fruitful inputs from
different traditions and languages.
Incorporating such an inclusive definition of culture into sustainability dis-
course would require, first of all, that the cultural patterns we – as respective
members of a particular tradition and agents with a particular history – under-
stand as guiding and normative, be considered in the notion of sustainability.
That entails asking ourselves why we find sustainability – and the notion of intra-
and intergenerational justice attached to it – plausible and attractive on the basis
of our respective normative traditions and patterns and how, in turn, those pat-
terns may be influenced by the idea of sustainability. Institutionally, this entails
the preservation of bodies of tradition or the nurturing of particular cultures as
well as sustaining creative processes dealing with the preservation, interpretation
and reinterpretation of cultural patterns and their concrete and fictional applica-
tion in different settings.
 Sustainable development 55
As culture must also be understood as the agonal arena for sustainability dis-
course, the creative processes, debates, dialogues and discourses in which different
moral principles, concepts, images, motives and narratives are compared, con-
tested and held against each other also need attention. This not only applies to
the furthering of public debate and competition, but also to critical reflection
on the role of political or economic power, and on cultural ascriptions and dis-
tinctions. The coal rollers might be dismissed as fools, but if the proliferation of
environmentally friendly behaviour is understood as a moral priority, it might
be a good idea to analyse the driving powers behind their distinctive strategy, in
order to test the stereotypes being employed in describing this group, as well as to
find ways to engage in some sort of civil dialogue – which implies that everyone
should remain open to learning experiences. The search for terms upon which to
conduct a dialogue, of course, means engaging not only international bodies, but
also the state and all levels of civil society.
In that vein, cultural patterns of sustainability must be understood as debatable
and brought to the fore not only in international organizations but in civil society
and politics proper on all levels, including faith based organizations, lobby organ-
izations, unions, clubs, public libraries, the media and of course also in everyday
life and practices. Debates, dialogues and practical experiments are important
even before becoming official policies.
In the context of culture as the semiotic horizon and as the agonal arena of
sustainability discourses, cultural activities and formations may then also form an
element of sustainability strategies. This instrumental aspect has been pointed out
by the concept devised in the context of the aforementioned European research
(Dessein et al. 2015). Relying heavily on the research of Soini and Birkeland
(2014), the COST group has developed a framework rooted in an instrumental
view of culture for sustainability. In that framework, culture is conceived of in
three ways, as culture in, for and as sustainability. Culture in sustainability signi-
fies culture as a separate pillar of sustainable development besides the social, the
economical and the ecological one, thus forming an instrumental aspect as cul-
tural means are used to further sustainability ideas (Dessein et al. 2015: 20–37).
Culture for sustainability sees culture in the focus of the sustainability triangle,
thus supposedly acting as an instrument to mediate the ecological, economical
and social dimension, for instance by granting a common symbolic language to
protagonists of the different dimensions. Culture as sustainability signifies a con-
crete sustainability-friendly cultural pattern including for instance models and
images of social cohesion, economic instruments that further effective and effi-
cient sustainable production, and a widespread ecological awareness expressed for
instance in a sufficiency orientation. Culture in that vein signifies a constitutive
instrument for sustainable development.
In that frame, cultural patterns may then be seen as an important aspect, a
fourth pillar, and may function as mediating principles between the classical
three dimensions and even work as foundations of sustainability as a whole. But
we need to keep in mind that those instrumental functions are volatile and sub-
ject to constant questioning, debate, interpretation and reconstruction.
56 Torsten Meireis
Case study: a Protestant religious normative argument
for sufficiency
To give a very short and sketchy example of which questions need to be addressed
in the perspective of cultural sustainability, let me turn to the idea of sufficiency.
The idea that there must be boundaries to consumption and production has been
propagated by authors like Bob Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange (1990), John
Cobb and Herman Daly (1994), Thomas Princen (2003), Manfred Linz et al.
(2002), Tim Jackson (2011) and Robert and Edward Skidelski (2012). A recent
definition that tries to circumvent normative language of ‘the good’ positions
sufficiency as involving the “modification of consumption patterns that help to
respect the Earth’s ecological limits, while aspects of consumer benefit change”
(Fischer and Griesshammer 2013: 10). Of course, the crux lies in the comparison
of benefits: To get from A to B, a car and a bike are feasible functional equivalents.
On the bike you will get sweaty and wet, will probably need more time and your
transport possibilities are limited. The car, however, will keep you cosy and warm,
and transport you and your belongings swiftly, albeit not doing a lot for your health
or for the environment. To decide which to use, normative orientation is needed.
In the horizon of culture, as a Christian theologian I would of course turn to
Christian tradition – others may turn to contemporary popular movies like James
Cameron’s Avatar (2009), literary works like Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the
Flood (2009) or an inquiry into legal philosophy like Capra’s and Mattei’s Ecology
of Law (2015). In the Protestant tradition that I locate myself in, elements corre-
sponding to the idea of sufficiency can be discerned (cf. Meireis 2016). First of all,
the particularly Protestant concept of calling – in its ethical aspects – is directed
towards the ultimate aim of serving one’s neighbour which carries the promise of
fulfilment. In the hierarchy of goods, consumption or recognition are means to
achieve that sort of service rather than ends in themselves. Distinctive luxury or
excessive consumption is therefore rather spurned, consumption has a measure
which allows for the respect of planetary boundaries. Secondly, the Protestant
concept of God’s merciful justification without works implies the notion that
everybody is a loved child of God, no matter what he or she achieves in terms of
success or reputation. The necessity of self-aggrandizing through distinctive con-
sumption or the amassing of power may be diminished by this idea of equal worth,
which in turn implies another set of boundaries to growth, consumption and
accumulation. Thirdly, Christian anthropology considers humankind to be the
stewards of the world, not its masters: God’s assignment as depicted in the crea-
tion myths implies a basic solidarity of the created that forbids limitless exploita-
tion or destruction.
However, the concept of sufficiency has to be perceived in the agonal arena
of culture, where questions of distinction, ascription and debate are always
present – I will not go into all possible issues, just a few controversial aspects
to make the point: First there could be a problem with religious traditions in
general. The otherwise flawless research of Soini and Birkeland (2014) on cul-
tural sustainability never even mentioned the contribution of religions toward
 Sustainable development 57
sustainability – drawing on religious tradition might be seen as diminishing the
scientific value of a sufficiency orientation. Also, different religious or philosoph-
ical traditions might disagree as to the worth of sufficiency. Secondly, sufficiency
might very well be a debated point in a certain faith based community – let’s say:
Protestantism – itself. Religious antagonists to the sufficiency argument might
suggest that religious thinking proper has nothing to contribute to secular prob-
lems of well-being but is only concerned with salvation of the soul and should
therefore refrain from that kind of moral language (Reuman 1992: 103–113).
Thirdly, the value of a sufficiency orientation on a general scale may well be
debated on the grounds that it lacks universalism and effectiveness. Such an argu-
ment might suggest that the economic growth paradigm has been largely effective
without putting consumers into restraining moral or legal reigns, and that where
such restraints have been tried through economic planning, they failed miserably.
Asserting such claims concerning Protestant tradition and theology and not
avoiding debates in the agonal arena of culture, may bring us to an understand-
ing of sufficiency as a cultural element of sustainability discourse: Sufficiency could
be understood as part of a ‘Protestant way of life’ – which in turn needs to be
preserved. This religious dimension would then be part of the cultural as aspect
of sustainability, maybe forming an overlapping consensus with other religious or
secular reasons for sufficiency. Protestant ethics being a part of the cultural dis-
course as a whole could offer models of mediating the ecological, economic and
social aspects of sufficiency, for instance arguing for an economic shift towards
publicly funded care work that authors like Daly, Princen or Jackson recommend.
And of course, a Protestant ethos on the whole might contribute to a moral basis
for sufficiency, as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was one of the sources of
the environmental movement in the German-speaking world.

Conclusion
To some, this description of possible Protestant contributions towards a culture
of sustainability may seem appealing, while others might find it appalling. Here,
it serves as an example of models based on a certain religion or world view. It is,
of course, only one religiously oriented model among many, all of which might
approach sustainability in equal-but-different ways, according to their own ethics.
Their contribution to cultural sustainability might be substantial, if they present
their moral claims for open debate. A prerequisite of that debate, however, is a
concept of cultural sustainability that takes the dynamics of culture into account
and understands culture not only as an instrument, but also as a horizon in an
agonal arena, thus opening the cultural field to sustainable discourse.

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Part II

Philosophy, sociology,
economics and cultural
sustainability
6 Sustainability and
modernisation in conflict
On Roger Scruton’s conservative
green philosophy
Anton Leist

Introduction
Politically ecological aims are traditionally wedded to the left-liberal or social-
democratic part of the political spectrum. The philosopher Roger Scruton is out
for correcting the expectation toward such an alliance. According to him, con-
servatism is a more proper basis for ecological aims. If we want to discuss sustain-
ability within the expanded frame of ‘cultural sustainability’, it is worthwhile
addressing Scruton’s thought.

The conflict inherent in ‘sustainability’

Beginning with the Brundtland Report (1987), ‘sustainability’ shifted from being
a technical term used in ecological debates to a household word. Today many
things, whether products or practices, are routinely labelled ‘sustainable’. Often
this means little more than conceiving of a certain self-imposed restriction, a
cap on the expenditure of resources. If there is any consensus on its meaning
given the widespread use of the term, it is that it signals ecological consciousness
and self-restraint, even if only in a multivariate and jumbled way. The difficulty
in using the concept precisely has been ecologists’ complaint since its linguistic
debut.
Nevertheless, with the Brundtland Report’s initiation, a principled core for
the definition of the word was included. The Report gave priority to the ‘needs’
of ‘future generations’ and also highlighted ‘development’, widely understood to
be a sort of incoherent concession to North-South sensitivities. To many eyes,
‘sustainable development’ was and is a contradiction, exposing the basic con-
flict between an optimally high standard of living of European proportions and a
reduction in overburdening the environment – both on a global scale.
At the time of the Brundtland Report, ‘sustainability’ was considered to be
a new concept, even if, as it turned out, it was a rediscovery of a forestry prin-
ciple developed by Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a long forgotten Saxonian Ober-
berghauptmann of the early eighteenth century.1 Post-Brundtland, ecologists,
confronted with the expanded concept of sustainable development, tried to
situate it in a wider normative context, and in order to do this, they had to fall
64 Anton Leist
back on two political moral traditions, liberalism and socialism. Accordingly,
they tried to rephrase sustainability either by referring to concepts of justice or
by linking it to a critique of capitalism, or both.2 Mirroring the muddle of an
unsustainable economy, the concept only became more opaque through these
transformations.
Given the multigenerational and international dimensions of ecological con-
flicts, resorting to distributive justice, for one, seemed the method of choice, even
if a problematic one. Not being able to ‘cooperate’ with future generations – one
of the basic conditions for justice – in the face of accelerated climate change,
the only possibility is cooperation with the next generation. Also, whether eco-
nomic and social justice, normally conceptualised as being implemented in a
single national society, can be extended to the global sphere, is open to debate.
A controversy about real conditions underlies the latter dispute: whether moti-
vational forces are needed and if so, whether the necessary motivation is in place
to implement a concept like justice. Moreover, in the rhetoric of sustainability,
the usually harmless philosophical penchant for abstractions turns dangerously
ideological, highlighting an impossible ideal.
To be clear, sustainability seems a Western apologetic idea as it suggests the
conservation of our level of welfare – why should we mount opposition to sustain-
ing our way of living? Often ‘sustainability’ is used in the literature, accordingly, to
mean the continuance of effective business, good markets and increasing wealth.
One wonders whether ecological sustainability would not need to be something
different. In order to disentangle its internally conflicting forces, I suggest dis-
tinguishing between productive and conservational sustainability. ‘Conservation’,
being etymologically linked with conservatism, refers to a third position that
politically has been relegated to the background for some time. Due especially
to the impact of globalisation, the political conservatism of the early years after
World War II has been thoroughly forgotten, and the label ‘conservatism’ has
little appeal today. But if we want to gain a clearer view of the systematic alterna-
tives, we should not overlook it.
Both liberalism and socialism centre on the values of freedom, equality and
justice. These ideals attempt to account for how scarcity is to be regulated, but
they are silent on how scarcity is to be mitigated in the first place. The tradition
of conservatism can be helpful for just this reason: because liberal and socialist
traditions are presently dominant in Western societies, it is no small wonder that
explicitly conservative defences are rare. In the following, I will engage with the
philosopher Roger Scruton who has paddled for many years ‘against the stream’
as a spokesman for conservatism, including for a conservative Green position.

Environmentalism and conservatism

In order to prepare the ground for an engagement with the values central to
Scruton’s conservatism, I will, following him, outline three areas of convergence
between environmentalism and conservatism: a conservative attitude towards
the environment, a scepticism about technological-capitalist solutions, and a
 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict 65
preference for community-based solutions over state-organised ones.3 Scruton is
an eloquent spokesman of all three of these conservative tendencies.
First, the socially aware conservative maintains a cultural concept of nature.
She appreciates perhaps more than others the historical development of our
environments, such as the built environment in our cities, as well as the cul-
tural manifestations of our landscapes. While raw, or pure, nature may exist – for
example, the deep sea or the North Pole – for humans there is no such thing
in our everyday activities. The natural environment is always already subjected
to human use, whether that be agriculture, landscaping or construction. Con-
servatives value tradition and are committed to maintaining the existing level of
human ‘interference’ in the environment. Here conservative ideology converges
with imperatives of conservational sustainability, without invoking an esoteric
concept of ‘deep ecology’ (Naess 1973; Merle 1994; de Jonge 2004).
Second, the conservative is sceptical of techno-capitalist solutions. This scep-
ticism will become more appreciable once we understand the deeper reasons for
conservatism, because at face value one would think ‘why not conserve capital-
ism as well?’ Techno-capitalist solutions are ones that are based on individualism
and instrumental rationality. With techno-capitalist solutions (e.g. solar pan-
els, energy-saving light bulbs, electric cars) short-term problems are solved but
underlying social habits remain largely intact. Conservatives, by contrast, focus
precisely on affecting social change. They propose tapping the social potential of
communities and making intrinsic values visible instead of employing instrumen-
tal rationality. Community for conservatives is not a narrow social association or
union, but an entity associated with a territory, a tradition and a specific social
glue that holds together its members. Scruton uses the German term Heimat for
this kind of environmentally advantageous commitment (2012: 25–27; ch. 7).
Third, the conservative attitude towards the state is ambiguous. Conserva-
tives typically favour a strong state and a certain amount of regulation. Adverse
to market-driven individualism and also direct democracy, conservatives may in
some situations seek help from a strong state, even one with oligarchic tenden-
cies. Conservatives believe in intellectual and moral hierarchies on the basis of
ineradicable natural and cultural differences among individual persons, and thus
are cautious of social equality. In other contexts, however, conservatives can be
strongly critical of bureaucracy and regulation. Scruton, for one, points to the
ecological disasters socialist regimes left behind, and he sees this as an endemic
problem within democratically controlled bureaucracies. He is also extremely
critical of bureaucratically structured NGOs like Greenpeace (2012: 30–38).
Instead, he favours small-scale communities where opposition and solutions are
organised at a personally engaged local level (10, 20–27, 36, et passim).
This sketch of three ways in which the conservative agenda supports environ-
mental aims brings into focus the extent to which conservatism contrasts with
liberalism and socialism. Liberals have much more flexibility in their view of
the environment than conservatives in that they subsume ecological aims to the
individual’s needs, either narrowly as preferences (neoliberalism) or for policy
reasons (civic liberalism). Conservatives would instead reclaim the worth of
66 Anton Leist
traditions, customs and virtues and assume that the community and its organic
needs restrict what can be subject to individual choice. For example, the prior-
ity of the community’s need is universally accepted in the community when it
comes to cemeteries, and for conservatives, this would be the ideal orientation
in general.
Green environmentalists often turn to bureaucratic solutions, something the
conservative shuns. Green environmentalists work to balance justice-driven
aims with environmental ones which frequently results in conflicting priorities.
For example, the Pendlerpauschale in Germany, a tax subsidy for commuters, is at
odds with environmentalists’ call for clean air. Green environmentalists are torn
between these two aims. Conservatives, in contrast, are not that much concerned
about justice issues, and they would opt for what is best in terms of addressing
climate change.4
Following Scruton, I will now examine to what extent the moral resources in
our societies can help to distance ourselves from a one-sided, ‘productivist’ use
of the sustainability claims, prevalent in Western capitalist societies.5 Scruton is
helpful in making us aware that in searching for an alternative, we are unavoid-
ably confronted with the more basic moral and political levels of modernisation.
In the following, I will engage less with concrete environmental problems than
with the social attitudes from which they arise, and which is the only relevant
medium of possible change.

Metaphysics or a sense of realism?

Different from everyday conservatives who either take tradition to be important
as such or favour it as an essential component of political stability, a philosophical
conservative like Scruton exploits philosophical traditions to provide a founda-
tion for his ideas. He is uncompromising in his insistence that conservatism must
have a metaphysical basis, which I place alongside another layer of conservative
thought, to be called the realist sense. A metaphysical and a realist sense often go
hand in hand in Scruton’s analysis, not unlike other conservatives’ analyses. To
me it seems preferable to hold on to the realist sense only, and I will explain this
by help of critical arguments against metaphysical claims.6 Metaphysical beliefs
conflict with liberal and socialist thinking, and the extent Scruton is fixated on
them points to a deeper conflict of values.
Should one not expect every political and moral doctrine to be ‘realistic’? The
point here is one of pervasive importance for our reflective thinking, both for
academics and laity. The opposite of a realist sense is a utopian sense. With the
help of the realist sense, we evaluate others in light of social behaviour, includ-
ing a realistic sense of whether social behaviour can be developed in one direc-
tion or another. Alternatively, in practising the utopian sense, a thinker orients
herself to values and ideals, with only a minimal regard for actual behaviour. Of
course, both realist and the utopian elements have to be taken into account if
our evaluations will, in some way, be adequate to their object.7 But different prac-
tical policies result depending on which end of the realist-utopian continuum
 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict 67
takes precedence. Conservatives orient themselves most often to the realist side,
whereas socialists, or socio-liberals, are always in danger of situating themselves
at the utopian end of the spectrum.8
Social relations are constituted by a combination of empirical psychology and
normative claims, and here is the heart of the realist/utopian distinction. Utopi-
ans rely on judgement alone, whereas realists orient their judgements to the kind
of motivation that is endemic in people. To find a balance between both is a dual-
ity problem, of which Scruton is well aware. He presents it in the form of a duality
of evolutionary and rational explanations (2012: 213; 2014: ch. 1). He suggests
that practical rationality does not come in a pure form but is always combined
with a sense of accountability for what we do to others (2012: 212–214). This
feeling is itself embedded in, or arises out of, typical moral emotions like indigna-
tion, resentment, envy, admiration, praise etc. Responsibility would be the larger
moral attitude into which ‘feeling oneself accountable’ fits.
Scruton follows here the ‘imperative of responsibility’ of Hans Jonas, which he
reads in a more down-to-earth, psychologically realistic way than Jonas did. Pure
thought – floating free of concrete motivation – is not what creates responsibil-
ity, including such typically academic thoughts as those of ‘future generations’
or of ‘humanity’. Instead, responsibility “arises from our attachments to others:
it is our ancestors, our successors in title who awaken our concern” (2012: 207).
Responsibility leads to sacrifice, and sacrifice is sustained only if there is attach-
ment to others. This is most effective – the Humean clue – in regard to family
and the narrow circle of friends, but hopefully also includes a potential for wider
social circles. Here is where the term oikophilia (along with Heimat) becomes rel-
evant (2012: 26). It means identifying with a local community in a way that is
interconnected enough to develop responsibility for the following generations of
the community.
There is one tradition of political (and moral) philosophy, the social contract,
that also offers insight into the problem of duality and that is also, to some extent,
realistic. Social norms of obligation could be derived from the fiction of a social
contract of all members of a society with each other by way of a hypothetical
reflection on the basis of empirically grounded motives. Such a contract is based
on the idea that there are advantages to all members agreeing on moral and polit-
ical norms, such as opposition to anarchy, civil war or amoral behaviour. Would
this not be a take on the duality problem as well, suggesting another combination
of accountability and responsibility? Scruton offers a Hegelian critique of this
combination, objecting that the contract, if the basis of something like morality,
must presuppose just what it purports to explain. For Scruton, family and state
“depend on unchosen obligations, and . . . will collapse if people lose the instinc-
tive gratitude and piety that enable them to identify kin and country as personal
assets, to be cherished and protected in return for what they give” (2012: 223;
italics added).
If the illusion exists in the modern era that moral attitudes can be embraced by
decisions in light of our informed desires or interests, this would be wrong because
such decisions are not available to us. In order to make decisions, an amount of
68 Anton Leist
presupposed cultural conditions have to be in place, and the contractualist is
naive about the extent of these communal givens.

Scruton on piety and the spiritual

Similar to other critics of modernity, Scruton applies the use/end value distinc-
tion in a metaphysical way to modernity. Whereas the distinction is unavoid-
able in general, the end result need not be read, as metaphysically inclined
interpreters do, as having value entirely beyond human control. Similar to
critics of ‘technotopia’ and ‘instrumental reason’ (late Heidegger, old Frankfurt
School), Scruton is eager to retain a sense of value that is beyond the reach
of humans and their influence. ‘Beauty’ and ‘sacredness’ are the two values he
considers most important for that. “Since the Enlightenment, aesthetic taste
and natural piety have stood vigil over our surroundings, and held back the
hand that was raised to destroy them” (2012: 253). Beauty and the sacred are
barriers against use, instrumentality and exploitation, and because of this they
are part of oikophilia and active components of stopping the disruption of natural
habitats. In the modern world, beauty and sacredness are under threat of being
adapted by, and drawn into, the very instrumental culture they are meant to
hold at a distance. Accordingly, it is the task of the conservative philosopher
to lay bare the original power of beauty and sacredness: “It seems to me that
many of the worst environmental depredations of recent times have come about
because beauty has been displaced from the agenda, and utility elevated at its
place” (2012: 256).
Scruton rejects the widespread notion of aesthetics as merely subjective and
instead attaches the experience of beauty to achieving a common social identity
(2012: ch. 8, esp. 256–258, 264). In one telling example he contrasts a purely
utility-oriented way of individually gulping down junk food with the aesthetically
laden event of a family dinner. He describes the latter as a synthesis of social con-
nectedness, aesthetically intrinsic value and giving meaning to oneself by relat-
ing to things eternal: things that “remain forever the same” (2012: 262).
Even if only vaguely articulated, Scruton’s social idea concerning beauty seems
plausible to me. It is a promising suggestion that “judgments of beauty are bids
for socially recognised presence” (2012: 264). In agreement with other remarks,
this could mean that aesthetic standards are forms of expressed social identities,
a common way to interpret and symbolise our everyday activities. All aesthetic
expressions have, even if at most times unintentional, to some extent a social
function. Let me call this, in line with Scruton’s intentions, the community con-
ception of aesthetics and beauty. The community conception sees art as exempli-
fying ideal ways of living together, in the form of shared living.
Now, if art had such a function in an extended way, it would certainly help
in the worst cases of environmental despoliation. To what extent and to what
end however, depends on what exactly is meant by ‘community’. A community
could be a present community, realistically conceived, or an idealised commu-
nity, depending again vaguely on metaphysical ideals. In his comments about
 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict 69
the family dinner, Scruton makes clear that he has a metaphysical conception of
community in mind.
Look, for example, at his advice to keep eternal traditions alive for the family
by enjoying ‘willow-patterned plates’ as reminders of ancient China (Scruton
2012: 262). The community has to value the sharing of meals in the first place,
and through this, the relation of beauty to sacredness.

You notice (in the case of the family meal) another continuity too, between
aesthetic values and piety, which is the recognition that the world is in other
hands than ours. Hence the gods are present in mealtimes.
(Scruton 2012: 263)

Oikophilia thus in the most substantial sense fosters three motivations for environ-
mental action, one of communal relationship, one of a sense of beauty, and one of
piety developed in the face of sacredness. If we orient ourselves to psychological
realism, we can appreciate the first two motives but will be hesitant about the
third. The point here is not one of total rejection; even the thinker adverse to
the metaphysical has to admit that Scruton puts his finger on something univer-
sally human (2012: 284). The occasions for piety that Scruton has in mind are
ones like birth, illness, death and events related to these, like marriages, funerals
or baptisms. Feelings of sacredness and piety arise out of, or in the face of, such
existentially outstanding and often unsettling experiences. The message behind
these events is that crucial parts of our life are beyond our control. If we open
ourselves to such experiences, something like piety arises, which might, in its
most raw form, be a universally human feeling.
Several open-ended questions follow, however, in the face of such an experi-
ence of existential shock or boundary feeling. Among these are, first, whether
adequate terminology is available, and second, what exactly is the content of this
existential response. As for the first one, we could ask whether the term ‘piety’ is
the right one in the event of such an existential boundary experience when there
is no religious belief involved. A less religious word would be ‘respect’. Another,
quasi-religious word would be ‘awe’ or, in German, ‘Ehrfurcht’. I think we should
not tie ourselves to any one word too narrowly, as that may result in a transforma-
tion of meaning. Why could ‘piety’ not be used in a religiously neutral way? On
the other hand, not to distinguish between a secular and a religious use would
blur the dimensions of definition, something that clearly happens in Scruton’s
writings. With this distinction in mind, I will use ‘respect’ for religiously neutral
existential phenomena, even if a purely secular use of ‘piety’ might be convenient
as well.9
To his credit, Scruton too wants to disengage ‘piety’ from its Christian back-
ground and adopt the meaning of the ancient Romans.10 Unfortunately, this does
not offer us a secular definition of piety. The difference between a secular existen-
tialist attitude of piety and a religious one (including the Ancient one) depends
on the presupposition of the existence of a right or good order of things beyond
humanity. From a secular perspective, one feels respect in the face of existential
70 Anton Leist
events of the type mentioned earlier, and out of this, one develops an attitude of
care, humbleness and circumspection concerning one’s life and of life in general –
ends that are open to further reflection and decisions. There is not only one form
of practical response, for example awe or self-denial. The religious perspective,
on the other hand, leads to just such dramatic responses, because along with the
feeling of piety is a presumption of a pre-established right order.11 This presump-
tion claims that at a minimum the transcendent order is right in and of itself or,
in addition, that it has been created by one of the Gods of the monotheistic reli-
gions. Consequently, imperatives are imposed on us on behalf of this right order,
sometimes of an absolute quality. We are not allowed, for example, to forego our
life by suicide.
The upshot of this is that as non-believers we must not accept Scruton’s claim
that sacredness is a human universal (2012: 284), even if we should accept a
respectful attitude arising from existential experiences of the boundaries of
human life. Such a non-religious existential respect is for non-believers an ade-
quate response. Scruton’s writings are biased rhetorically at this point, as he regu-
larly tries to convince his readers of the ‘sacred reality’ by dramatically painting
the shortcomings of a purely ‘rational’, ‘instrumental’ or ‘utilitarian’ perspective
(see also his 2012a). This either/or is too crudely put by Scruton, as existential
respect is another alternative between such stark extremes.
If one favours a ‘religious’ attitude of piety (presupposing a ‘right order’), one
should have deep concern for nature beyond making it instrumentally useful for
the fulfilment human needs. If, alternatively, for the non-believer, piety arises out
of existential events, it is not usually or easily extended to all living things. We
may feel respect (based on our existential experiences) for unknown humans, but
not similarly for animals, plants and landscapes. Scruton holds the human person
to be ‘sacred’, a term the non-religious thinker cannot adopt. He restricts sacred-
ness to humans, arbitrarily because he does not base his argument on Christian
revelation, and relegates animals to a lower tier by denying them rights (Scruton
1996: ch. 8). Also, it is less sacredness he builds on here than established philo-
sophical reason, which is reserved for humans and distances the moral status of
animals. The premium ‘sacredness’ is attributed to whatever is of human interest.

Traditional and modern morality

I will now try to explain the extent of my sympathy with Scruton’s conservatism.
I am obviously hesitant to embrace his ideas in so far as they arise out of the belief
in sacredness and piety. These I think to be private attitudes, and even if I would
share them personally, I would not see fit to advocate them as public attitudes.
Scruton seems to think otherwise because he takes these values to be a part of the
anthropological frame of man, whereas I doubt that such a claim can be justified.
A closer look into the bases of morality may help to make my reasons for hesita-
tion clearer.
First of all, Scruton’s belief in sacredness is not an idiosyncratic whim on his
part, so much as part of a coherent conservatism. An underlying affinity between
 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict 71
conservatism and religion can be seen from the empirical work by the social psy-
chologist Jonathan Haidt (2008, 2012). Haidt keeps distinct several groupings of,
as he calls them, ‘value modules’. The one grouping I see as traditional morality
includes values like loyalty, authority and sanctity, and the competing modern
one centres on values like care, fairness and freedom. If we make use of this dis-
tinction, the ideal-typical conservative morality could be defined by giving prior-
ity to the three traditional values when there are conflicts in values. Somehow,
it seems, the value of sanctity coheres with the social attitudes of authority and
loyalty and relegates to the background the modern values of care, fairness and
freedom, without necessarily being entirely at odds with them. If we take the two
value sets to be internally coherent, sanctity, or the belief in sacredness, is not an
arbitrary addendum for the conservative attitude.
If we ask ourselves which ideal-typical variant of morality to follow, in the
sense of explicating to ourselves what it means to live in Western culture, we will,
in all likelihood, situate ourselves on the side of modern morality, which at its
core, centres on fairness and freedom, or a belief in individual autonomy which
in conflict trumps authority and loyalty. The believer in autonomy will not easily
accept the intrinsic value of tradition and will be critical of attributing sacred-
ness to things or practices. Families, old buildings and even outstanding natural
objects will not have a premium above all interest-based alternatives.
There is a distinction to be made, however, among the positions within mod-
ern morality. Again ideal-typically, the apt distinction is the one between the
realist and the utopian liberal.12 And here is where the realist liberal and Scru-
ton’s conservative converge in part. The realist liberal agrees in many ways with
Scruton’s sceptical criticism of self-serving bureaucracy, non-legitimised political
cosmopolitanism, and suppression by utopian politics. Scruton is right in see-
ing ethical reasoning to be based on motives, albeit often in a hidden form. His
tendency of letting polemics run into diatribe notwithstanding,13 he is right in
his critique of the disruption of well-functioning communal networks, crafts and
customs by economic and technological forces (Scruton 2012: 313).
To generalise, the expansion of local economic activities into a sphere of ever
wider geographic and political extension, particularly transnational, notori-
ously implies signs of suppression by means of politics and law. In many cases,
this changes the situation for the worse, as the mismatch of ambitious political
schemes and available levels of motivation disrupts what was effective earlier. If
this criticism of politics and law in their expansion beyond engaged morality is
right, conservatives have another argument beyond what at first looks like only
a nostalgic adherence to community. They have a piece of practical proof of the
social glue of communal living, and realist liberalism shares this.

Conclusion: towards a conserving (cultural) sustainability

Conservatives have a point when they highlight the importance of traditional
practice. Traditional practice can be a way of doing business, a way of work, of
festivities or religion, or of whatever one could think. Conservatives claim these
72 Anton Leist
practices have been proven effective by history and represent a well-established
way of doing things. And this is indeed true: long-term traditions incorporate a
social experience that should not be overlooked or be left to erode by one-sided,
economically driven developments. Conservatives should, therefore, point out
what they think the treasures of tradition are and hold on to them.
However, what is also needed is a critical adaptation of traditional practice.
A traditional practice in most cases is at the core a social one, which gives moral
values an extraordinary role within the practice. This also merges the practice
with traditional values. For liberal realism, this suggests a two-pronged method
to deal with Scruton’s more material attitudes. First, in sharing a dependence on
empirical relevance with Scruton, liberal realism acknowledges the communi-
tarian side of environmentalism, as long as it does not openly contradict liberal
values. Compromises in values are to be sought after. Second, these compromises
are those that Haidt explains with his contrast between traditional and modern
morality. If loyalty, authority and sanctity are related to long-standing social prac-
tices and institutions, like the family and fathers or the church and the priest,
liberal realism will try to appreciate the attitudes that undergird these but try to
critically adapt them by subsuming them under care, fairness and freedom.
Traditional marriage is a case in point, if authority and loyalty in it are prac-
ticed one-sidedly, and fairness and freedom are invoked against this. It is an idle
question whether empirical modernisation – the disruption of traditional prac-
tices by (especially) economic development – is the origin of modern values, or
the other way around. In any case, modern values arise when traditional practices
weaken or break down. Marriage is not breaking down, of course, but turned into
a contract-based relationship with mutually equal duties and rights (a develop-
ment that Hegel and Scruton regret).
A critical attitude towards a traditional practice could be developed in the fol-
lowing way: identify within a traditional practice what is good and the traditional
values undergirding it in order to hold onto what is good but substitute modern
values for the traditional ones, without, if possible, destroying the entire practice!
Also let all presently available experiences and techniques add to improve the
practice, but keep what is good in it alive. We could call this the ‘modernising
change’ of traditional practices. This way of proceeding is not what a conserva-
tive like Scruton would acclaim. But if we do not want to dogmatically bind
ourselves to tradition, reworking it in light of our modern values is surely the only
way to proceed.

Notes
1 Von Carlowitz lived in the small Saxonian city of Freiberg and published his book
Sylvicultura Oeconomica in 1713 in Leipzig, one year before his death. He served as an
employee of the Saxonian King August the Strong, not himself an exemplar of frugal
living!
2 I followed the first lead myself in Leist (2010). But see also Tremmel (2009: chs. 5–6).
Comment on ecology and socialism falls either in the category of self-directed criti-
cism (Grundmann 1991; Benton 1996) or in the category of rescue operations by way
 Sustainability and modernisation in conflict 73
of social justice (Pepper 2002). Of course, socialism is notoriously known for laying
waste to the environment, not for sustaining it.
3 Scruton (2012: 9); see also Pilbeam (2003).
4 Or better: for the preservation of his local environment from climate change induced
destruction, making the climate topic only instrumental. See below.
5 I call claims to sustainability ‘productivist’ if they are wedded to technical methods
making human behaviour environmentally less damaging, without changing the
aims of behaviour. The alternative of ‘conservational’ sustainability comes into view
towards the end of this chapter. This is not, of course, meant to be a quid pro quo.
6 In philosophical parlance the predicate ‘realist’ has a metaphysical connotation as
well. I, however, use the term in the everyday practical meaning of addressable empiri-
cal facts, adequately theorised, and not in the sense of an irreducible ontology of
values or duties.
7 J. Rawls (1999: 7, passim) coined the term ‘realistic utopia’ for this.
8 Most academic moral philosophers are inclined to lean towards utopianism, without
being outspoken socialists. Libertarians, for example, are also exemplars of utopian
thinking.
9 In the dispute following up on the first article of the German constitution, it has
become customary to make use of the term ‘dignity’ (‘Würde’) as a partial substitute
for ‘sacredness’. If dignity is based in respect alone, this would come to the same end.
I suggest something like this in Leist 2005.
10 “I wish to divest it of its specifically Christian connotations in order to return it to
something like the use it had in late antiquity, when it expressed an idea of permanent
validity in moral thinking” (Scruton 1996: 64).
11 The use of ‘religious’ is a difficult one here. Christianity would not at all endow the
whole of nature with sacred value, as Buddhism does. In consequence, its ethic of
nature is more in line with the secular one.
12 The ‘liberal,’ to make things easier, includes the ‘socialist’.
13 For heavy polemics, see Scruton’s comparison of cosmopolitan intellectuals with the
Jacobins during the French Revolution (2012: 102). For his recurrent plea for motiva-
tion-based reasoning, see Scruton (2012: 17–19, 22, 101, 187, 198, 200–201, 206–8,
214, 229, 284, 290).

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Brundtland, G. H., et al. (eds.) (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Jonge, E. (2004). Spinoza and Deep Ecology: Challenging Traditional Approaches to Envi-
ronmentalism [2004]. London: Ashgate; second ed. 2016 Milton Park: Routledge.
Grundmann, R. (1991). “The Ecological Challenge to Marxism”. New Left Review, 187,
103–120.
Haidt, J. (2008). “Morality”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 65–72.
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Leist, A. (2005). “Menschenwürde als Ausdruck”. In Ethik der Beziehungen. Berlin:
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Pepper, D. (2002). Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice. London: Routledge.
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7 Culture, consumption and
sustainability in a sociological
perspective
Ulf Liebe

Introduction
Overconsumption is one of the central challenges of modern societies aiming for
sustainable development. So-called developed countries in particular use many
more resources than is tolerable for meeting current needs and not affecting the
possibilities of future generations to meet their needs (a common definition of
sustainability). Most countries already have an ecological footprint that is con-
siderably above biocapacity (Dietz et al. 2007; also www.footprintnetwork.org/).
Ethical and political consumption, including the purchase of organic and Fair
Trade products and using repair cafes, are forms of social action and features of
social movements seeking sustainable societies (Rössel and Schenk 2017; Andor-
fer and Liebe 2012; Stolle et al. 2005). However, the impact of these sustainable
consumption practices remains rather low (FAO 2009; Krier 2008). Many argue
that, to secure a sustainable society, individuals must change their lifestyle and
consumption patterns (Leng et al. 2017), which is where culture – including
values, norms and beliefs – comes into play. Ideally, these cultural components
would have to change, but processes of value, attitude and norm change require
long-term commitment and can be difficult to enact.
Against this background, I use a sociological perspective to analyse the inter-
play of culture, consumption and sustainability. Because these are very broad terms
and are conceptualized very differently even in sociological research, this contri-
bution cannot do justice to the full range of perspectives. Rather, after presenting
some practical conceptualizations of culture, I will highlight two perspectives on
the interchanges between culture and consumption that appear contradictory
at first glance and argue that, upon closer inspection, both perspectives can be
effectively drawn upon to enhance our understanding of how societies can shift
towards greater sustainability.

Linking culture and consumption

Similar to other concepts in sociological research, culture is defined in many
different ways and is not always easy to distinguish from other phenomena (i.e.
“everything is culture”). In the following paragraphs, I refer to some of the
76 Ulf Liebe
conceptualizations discussed in relation to economic processes, including (sus-
tainable) consumption. As shown in Table 7.1, culture can be defined by three
aspects (see DiMaggio 1994). Culture has a cognitive component, as expressed
in beliefs such as justice in the trading system between developing and developed
countries. It also has an expressive component, for example, as indicated through
symbols such as the Fair Trade mark. Culture also maintains a valuative compo-
nent that refers, for example, to values such as universalism (Schwartz 1992),
which can be linked to sustainable consumption, including the purchase of fair
trade products (Doran 2009, 2010).
To forms of culture like scripts, schemata, classifications, preferences, atti-
tudes and opinions, DiMaggio (1994: 27) adds several other useful distinctions
with respect to the study of culture as it relates to the economy. Culture can be
conceptualized as a “source of values and goals” that motivate individual behav-
iour (in line with works by Talcott Parsons and Max Weber, see DiMaggio 1994;
Vaisey 2009), as well as a source of “strategies or means” that shape capacities
from which strategies of action – ways of organizing action – are constructed
(Swidler 1986). According to this framework, culture is represented as a het-
erogeneous “toolkit” or “repertoire” (DiMaggio 1997: 267, referring to works
by Ann Swidler and Charles Tilly) compared to representations as a coherent,
latent variable. Research in cognitive psychology supports the “toolkit” per-
spective (DiMaggio 1997), but also explicitly or implicitly assumes that culture
works as a conscious and deliberate process. This conclusion, in turn, tends
to neglect automatic processes. Therefore, some researchers argue in favour of
a dual-process theory of cultural cognition, which differentiates between fast/
automatic and slow/effortful behaviour (Kahneman 2003) and seems more
plausible:

actors are driven primarily by deeply internalized schematic processes (‘the

elephant’/practical consciousness/ habitus), yet they are also capable of delib-
eration and justification (‘the rider’/discursive consciousness) when required
by the demands of social interaction.
(Vaisey 2009: 1687)

Table 7.1 Three aspects of culture

Aspect Example of a Example of manifestation regarding Fair Trade (FT)

cultural form consumption
Cognitive Beliefs Justice concerns on fair prices for small-hold farmers are
related to FT purchases.
Expressive Symbols FT marks on clothing, shopping bags, etc. can express
support of the Fair Trade movement.
Valuative Values Universalism = “protection for the welfare of all people
and for nature” (Schwartz 1992: 12) – as a foundation of
supporting FT
Source: Ulf Liebe
 Culture, consumption and sustainability 77
In considering the correlation of culture to consumption – the “acquisition and
use of goods and services” – one may argue that consumption without culture is not
possible because “(s)hared understandings and their representations – the com-
ponents of culture – undergird all economic life” (Zelizer 2005: 337, 348). Many
questions concerning the relationship between culture and consumption are also
relevant for sustainability (DiMaggio 1994 in the following); among them is the
classic question of whether poor people have different preferences, their own cul-
ture, compared to “non-poor” people, or whether differences between poor and
non-poor people are driven by structural factors (somewhat in line with Pierre
Bourdieu’s habitus concept, which is partly explained by structural constraints
DiMaggio 1994: 42). The culture-of-poverty debate offers valuable insights for
questions about social sustainability, for example, in terms of reducing social ine-
quality and poverty. Other topics at the nexus between culture and consumption
include: How do goods become the objects among which we choose (e.g. ethical
products)? Where do preferences come from (e.g. for Fair Trade products)? How
does cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984) emerge and lead to in-group effects and
distinct consumption patterns (e.g. ethical consumption such as the purchase of
organic food, Agovino et al. 2017)? How does status competition work and lead
to conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899, purchase of green products meant
to be seen, Griskevicius et al. 2010)? How does consumption constitute identity
and vice versa (Simmel 1907; Andorfer and Liebe 2013)? Sociological analysis at
the macro-level of research addresses, among others, issues of consumer societies
(Schor and Holt 2000).
Keeping the above-mentioned concepts in mind, in the following I will argue
that a simple distinction pointed out by DiMaggio (1994) and shown in Fig-
ure 7.1 is helpful to understanding (parts of) the relationship among culture,
consumption and sustainability:

Those who treat economic behaviour as analytically distinct from culture

stress the ways in which norms and conventions constrain the individual’s
untrammelled pursuit of self-interest. Those who view culture and economic
behaviour as mutually generative tend to emphasize the former: culture pro-
vides the categories and understandings that enable us to engage in eco-
nomic action.
(DiMaggio 1994: 28, emphasis added)

As the following paragraphs elucidate, research on sustainable consumption fea-

tures both perspectives and I will argue for their complementarity.

Culture in action towards sustainable consumption patterns

I begin by assuming the perspective that the relationship between culture and
(sustainable) consumption is analytically distinct, then change course by adopt-
ing the perspective that sees this relationship as mutually generative. Figure 7.2
demonstrates the examples with respect to the two perspectives.
78 Ulf Liebe

A. Analytically Distinct

Culture Action

B. Mutually Generative

Culture Action

Figure 7.1 Two perspectives on the relationship between culture and consumption
Source: Ulf Liebe

An “Analytically Distinct” perspective

Explicitly or implicitly, based on the conceptualization that culture is analytically
distinct from consumption behaviour, behavioural research shows that aspects
of culture can be “used” to promote sustainable consumption such as purchas-
ing green products and fair trade products, and participating in other forms of
pro-environmental behaviour. These studies suggest that “nudges” – cues in a
decision environment – can promote sustainable behaviour like green energy
use and consumption patterns (Lindenberg 2012; Thaler and Sunstein 2008).
While System 1 nudges, including default options (e.g. defining organic products
as standard options), are directed towards automatic processing, System 2 nudges,
such as the provision of information about “what most people are doing” (Thaler
and Sunstein 2008: 69), a descriptive social norm (Cialdini 2005), target deliber-
ative processing (Kahneman 2003, 2011). Nudges, especially the System 1 type,
function well because they are built upon on the general behavioural tendencies
of humans such as the desire for relative social status (Griskevicius et al. 2012:
120), perhaps best elucidated in Thorstein Veblen’s discussion of “conspicuous
consumption” in his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
 Culture, consumption and sustainability 79

A. Analytically Distinct, Effects of Descriptive-norm Information on Sustainable Consumption

Information on what Sustainable

the majority of consumption action
consumers do

B. Mutually Generative, Enrolment in Interactions Rituals Regarding Sustainable Consumption

Ritual ingredients Group solidarity,

such as interactions emotional energy,
with producers sense of morality

Figure 7.2 Examples of two perspectives on the relationship between culture and sustain-
able consumption
Source: Ulf Liebe

Griskevicius et al. (2012: 120) summarize how marketers can manipulate these
human behavioural tendencies to promote sustainability:

Strategies for reducing overconsumption that do not account for the importance
of relative status are often fighting an uphill battle. . . . Rather than being the root
of the problem, savvy marketers are simply exploiting people’s innate desires. It
will also be difficult to persuade people to be content with their current status or
behave in ways that lowers their status. For example, imploring Westerners to
consume less because they are wealthier than most people in the world is likely to
do little to slow consumption. . . . Rather than trying to eradicate the drive for sta-
tus, each theory [Costly Signalling, Competitive Altruism, Status, Competitive
Environmentalism, added by UL] suggests how this tendency can be harnessed to
motivate people to behave in self-sacrificing and pro-environmental ways.

But how do marketers prompt and promote these consumer patterns? Priming
experiments have shown how individuals, often unconsciously, can be affected by
80 Ulf Liebe
behavioural cues that activate certain attitudes, norms and so forth (variation in
the context of behavioural choices, Sniderman and Grob 1996: 390). For exam-
ple, in a study conducted by Griskevicius et al. (2010), university students read a
short story about a successful university graduate who obtained a high-status first
job and was, relative to others, promoted quickly. Students in the control group
read a neutral story of similar length. In subsequent experimental tasks, students
could (hypothetically) choose between different green and non-green consumer
products (car, household cleaner, dishwasher). Each time the products were equal
in price but the non-green product was more luxurious and had better perfor-
mance than the green product, which in turn was pro-environmental. The study
showed that, in the treatment group, in which an activation of status motives
occurred, 55% chose the green car; in the control group, 37% chose the green
car. The corresponding figures for the household cleaner and dishwasher were
42% versus 26%, and 49% versus 35%, respectively. Therefore, activating status
motives – exploiting the cultural tendency of a “desire for status” – increased the
likelihood of pro-environmental product choices. In further experiments, Grisk-
evicius et al. (2010) showed that the activation of status motives with respect to
green product choices was only effective when students were shopping in public
(in a brick-and-mortar store versus online at home), and that green products
were more desirable when they cost more than non-green products. This phe-
nomenon can be explained by costly signalling theory (Griskevicius et al. 2010,
also Fehrler and Przepiorka 2013; Trivers 1971), which suggests that individual
pro-environmental behaviour demonstrates not only the willingness to contrib-
ute to a collective good (e.g. improved environmental quality) but also the ability
to bear the costs for the corresponding contribution. Thus, it might be the desire
for status and not the desire for environmental protection that drives these forms
of pro-environmental behaviour.
The effectiveness of communicating a descriptive social norm in promoting
pro-environmental behaviour was indicated in a field experiment on the reuse of
towels in hotels conducted by Goldstein et al. (2008). They randomly assigned
190 hotel rooms in medium-sized hotels in the United States to one of two exper-
imental groups. The rooms for the first group displayed the standard message
regarding towel reuse on washroom towel racks: “HELP SAVE THE ENVIRON-
MENT. You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by
reusing your towels during your stay.” The message to the second group included
the descriptive norm – that is, what the majority of other guests do:

JOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVI-

RONMENT. Almost 75% of guests who are asked to participate in our new
resource savings program do help by using their towels more than once. You
can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by
reusing your towels during your stay.

Goldstein et al. (2008) observed the behaviour of the hotel guests over a time
span of 80 days where there have been 1,058 instances of potential towel reuse.
 Culture, consumption and sustainability 81
The data were collected by the hotel room attendants, and hotel guests were
not aware that they were part of an experiment. The results show that the towel
reuse rate increased by 9 percentage points when the descriptive norm message
(44% reuse) was used compared to a standard message, which saw a 35% reuse.
In subsequent experiments, Goldstein et al. (2008) varied the reference group of
the norm. They found, for example, that referring to the previous hotel guests of
the same room (49% reuse) increased the towel reuse rate by 5 percentage points
compared to referring to hotel guests in general (44% reuse) and that referring to
any reference group (average of 45% reuse) increased the towel reuse rate com-
pared to using the standard message (37%). These results were partly replicated
in a similar study in Germany (Bohner and Schlüter 2014).
Nudging citizens into specific behaviour can be a powerful tool for promoting
sustainable behaviour. Recognizing the effectiveness of nudging, governments,
for example in the United States and the United Kingdom, have begun using
these tools widely. Although nudging has been criticized as being potentially
manipulative (Wilkinson 2013), many studies have shown that the majority of
citizens in Europe and the United States have accepted nudging – especially with
regard to pro-environmental behaviour and healthier food choices – when they
were in line with values in a population and not involved in illicit purposes (e.g.
Sunstein 2015; Reisch and Sunstein 2016).

A “Mutually Generative” perspective

Works on practice theories offer a perspective that is in line with the assump-
tion that culture and consumption are mutually generative. Spaargaren sees the
potential for these theories to promote sustainable consumption patterns:

A cultural perspective on socio-environmental change should first of all be

applicable at the level of situated consumption practices. Second, it should
allow for a thorough analysis of the role of objects and symbols in the repro-
duction of practices. Third, to complement the existing emphases on the
negative aspects of (un)sustainable consumption, the cultural approach
should make conceptual room for analysing the positive experiences and ele-
ments of sustainable consumption.
(2011: 818)

Following Spaargaren (2011), promoting sustainable consumption patterns can

be studied by looking at interaction ritual chains following Collins’ (2004) theo-
retical work. Collins’ theory considers situations as starting points. These situ-
ations – common events – have ritual ingredients such as bodily co-presence,
barriers to outsiders, mutual focus of attention and shared moods, which are
interlinked and lead to “collective effervescence,” which in turn “produces” ritual
outcomes such as solidarity, symbols, standards of morality and emotional energy
(“strength, enthusiasm” etc.) in the individual (Spaargaren 2011: 819; Collins
2004: 48). While these processes start in face-to-face interactions, they extend to
82 Ulf Liebe
interaction ritual chains, in which emotional energy flows and is stored in objects
and symbols. Through interaction ritual chains these processes of intersubjectiv-
ity can bridge the micro- and macro-level.
With respect to promoting sustainable consumption patterns, Spaargaren
explicates:

With Collins’ analysis in mind, we can reframe the issue of green commit-
ment, excitement and awareness in a non-individualist, positive manner.
The more frequent, intense and dense the enrolment of individuals in sus-
tainability-related interaction rituals, the higher the chance that their com-
mitments and levels of awareness will increase. This increased commitment
can be studied for the kinds of interaction rituals at play and the particular
green symbols and objects used to develop and carry along ‘green emotional
energies’. . . . When green objects and technologies start to perform well
across a range of different interaction rituals they can be said to be of strate-
gic (policy) significance for the greening of interaction ritual chains within
specific consumption domains.
(2011: 820)

Brown (2011) studied interaction ritual chains related to Fair Trade consumption.
For two years, he conducted interviews and ethnographic research in a retail store
and a cooperative of Fair Trade (FT) coffee shops in Philadelphia. Among other
efforts, he worked as a volunteer and retail clerk in order to study “how meanings
of FT emerge through face-to-face interactions with consumers” (Brown 2011:
127). His research showed that when shopping (ritual), consumers learn about
Fair Trade by interacting with retailers. He classified the process as involving low-
to-moderate emotional energy, which motivates shopping related to aesthetics,
quality and ethics. The corresponding symbols include hand-made objects and
high-quality coffee. The sense of morality is hardly affected and mainly includes
a warm glow by buying Fair Trade products. Other rituals, processes and symbols
studied include (sacred) Fair Trade certification logos commended by artisans and
farmers. These processes involve low-to-moderate emotional energy, raise aware-
ness and encourage consumers to consider ethics.
Practice theory in general and Interaction Ritual theory in particular can
enhance our understanding of consumer situations and consumption processes.
It also has the potential to show how sustainable consumption patterns can be
promoted and spread in society.

Conclusion
It is clear that culture matters for both consumption and sustainability as well
as for the relationship between the two phenomena. However, sociology’s great
variety of cultural conceptualizations may lead to the deleterious assumption that
when “everything” is affected by culture, culture becomes an empty and mean-
ingless concept. Going beyond a “culture matters” perspective in sociological
 Culture, consumption and sustainability 83
research requires defining culture in research studies so as to uncover variations
in culture in or across populations and to investigate the relationship between
different forms of culture and action (DiMaggio 1994: 28). By pointing to some
forms of culture and distinctions made in the literature, I hope I have exemplified
the difficulties of doing cultural research in general and with regard to consump-
tion and sustainability in particular.
Limitations on length prevent discussion of many other valuable insights into
conceptualizations and theoretical ideas in sociological research on culture (see
Patterson 2014; DiMaggio 1997) and consumption (Zelizer 2005; DiMaggio
1994). A deeper look at (sustainable) consumption would include the broader
relationships among production, distribution and consumption (Zelizer 2005:
332). A promising theoretical and empirical approach on research on culture –
which might also be fruitful for the study of the nexus between culture, consump-
tion and sustainability – would focus on social networks (Pachucki and Breiger
2010; Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994). As demonstrated by Edelmann and Vaisey
(2014), network analysis can, for example, uncover mechanisms and social pro-
cesses that link cultural tastes to a focus on consumption and non-consumption
to social relationships and reveal, in addition to a perspective of “cultural skills”
(Swidler 1986), culture as a “system of distinctions” in line with works by Pierre
Bourdieu (1984).
While research on culture (partly) seems to move towards more integrative
theorizing such as dual process theory (Vaisey 2009) and specific ideas about
network analysis (Pachucki and Breiger 2010), I highlighted two analytically
distinct perspectives, which can also be found in the literature on sustainable
consumption: “culture and action are analytically distinct” and “culture and
action are mutually generative” (DiMaggio 1994: 28). I tried to demonstrate that
both perspectives can help us understand and explain consumer behaviour and
behavioural change towards sustainability. Research on the activation of social
norms and desires for social status show how cultural forms prevalent in society
can be used to promote sustainable consumption, without changing these cul-
tural forms per se (e.g. values, attitudes, social norms). This strategy seems to be
a powerful tool that is already used by decision makers and governments (e.g. in
so-called nudging units). Some of these “cultural cues” in the decision environ-
ment are so strong that they have remarkable effects and can change behaviour
immediately – an attractive tool for gaining improvements in sustainability in
the short-term.
While such cultural cues might work short-term, sustainable societies require
a substantial change in values, attitudes, lifestyles and so on, which is typically
achieved in long-term processes. Practice theories (Spaargaren 2011) offer a
framework to understand how such substantial changes might happen by bridg-
ing the micro-level and macro-level of society. One approach is interaction ritual
chain theory (Collins 2004), which can explain the microfoundations of cultural
change related to sustainable consumption. It can also be used to promote sus-
tainable consumption by reframing consumption as a positive, intersubjectively
shared practice (Spaargaren 2011).
84 Ulf Liebe
Therefore, both the “analytically distinct” perspective and the “mutually
generative” perspective can be of use in (actively) promoting sustainable con-
sumption. In my view, these perspectives complement each other in that the
first perspective offers a way to reach increases in sustainable consumption with
immediate impact, which is needed given current levels of overconsumption in
many societies; the second perspective can help to reach persistent long-term
changes towards cultural forms in line with the goals of sustainable development.

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8 Social happiness as a cultural
value
An analysis of shared values for
ecosystem assessment
Galit P. Wellner

Introduction
In 2005, the UN via the World Health Organization published the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. This report initiated a
series of National Ecosystem Assessments (NEA),1 which were intended as tools
to assist policy makers ensure their decisions support sustainable development.
In Israel the NEA’s objective was defined as “the advancement of knowledge-
based management of open spaces and natural resources, via continuous pro-
duction of scientific knowledge on the state of ecosystems and biodiversity in
Israel” (HaMaarag 2018). Two objectives were set: to increase awareness as to
the multifaceted value of nature and our dependence on functioning ecosystems;
and to assist managers, decision- and policy-makers to incorporate the value of
ecosystem services, and the biodiversity on which their provision depends, into
planning processes, land management and policy.
The first Israeli report is scheduled to be published in 2018. The report will
be structured around three main research sections: The first and primary section
will include six chapters, each of which will review the local ecosystems: marine,
urban, agricultural, Mediterranean, inland water and desert. The second section
will analyse the ecosystem services that derive from these ecosystems. The third
section will discuss the contributions of the ecosystems to human well-being from
economic, health, cultural and social perspectives. I am a contributing author of
the social chapter, with Dr Daniel Mishori and Aviram Sariel.
The social chapter is the “Benjamin” of the Israeli NEA report – it is the
last, but nevertheless requires attention. The positioning as the last chapter can
be explained by the order in which the pillars of sustainable development are
usually presented: ecological, economic and social. But this ordering can also
be seen as a reflection of its relative unimportance as perceived by biologists,
traditional ecologists and health professionals. Although it is the last chapter,
it is a candidate for becoming the “trouble maker” of the project. Social issues,
after all, have been a source of unrest (at least) since the publication of Capital by
Karl Marx, and more recently since 2011’s Occupy movement. The word “social”
has become a signifier of claims for justice and the fair distribution of resources.
These manifestations were fuelled by the resistance to hyper-capitalism, which is
88 Galit P. Wellner
at the foundation of the chosen methodology of the NEA – the ecosystem service
assessment. Hence, our chapter is potentially “explosive” for the content as well
as for the methodology. In light of these concerns, the confusion between services
and contributions, or the overlap between the social and the cultural chapters,
seem minor and solvable.
My essay will open with a brief description of the methodology of Ecosys-
tem Services (ES). Then the tight relations between the social and the cultural
aspects of sustainability are discussed and an attempt made to draw some distinc-
tions between them. To complete the background, I will dive into the role of
shared values and focus on one shared value that has interested me most over the
last few years – happiness. After having introduced the links between happiness
and well-being and I will then develop the notion of social happiness. My main
effort will be to link social happiness with sustainability and show how they co-
constitute each other. My contention is that happiness is not only a psychologi-
cal goal and personality trait, but that it is a social construct that depends on a
culturally rich environment.

Ecosystem service assessment

Sustainable development discourse typically centres on assessing the ecological
impacts of human actions on the environment (it is important to stress here
that most of these assessments leave society and culture in the fringes, a point
I will return to later). Most assessment methods seek to quantify, and specifically
to “monetarize”, these impacts; that is, to express them in dollar or Euro terms.
This practice has been expanded to earlier stages of projects’ pre-evaluation and
selection. In these stages, the needs to be answered by a project and the potential
harms the project might create are “translated” into monetary terms, in order to
sort and prioritize actions.
The ES approach emerged in the 1980s as a reaction to the then common
practice of evaluating effects through measuring people’s “willingness to pay” for
environmental “commodities”, in practice or in theory. The novelty of ES resides
in the measurement of the services generated from the environment for the ben-
efit of human beings (Norton 2012). Unlike “willingness to pay”, ES raises aware-
ness of human dependencies on nature. There are three major areas of services:
first, provisioning (food and fibre); second, regulation (maintenance of energy
flows and maintaining the resilience of systems); and, third, culture (such as the
value of place). In 2005 the ES methodology was adopted by the World Health
Organization for its Millennium Assessment, and became the basis for the National
Ecosystem Assessments.

Between the social and the cultural

Whereas sustainable development defines the social as a pillar, the Millennium
Assessment (2005) focuses on cultural services. The Millennium Assessment rec-
ognizes six categories of cultural Ecosystem Services:2 heritage values; cultural
 Social happiness as a cultural value 89
identity; spiritual services (sacred, religious, or other forms of symbols and prac-
tices); inspiration (use of natural motifs or artefacts in art, folklore etc.); aesthetic
appreciation of natural and cultivated landscapes; and, recreation and tourism.
The social is also mentioned in the Millennium Assessment, as one constituent of
well-being, along with health and security to name a few.3 Yet, both the cultural and
the social are considered relatively minor: In the diagram describing ES and well-
being, the arrows to and from the social and cultural elements are the weakest –
in colour and in width.
After the publication of the Millennium Assessment, three major practices
emerged in the research literature for dealing with the cultural and the social
aspects of sustainability. The first is simply ignoring the cultural or social
aspects: The practice of ignoring cultural aspects is criticized by Plieninger et al.
(2013), who urge researchers to study and map cultural Ecosystem Services.
Yet these scholars ignore the social aspects, and mention only environmental
and economic considerations.4 The second practice involves referring to culture
and society as synonyms: For example, de Groot et al. (2010: 262) mention
them as a combined entity titled “socio-cultural values”, as part of their analysis
of cultural ES. Lastly, some researchers chose to assess the relations between
the social pillar and cultural Ecosystem Services. One of the major works is a
COST Action (2016; see also Dessein et al. 2015)5 that explored the role of
culture in sustainable development. In the final report, the Action’s members
suggest differentiating between culture and society while acknowledging that
they co-shape and co-constitute each other. Yet the COST Action for cultural
sustainability does not provide definitions for either. One of the important end
results of this project was a set of concise models for the integration of culture
into sustainability. Three models were developed: the “in” proposition which
represents culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development; the “for” prop-
osition which represents culture as mediating between the three pillars; and
the “as” proposition which represents culture as the foundation for sustainable
development.
In the Israeli NEA, the distinction between social and cultural is expressed in
the structure of the report, as each has a separate chapter written by a different
team. This layout is a variation on COST’s “for” option: the cultural serves as a
class of ES while the social is located in the last part discussing contributions that
serves as a mediating layer for the services chapters. I must admit that the differ-
ences in practice are difficult to maintain. Still, I am afraid the two chapters will
share a similar destiny, of being considered of less importance compared to the
biological-ecological and economic chapters.
Even today, we still need to overcome a major trend in ecological thinking,
which addresses society and culture together, sometimes marginalized together
and even ignored together. This trend is relevant to both the social and cultural
aspects because they share a similar challenge – these services and constituents
cannot be translated into money. Who can attach a fixed monetary valuation to
a sense of place, to heritage or to landscapes (to name but a few)? Social and cul-
tural services and constituents, as well as their impacts, cannot be “monetized”.
90 Galit P. Wellner
Shared values (as substitution for monetization)
Even if we manage to find a magic formula to monetize social and cultural ser-
vices and constituents, a deeper problem arises, which is inherent to evaluating
the future. A Hebrew proverb says: Since the destruction of the Temple, proph-
ecy has been given to fools. It is difficult, if not impossible, to assess – based on
current parameters – an action that will affect future generations. Here is one
example: In the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine,
a rail project was initiated. It was a large project even by contemporary standards,
and it included the laying of train tracks, the construction of bridges, stations and
other facilities. During the First World War, the train became a strategic asset of
the empire and hence a target of British attacks. At the same time, the supply
of coal was disrupted, and an alternative source of energy was needed to move
the locomotives. The quickest solution at-hand was to cut the local oak forests
to supply wood to the engines. This raw material was also useful for the mainte-
nance of the rails. The result was a destruction of almost all natural oak forests
in Palestine. The interest of future generations in natural forests was overruled or
overlooked. At best this decision falls under the category of prophecy after the
destruction of the Temple. Today similar lessons can be applied to mining, frack-
ing and water desalination to name a few. All these mega projects accentuate
current human needs and tend to disregard the cultural and social effects that will
deprive future generations of cultural environmental assets.
While the future cannot be predicted, defining shared values and taking them
into account in the policy-making and planning phases can mitigate the effects of
most projects, as these values call attention to the losses in cultural assets and the
social costs that tend to be disregarded. Moreover, while monetization typically
calculates only twenty-five years into the future, values can encompass longer peri-
ods of time. Shared values can also better represent the past through the notion
of heritage. And in the present, they enable one to take into account experi-
ences that cannot be translated into money, such as cultural ceremonies whose
contributions to the sense of belonging, self-identity and subjective happiness are
disproportionate to their costs of implementation. Values can represent compet-
ing vectors, just as monetization involves calculations that add and deduct. As
an alternative to monetization, one can think of balancing values, similar to the
practice of a court of justice when two competing values or rights are raised.

From well-being to happiness

Instead of attempting to “monetize” values, I suggest assessing them qualitatively
and balancing between them. When considering this balance, a “meta value”
emerges – well-being. Well-being is a central component of the Millennium
Assessment, and it is presented very early in the 2005 report:

“The Millennium Assessment examines how changes in ecosystem services

influence human well-bein. Human well-being is assumed to have multiple
 Social happiness as a cultural value 91
constituents, including the basic material for a good life, . . . health, . . . good
social relations, . . . security, . . . and freedom of choice and action.
(2005: xiv)

In the Millennium Assessment, well-being is understood in the broadest sense

and hence as having multiple aspects. It orients the Millennium Assessment to an
anthropocentric approach to sustainability, in which human well-being is of top
importance.
Interestingly, the Millennium Assessment’s definition of well-being does not refer
specifically to the psychological aspects of happiness. The constituents related to
happiness are “good social relations” and “freedom of choice and action” (2005: v).
These conform to a certain definition of psychological well-being known as Self
Determination Theory (SDT). According to SDT, long-term happiness arises
when three basic needs are answered: relatedness, autonomy and competence.
It is the last need that is left outside the Millennium Assessment’s definition for
well-being. The two that were included are more socially oriented, as they reflect
the inter-subjective character of happiness. Yet, SDT and the other psychological
happiness theories focus on the individual, and do not develop a notion of social
happiness.6 In the next section, I will map the differences between psychological
well-being and social happiness.

Social happiness
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Jeremy Bentham developed a utili-
tarian principle of happiness calling for the “greatest happiness for the greatest
numbers” (Thin 2012: 4). His approach has dominated happiness scholarship
across disciplines, especially since the 1990s. In most contemporary happiness
research, the goal is to measure maximum levels of happiness in the largest num-
ber of people participating in self-reporting surveys. These surveys are conducted
either in rich countries or among university students in poorer countries (Thin
2012: 6), but these limitations and other methodological obstacles do not slow
down the adoption of such surveys as a key component in various indices, such
as the OECD’s Better Life Index, the Happy Planet Index or Bhutan’s Gross
National Happiness Index. They all measure the psychological subjective happi-
ness through self-reports on life satisfaction. If more people report greater happi-
ness, then the index goes up, thereby following Bentham’s formula.
But what if happiness cannot be arithmetically accumulated? What if happi-
ness is not totally subjective? What if it has a social dimension, which requires a
happy socio-cultural environment and a well-functioning inter-subjective space?
Let us take the US as an example. Each year we read that the number of million-
aires in the US is growing, and this country is ranked fairly high in most happi-
ness indices. Yet, the number of people who become addicted to anti-depressants
like Prozac, pain killers, not to mention drugs, is on the rise.
Or take another example: Scandinavian countries occupy the top spots in most
indices of happiness. Slavoj Žižek, the king of paradoxes, points to the fact that
92 Galit P. Wellner
these countries also lead in the number of suicides (2009). Since the research
of Emile Durkheim in the late nineteenth century, the number of suicides has
been an indicator for societal health – that is, the health of a society as a whole.
Measuring personal happiness, therefore, misses an important social dimension.
Happiness, I argue, is not the sum of subjectively happy people. It is not like
money where the more you have the richer you are. Social happiness is not an
accumulation of all (or the majority of) personal happiness-es. Social happiness
does not automatically emerge when a certain statistical threshold is crossed.
Social happiness takes into account another set of considerations.7 It can be
regarded as the result of a combination of factors such as good social relations, a
rich cultural environment and fair institutions.8 This is an additional dimension
of happiness that resides in the inter-subjective level. This dimension allows us
to overcome Bentham’s maximization formula.
Within happiness studies, the notion of social happiness has emerged only
recently. In his 2012 book Social Happiness, Neil Thin positions happiness as “a
social and public good, not just a private and individual concern. To understand
and promote it, we must look between and around persons, not just within per-
sons” (2012: x). This type of happiness is just as important as psychological hap-
piness. Thin suggests that public discourse on happiness should evolve from the
subjective to the inter-subjective and social sphere: “It is not just about private
self-interest, it is about love, empathy and engagement in the workplace and in
communities, and about collective aspirations for a world that could be even
better than it already is” (2012: xi). This direction coincides with sustainable
development principles that likewise aims at promoting collective inspirations
for a better world in terms of ecology, economy and society.
Thin considers the “social” in social happiness as an interim between micro-
personal level and macro-political policy-oriented level. The in-between is com-
posed of families, workplaces, communities etc. (2012: 15–17). He terms it the
meso-level. When we consider sustainable development, all three levels of hap-
piness are of relevance. That is why I refer to social happiness as including any
inter-subjective relations, macro- and meso-level alike, leaving the micro-level
to psychological investigations. In order to link social happiness with sustain-
able development, two parallel steps are required: One should position happiness
(and specifically social happiness) as a legitimate consideration in the shaping of
policy (remember that the NEA is intended for policy makers); the other step
should map the complex relations between happiness and sustainability. Let us
start with the policy issues.

Social happiness as a consideration for policy

Thin’s research is aimed at including happiness considerations in public policies.
He asserts: “To talk about values, or justice, or prosperity without reference to
happiness . . . is perverse and potentially very damaging” (2012: ix). Yet, in spite
of the importance of happiness, “[i]t is still rare to find substantial attention to
happiness in research or policy texts on ‘ethical’ (or ‘green’, or ‘sustainable’, or
 Social happiness as a cultural value 93
‘eco-friendly’, or ‘fair trade’) consumption or investment, or even in texts on
corporate social responsibility (CSR)” (2012: 212).
Thin mentions few initiatives that attempt to deal with happiness at the policy
level. One initiative is the ‘Wellbeing Manifesto’ promoted by the New Econom-
ics Foundation (NEF). In the manifesto, the NEF highlights eight key areas for
action:

national well-being accounts; ensuring access to meaningful work; a maxi-

mum thirty-five hour week, more flexibility in working hours, and more bank
holidays; all schools promoting emotional, social, and physical well-being,
with more emphasis on thriving and less on performance; a health service
that promotes health; more support for early childhood and parenting; dis-
couraging materialism and promoting authentic advertising; and strengthen-
ing active citizenship.
(Thin 2012: 84)

As you can see, most of these considerations take into account the individual and
do not attempt to capture the social dimensions of happiness like social justice or
a rich cultural environment.
Another example is The Happy Planet Index, which is one of the few attempts
to link happiness with sustainability. The index is simple: Happiness in a given
country is calculated by the multiplication of the result of life satisfaction surveys
by average life expectancy by inequality index, divided by the ecological foot-
print. The division by the ecological footprint gives an advantage to third world
countries, and so at the top of the index you will not find “the usual suspects” –
i.e. the Scandinavian countries – but rather those of South and Central America.
The index limitedly refers to the social aspects of happiness through the ine-
quality index. There are no references to culture. Moreover, Thin criticizes The
Happy Planet Index for its over-simplicity. In his words, it is “frighteningly naïve”
and “an insult to the intelligence” (2012: 85).
Sustainable development and happiness each invokes significant policy issues.
Their intersection has been poorly explored. Social happiness and cultural sus-
tainability have the potential to link sustainability and happiness policies: Cul-
tural sustainability can serve as a shared domain whose values are elaborated in
social happiness studies. I shall hence review in the next section the intersection
between sustainability and happiness.

Happiness and cultural sustainability

Thin notes,

the tide of interest in environmental responsibility and sustainable development

is strongly linked with the projects of rethinking prosperity, transcending
short-termist and selfish ‘materialism’, and development of more socially
responsible self-projects and business approaches. Although very often
94 Galit P. Wellner
associated with fear-mongering, pessimism, and ascetic values, the sustain-
able development movement makes little sense without a concept of good
lives and good societies that would be worth sustaining.
(Thin 2012: 19–20)9

The link between social happiness and sustainability seems natural, even a must.
Yet, even psychological happiness is currently absent from many new societal
policies, as well as from the majority of sustainable development policies. What
can be found is research on psychological happiness in the sustainable context.
In a series of studies, psychologist and SDT scholar Tim Kasser explored the co-
constitution of sustainability and personal happiness. In one research paper pub-
lished in 2011, Kasser and colleagues experimented with US college students who
were led to think about times when their nation had acted to support freedom, to
build family values and to be generous to others, i.e. think of intrinsic values that
signal subjective happiness (Sheldon et al. 2011). The researchers found that
those students later endorsed more sustainable ecological policies, such as sup-
port for public transportation and smaller homes. The happiness explored in this
research is not only personal but also social, by referring to freedom and empathy
in the first phase. This experiment demonstrates how happiness that focuses on
inter-subjective values leads people to think more sustainably.
A similar direction was taken by Catherine O’Brien who coined in 2005 the
notion of “sustainable happiness” to denote the pursuit of happiness that does not
exploit other people, the environment or future generations (2008). However,
the relations between environment and happiness are bi-lateral, which is to say
that not only do our moods influence the environment but also the environment
can influence happiness: When the environment is polluted it lowers happiness,
and when it is “good”, it “facilitate(s) good lives and good experiences” (Thin
2012: 14). In other words, sustainability serves as a condition for happiness.10 My
last example relates to this connection, albeit on the psychological and personal
value level: In 2014, Kasser et al. published a set of studies, the longest spanned
over 12 years, showing that people’s well-being improves as they place relatively
less importance on materialistic goals and values. Put differently, those who ori-
ent toward less sustainable goals are more likely to experience a decrease in well-
being over time. The researchers examined the effects of placing importance
on attaining money and having many possessions. The results were that “when
people oriented away from materialistic values and goals over time, their well-
being improved, whereas when they increased the relative priority they placed on
materialistic values and goals over time, their well-being declined” (Kasser 2014:
18). This research is of importance to my argument as it shows the links between
sustainable culture and happiness.

Conclusion: happiness as a cultural value

My original intent was to integrate happiness as a value into the social contribu-
tion chapter of the Israeli NEA. I realized that happiness can be also in the cultural
 Social happiness as a cultural value 95
ES chapter, because in the context of sustainable development the borderline
between the cultural and the social is not clear-cut. I also found that happiness
is missing from the definition of well-being in the Millennium Assessment, though
shades of it can be identified, if one follows a specific theory like SDT. All this led
me to define social happiness: The notion of social happiness differs from personal
happiness due to its ingredients, including good social relations, rich cultural envi-
ronment and fair institutions. Social happiness is a shared value that can assist
decision-makers in assessing the impacts of a given action on cultural and ecologi-
cal environments. Social happiness should be a consideration in policy-making.11
The relations between happiness and sustainability are complex: In a sustain-
able environment – ecologically, socially and culturally – happiness can flourish.
It can flourish because the environment is clean, economically fair, socially bal-
anced, culturally rich and diverse. But in a deeper sense, considering sustain-
able development leads us to re-think what makes us happy. Shopping, driving
a sports car, building a swimming pool in the back yard – all these change their
meanings once we examine them with “sustainability lenses”.
As my last point I would like to invoke an ancient Greek distinction, which
may help us in this rethinking process. The distinction between hedonism and
Eudaimonia draws a timeline between two types of happiness, the short-term and
the long-term. Sustainable development urges us to target the long-term eude-
monic happiness and reject short-term hedonic pleasures.

Notes
1 One of the pioneers was the UK commencing such an assessment in 2009 and publish-
ing the findings in 2011.
2 The Millennium Assessment states that the importance of cultural services and values is
not currently recognized in landscape planning and management and that these fields
could benefit from a better understanding of the way in which societies manipulate
ecosystems and then relate that to cultural, spiritual and religious belief systems. The
Millennium Assessment also states that the ecosystem approach implicitly recognizes
the importance of a socio-ecological system approach, and that policy formulations
should empower local people to participate in managing natural resources as part of a
cultural landscape, integrating local knowledge and institutions.
3 On the first page of the Millennium Assessment the third paragraph states: “The Millen-
nium Assessment examines how changes in ecosystem services influence human well-
being. Human well-being is assumed to have multiple constituents, including the basic
material for a good life, such as secure and adequate livelihoods, enough food at all times,
shelter, clothing and access to goods; health, including feeling well and having a healthy
physical environment, such as clean air and access to clean water; good social relations,
including social cohesion, mutual respect, and the ability to help others and provide
for children; security, including secure access to natural and other resources, personal
safety, and security from natural and human-made disasters; and freedom of choice and
action, including the opportunity to achieve what an individual values doing and being.
Freedom of choice and action is influenced by other constituents of well-being (as well
as by other factors, notably education) and is also a precondition for achieving other
components of well-being, particularly with respect to equity and fairness” (2005: xiv).
4 Plieninger et al. (2013) mapped cultural services into aesthetic values, social relations
and educational values.
96 Galit P. Wellner
5 COST Action is a European funding framework intended for bottom-up science and
technology networks, which are open to researchers and stakeholders with a dura-
tion of four years. The action is active through a range of networking tools, such as
workshops, conferences, training schools and dissemination activities. COST does
not fund research itself (see www.cost.eu/COST_Actions). In this work, I refer to
COST Action IS1007 Investigating Cultural Sustainability, which was active in the
years 2011–2015.
6 On the link between happiness and ethics, see Wellner (2015).
7 For example, high self-esteem is perceived in Western culture as a positive trait for
individuals, but society cannot be made up entirely of high-confidence people (Thin
2012: 19).
8 Thin roots social happiness with the theories of Hume and Adam Smith (Thin 2012:
4). “[T]o the extent that individual-level interventions are good for individuals, this
doesn’t necessarily amount to a social good in aggregate” (19).
9 Thin lists the disciplines that should take into consideration happiness (2012: 8–12):
Psychology is the first, followed by sociology, economics and education, but the fur-
thest Thin could get was gender studies, Law and business management. Ecology and
sustainability are missing from his list. Happiness, according to Thin, has to do with
development of poor countries, but he fails to see it as a value or goal for sustainability.
10 Brown and Kasser (2005) examined the links between subjective well-being (SWB)
and ecologically responsible behaviour (ERB) and found compatibility between them:
Higher subjective well-being was associated with higher ecologically responsible
behaviour. The researchers concluded that sustainable way of life enhances both per-
sonal and collective well-being, although the studies are focused solely on the subjec-
tive one: “happier people were living in more ecologically sustainable ways” (2005:
360). The researchers point to a common ground to SWB and ERB – intrinsic value
orientation and mindfulness. They explain: “a mindful consideration of one’s inner
states and behavior along with a set of values oriented more towards intrinsic than
extrinsic aims appear to simultaneously benefit both individual and ecological well-
being” (2005: 360). They add: “the focus on community that is a component of an
intrinsic value orientation . . . might lead individuals try to decrease the ecological
impacts of their behavior so as to benefit future human generations as well as other
species” (2005: 361). Brown and Kasser built a model in which SWB, mindfulness and
values affect ERB. An opposite link is absent, and so the model does not encompass
the influences of ERB on WB.
11 The link between ES and values is parallel to that between cultural and social: Culture
is assigned to ES, while values are dealt in the social sphere, elaborated through series
of endless discussions that constantly shape the shared values of a given society.

References
Brown, K. W. and Kasser, T. (2005). “Are Psychological and Ecological Well-being Com-
patible? The Role of Values, Mindfulness, and Lifestyle”. Social Indicators Research,
74(2), 349–368.
COST. “COST Actions”. European Cooperation in Science and Technology. 26 September
2016. www.cost.eu/COST_Actions [Accessed 27 April 2017].
De Groot, R., Alkemade, R., Braat, L., Hein, L. and Willemen, L. (2010). “Challenges
in Integrating the Concept of Ecosystem Services and Values in Landscape Planning,
Management and Decision Making”. Ecological Complexity, 7(3), 260–272.
Dessein, J., Soini, K., Faircough, G. and Horlings, L. (2015). Culture in, for and as Sus-
tainable Development: Conclusions from the COST Action IS1007 Investigating Cultural
Sustainability. Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla.
 Social happiness as a cultural value 97
HaMaarag (2018). Hamaarag – Israel’s National Ecosystem Assessment Program. www.
hamaarag.org.il/en/content/inner/hamaarag-israel’s-national-ecosystem-assessment-
program [Accessed 13 January 2018].
Kasser, T. E. (2014). “Changes in Materialism, Changes in Psychological Well-being: Evi-
dence from Three Longitudinal Studies and an Intervention Experiment”. Motivation
and Emotion, 38(1), 1–22.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.
A Report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Norton, B. G. (2012). “Valuing Ecosystems”. Nature Education Knowledge, 3(10), 2.
O’Brien, C. (2008). “Sustainable Happiness: How Happiness Studies Can Contribute to a
More Sustainable Future”. Canadian Psychology, 49(4), 289–295.
Plieninger, T., Dijks, S., Oteros-Rozasc, E. and Bielingd, C. (2013). “Assessing, Mapping,
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Žižek, S. (2009). In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso.
9 The challenges of cultural
sustainability on an (inter)
planetary scale
Andreas Losch

Introduction
“Planetary sustainability”, understood here according to NASA’s use of the term
(NASA 2014), concerns the idea of sustainable development on a planetary
scale, that is, not only regarding planet Earth, but also regarding the surrounding
solar system (cf. Losch 2018). Recent space activities including space mining
initiatives make it necessary to consider this dimension, at least economically,
even though it may sound like science fiction to many. Taking this planetary
or even interplanetary scale into account, this chapter discusses how economic
and ecological dimensions of sustainability need to be extended to incorporate
cultural ideas. The concept of planetary heritage sites might count as an exam-
ple, but where else, on an (inter)planetary scale, does the cultural dimension of
sustainability need to be brought into the discussion?
NASA is not the only institution currently propagating “planetary sustainabil-
ity”.1 In fact the term was coined by UNESCO when describing a new relation-
ship “between humankind and our habitat” (UNESCO 2003: 1). As the leading
UN agency for sustainable development from 2005 to 2015, UNESCO was aware
of the necessity of implementing a “renewed vision of culture and education”,
which could form the core of this new relationship in light of the emergence of
the Information Age. (UNESCO 2003: 5).
Can culture be situated at the core of sustainability? It largely depends on the
epistemological approach one likes to adopt. From a social constructivist point
of view, one is already interpreting nature through the lenses of human culture
by framing the situation of our planet as “problematic”. While in this sense the
problems of our planet are indeed culturally or “socially constructed” (Soini and
Birkeland 2014: 215), one must immediately add that this evaluation of our situ-
ation is certainly necessary to safeguard not only our own survival on this planet.
The constructivist approach does not intend to diminish existing problems, but
to recall that it requires a certain degree of reflection and education to be aware
of them. From this point of view, the UN is also right to put “culture and educa-
tion” at the core of their vision. The constructivist perspective emphasizes that
culture is no potential additional pillar of sustainability in addition to economic,
ecological and social dimensions, but the means through which we encounter the
topic, which permeates every aspect of sustainability.
 The challenges of cultural sustainability 99
The development of a holistic approach to sustainable development, such that
it might be termed planetary sustainability, is only needed if we wish to ensure the
ongoing survival of the biosphere. Whilst such an aim may itself be understood as
culturally constructed – the result of an intra-species dialogue on human respon-
sibility for the planet – it is nevertheless, very meaningful. The value judgement
inherent to the assumption that sustainable development is positive is that, were
the biosphere to be destroyed, the planet would not cease to exist but that it would
continue to exist in a state less desirable, irrespective of whether the judgement of
this state requires a human perspective. Planet Earth will continue to exist even
if it is over-exploited, albeit most likely with an irrecoverably altered and vastly
diminished biosphere. That we, as humankind, value it very highly as a living envi-
ronment and want to preserve it in a shape close to the current one (hopefully
with a diversity of species) is a value issue, focussed upon our own well-being. Most
of us probably care about our planetary environment enough to want to safeguard
our survival within it. Maybe we should also care about the planet for its own sake,
yet this idea is not necessarily included within the current concept of sustainable
development. Be that as it may, taking care of life on our planet (or not) is obviously
our decision, informed by whichever sociocultural point of view we choose to take.2
In addition to this meta-role assigned to culture from a social constructivist
perspective, I also want to explore culture as a content of sustainability. Here, we
need to expand the concept of sustainability to embrace notions that might help
safeguard our cultural heritage on Earth and beyond. While I share the socio-
cultural value-orientation expressed by UNESCO’s use of the term “planetary
sustainability”, the extent of the term in this chapter will differ somewhat. I will
attempt to focus less on our planet itself, but on its surroundings: our orbit, near
Earth objects (NEO’s), our Moon, and the planet Mars, insofar as they affect us.
With this understanding of “planetary sustainability”, I follow the NASA initia-
tive with the same name, which not only envisions

• a world in which all people have access to abundant water, food and energy,
as well as protection from severe storms and climate change impacts,
• healthy and sustainable worldwide economic growth from renewable prod-
ucts and resources.

but also

• a multi-planetary society, where the resources of the solar system are avail-
able to the people of the Earth (NASA 2014).

I want to make use of NASA’s valuable idea that space activities be included
within the consideration of planetary sustainability. Reflecting on this, one
should perhaps call the deliberations of this chapter “interplanetary sustainabil-
ity” but for the fact that all these reflections are still quite Earth-focused. For this
reason I stick with the term “planetary sustainability”, emphasizing, however,
what we all know but often forget: Earth is a tiny planet in a vast tract of space,
and our space environment is also important for our well-being.3
100 Andreas Losch
Recent space activities and their legal evaluation
One may ask if NASA’s vision of “a multi-planetary society” is not more science-
fiction than actual science. Without doubt the idea is futuristic. Yet the very con-
crete visions of space agencies and space companies are close to being realized.
The UN is also active in these regards.
At the end of 2015, the American Congress passed the S.P.A.C.E. (Spurring
Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship) act, which opened to US
citizens the opportunity “to engage in commercial exploration for and commer-
cial recovery of space resources” (H.R.2262 2015: para. 51302 (3)), understood as
abiotic resources including water and minerals (para. 51301).
Equally, Luxembourg started an initiative whose

goal is to ensure that space resources explored under its jurisdiction serve a
peaceful purpose, are gathered and used in a sustainable manner compatible
with international law and for the benefit of humankind.
(The Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg 2017: n.p.)

Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies passed the law on 13 July 2017 (Planetary

Resources 2017).
Who is interested in such a legal framework? Private companies today not
only invest in satellite launches and space tourism.4 Some private enterprises
(e.g. Elon Musk’s SpaceX) even help to supply the International Space Station
(ISS). The plans of companies such as Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries
to exploit near Earth objects (e.g. asteroids) show that the Space Age is on the
verge of entering a new phase, a time which the European Space Agency (ESA)
has framed as “Space 4.0”:

[S]pace is evolving from being the preserve of the governments of a few

spacefaring nations to a situation in which there is the increased number of
diverse space actors around the world, including the emergence of private
companies, participation with academia, industry and citizens, digitalisation
and global interaction.
(ESA 2016: n.p.)

In response and as “a vision for global cooperation and Space 4.0”, ESA is sketch-
ing its ambitious ideas for a “moon village”, less a place to live, but “a community
created when groups join forces without first sorting out every detail” (Woerner
2016: n.p.). The times have changed, and hence the aims are not purely scien-
tific, although a radio telescope on the far side of the moon is part of the bun-
dle of ideas. “You might see not only scientific and technological activities, but
also activities based on exploiting resources or even tourism” (Woerner 2016:
n.p.). There is actual money involved in exploring such visions. For their initia-
tive, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg announced a 25-million-euro investment
cooperation with Planetary Resources (The Government of the Grand Duchy of
 The challenges of cultural sustainability 101
Luxembourg 2016). One can evaluate this critically, and I concur with Capova,
who states that:

All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that the New Space
Age is primarily an economically driven one; that is to say an effort to gain
control over space resources and pursuit of business. The upcoming of this
era is also ushered in changes in human relations to outer space; that is from
something to be explored to something that could be exploited.
(Capova 2016: 307)

Increased human activity starts to create problems. Besides the enhanced benefits
with which a more diverse suite of satellites and launchers and an influx of com-
mercial investment provide mankind, “there is also more orbital debris threaten-
ing the new activities in space” (Bonnal and McKnight 2017: 5). In low Earth
orbit (LEO) alone, over 200 breakup events have created tens of thousands of
objects too small to be sensed. We can only see objects above 10 cm in LEO, yet
already “impacts from objects as small as 5 mm are likely to disrupt or terminate
a satellite’s operations” (Bonnal and McKnight 2017: 5).
These developments, including the extension of economy into space, make
it important that we start to take better care of our space environment. The
application of the concept of sustainability could be a decisive step and may
help sustainable development on Earth as well. Indeed, the UN’s Committee on
the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) has established within its Scien-
tific and Technical Subcommittee a Working Group on the Long-term Sustainability
of Outer Space Activities which addressed thematic areas, “including sustainable
space utilization supporting sustainable development on Earth” (UNOOSA
2017: n.p.). Parallel to the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals
(United Nations 2015), which still lack a consideration of the space surround-
ing Earth, the Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has launched a new
framework strategy called Space 2030, advocating space as a driver for sustain-
able development.

We want to make sure that space technology and applications are used to
bring concrete benefits to all humankind, paying special attention to the
future space-faring and developing countries while also carefully considering
the long-term sustainability of outer space activities for current and future
generations.
(UNOOSA 2017: n.p.)

This Space 2030 framework will be built upon four pillars:

• Space accessibility: all communities using and benefiting from space

technologies;
• Space diplomacy: building and strengthening international coopera-
tion in space activities;
102 Andreas Losch
• Space economy: development of space-derived economic benefits;
• Space society: evolution of society and societal benefits stemming
from space-related activities.
(Di Pippo 2017: n.p.)

The legal framework for international space activities is provided by the Outer
Space Treaty. At this point it might be worth paying heed to article 1 of the Treaty
from 1967, which is reflected by the UN office’s activities:

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celes-
tial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all
countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development,
and shall be the province of all mankind.
Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free
for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on
a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall
be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.
(United Nations 2002: 4)

The Luxembourgian initiative draws on this wording, too. But does the spirit
of the Outer Space Treaty really sit well with the vision for space mining? With
regard to this most space actors follow the provisions of the International Institute
of Space Law (www.iislweb.org/), which interprets “use” as including the permis-
sion for “recovery”. “In view of the absence of a clear prohibition of the taking
of resources in the Outer Space Treaty one can conclude that the use of space
resources is permitted” (International Institute of Space Law 2015: 3). By con-
trast, one could also argue that the economic exploitation of space was simply not
considered in this treaty, which dealt with military threats and science. Private
space actors are left out, because they hardly existed in 1967, and hence the IISL
goes on to say that

It is an open question whether this legal situation is satisfactory. Whether

the United States’ interpretation of Art. II of the Outer Space Treaty is fol-
lowed by other states will be central to the future understanding and devel-
opment of the non-appropriation principle. It can be a starting point for the
development of international rules to be evaluated by means of an interna-
tional dialogue in order to coordinate the free exploration and use of outer
space, including resource extraction, for the benefit and in the interests of
all countries.
(International Institute of Space Law 2015: 3)

One can ask whether the plain declaration that the Luxembourgian initiative
is “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”, as the country has done,
is sufficient. Luxembourg’s quasi-second legislative chamber, the Council of
 The challenges of cultural sustainability 103
State, had expressed several formal oppositions to the space mining project. The
responsible official is even reported

to have confirmed his objective . . . to ask for a revision of the question of

property in the Outer Space Treaty. He wants the UN to create a legal frame-
work which would allow companies worldwide to act in this domain.
(Huberty 2017: n.p.; cf. Conseil d’etat du grand-duché de Luxembourg 2017;
Allen & Overy 2017)

Cultural challenges and value issues

The current legal framework does not really seem to guarantee the rights to recover
elements of our space environment. In truth, it seems it would need to be extended
to take the private actors of “Space 4.0” into account. A fundamental question
would be, however, whether private actors can actually act “for the benefit and in
the interests of all countries” (United Nations 2002: 4). When economy extends
into space, at least the principles of sustainable development should be applied to
our space environment as an essential element of any legislative overhaul. This
should certainly be for the benefit and in the interest of all countries.
A more bizarre development of space economy is the phenomenon of exo-
burials, “making it possible to place a symbolic portion of cremated remains into
orbit, onto the lunar surface, or be sent into deep space” (Capova 2016: 308). The
Moon, it seems, already hosts a sort of a graveyard, and we have also seen that
ESA activities involve this celestial body. Should not places like, for instance,
the Apollo landing site or remarkable moon landscapes be protected against com-
mercial use, or even against any further human intervention?
The 1979 Moon Agreement (Art. 7) “foresees the possibility of zones of special
protection being established on celestial bodies” (Bohlmann 2011: 302). Article
4.1 even evokes the principle of intergenerational equity (fairness of distribu-
tion), which is part of the idea of sustainability. Unfortunately, the Moon Agree-
ment has so far only been signed by thirteen State Parties (as opposed to the 100
State Parties to the Outer Space Treaty).
With regard to our neighbouring planet Mars, the idea of protected zones has
been discussed in some detail:

The most interesting and unique regions on Mars that might merit conserva-
tion and preservation are by definition the ones where we might wish to send
robots and human explorers to explore and exploit. This creates the same
paradox as we face on Earth with sites of scientific or natural beauty – how do
we preserve such sites while at the same time allowing them to be explored
and studied? On Earth the answer to this problem has come in the form of
the National Park system, widely replicated in a number of countries around
the world in various forms.
(Cockell and Horneck 2004: 291)
104 Andreas Losch
It makes sense to discuss these questions and the related intrinsic and utilitarian
reasons for protecting our natural and cultural heritage (Cockell and Horneck
2004: 294). Before I develop this further, let us consider the ethical fundament
we stand on, and the basic ethical stances we cling to. Anthropocentrism attributes
moral status (being the object of moral concern) only to human beings, while sen-
tientism (also called “pathocentrism”) assigns this to all (and only) sentient beings.
Biocentrism extends this status to all (and only) living beings, while ecocentrism
assumes whole ecosystems (cf. the Gaia theory) and sometimes even non-living
nature to have moral status (Persson 2012). The latter would be especially impor-
tant for cultural sustainability in the traditional “pillar” sense, where geological
sites are regarded as cultural heritage as well.
The fundamental question to be evaluated here is, what is a living system?
As extensions of this question, one might ask what and where are the fuzzy bor-
ders of live and non-live; are there any limits to the interconnectedness between
organism and environment? And finally, how do we categorize feelings, and what
precisely, is mind? Such questions lie behind these ethical distinctions and I fear
it will be almost impossible to find an answer, in our time at least. For now, we
need to allow intuition to dictate our stance, albeit not at the expense of remain-
ing open to dialogue.
I personally think that ratiocentrism (a universal version of anthropocentrism:
the idea that only rational beings morally matter) and the Gaia hypothesis on
some deep level belong together, because I regard life, mind and consciousness
as complexity phenomena. By way of example, even gaseous nebulae are more
complex than previously thought (Benz 2016). To fully apprehend these phe-
nomena would require a God’s eye perspective. We can but hope to work with
clues, although some “overview effect” of course helps (White and O’Neill 1987).
As well have our own individual perspective, we need all of us and everyone else
to get an overall idea.5
Now, while the Moon is regarded as lifeless, we do not know whether there is
life on Mars. I am not talking here about little green men, but about potential
microbial life. Even on Earth, so-called extremophiles have proven to be highly
resilient in environments lethal for the human being, and actually, a crucial
Viking lander experiment technically had a positive outcome concerning live-
detection in the Martian soil (Losch 2017). Hence, we should be cautious at
least and include the possibility of microbial life on Mars in our considerations.6
Therefore, one also needs to include the dangers of forward or backward contam-
ination, summarized under the label “planetary protection” (COSPAR 2011).
Should we not care about this, we might face the problem that we only find on
other planets what we ourselves brought there before. Or, worst case, we could
even endanger the Earth’s biosphere by importing extraterrestrial life.
This brings us back to a discussion of the values involved in space exploration.
Much depends on the issue of whether we actually find extraterrestrial life out
there. In considering why planetary parks might be created on Mars, we must
distinguish between the reasons given in the absence of life and those given if
 The challenges of cultural sustainability 105
microbial life were to be discovered. We could, for instance, protect regions of
Mars purely for the enjoyment of future generations. This aesthetic reasoning
would be an instrumental value, even with an anthropocentric stance provided,
which could weigh in against the economic value of mining operations. Also, for
scientific purposes, an epistemic value of unharmed geological figures should be
considered. Some places, such as landing sites, could also be preserved for histori-
cal reasons. As on Earth, there might be those who argue beyond an instrumental
value, in favour of some intrinsic value of Martian figurations, especially should
there be areas with life on Mars (Cockell and Horneck 2004). This is where cul-
tural sustainability comes into play. Microbial extraterrestrial life could have an
instrumental value for our research as well, or receive an aesthetic or monetary
evaluation, yet one also has to ask whether it deserves a moral status of its own
(Persson 2017).

Conclusion
We have stated from the outset, that any human agenda is a value-laden cul-
tural activity. Which foundational ethical principles should frame our collec-
tive space activities as we explore outer space (cf. Rummel et al. 2012)? It is
a matter requiring a more in-depth discussion than can be done here. Yet the
globally agreed-on concept of sustainability, a “development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development
1987, 16.41), is certainly one such ethical principle, in all its dimensions. In its
cultural dimension, we face not only a legal challenge to combine international
cooperation with the involvement of private investors in Space 4.0 and to regu-
late their permissions. In space, quite divergent national cultures meet with
each other, and the ethics the nations may apply in the scenarios presented will
depend on their respective cultural heritage. An intercultural dialogue is of the
essence and appears as the greatest cultural challenge on a planetary and inter-
planetary scale. A constructivist approach may useful here, as it reminds us that
our fundamental ethical assumptions are beliefs as opposed to knowledge; our
divergent convictions and ethical rules are cultural constructions born out of
an individual or communal perspective. Finally, if there really should be extra-
terrestrial life within reach of discovery, an important debate on its value and
status would need to start.
In sum, cultural sustainability is of the essence to protect ourselves, our history
and our living environment against hasty conclusions concerning how deeply
connected we are with the biosphere and beyond, so we are able to refresh our
memory of these insights in heritage parks at least. Besides, everything we do is a
value-laden cultural activity. We are consciousness grown from this planet, hence
we are responsible for caring for our home. In this regard, we cannot avoid evalu-
ating, and hence the discussion needs to continue, with as many participants as
possible.
106 Andreas Losch
Acknowledgements
I thank the editors of this volume, the native speakers and copy editors for helpful
comments and corrections.

Notes
1 The status of the respective NASA initiative is unclear to me.
2 My own epistemological stance is a constructive-critical realism, which embraces con-
structivist thought, while emphasizing the importance of a realist approach, understood
as a firm belief (Losch 2011, Ch. 10). For this chapter, however, it seems sufficient to
focus on the social constructivist interpretation of epistemology.
3 That is why I call for an eighteenth UN Sustainable Development Goal, see Losch
(2018).
4 For legal reflections on space tourism, see Masson-Zwaan (2010).
5 Theologically spoken (if I may), complete knowledge is an eschatological principle
anyway.
6 The emerging discipline of astrobiology tries to take this possibility in our solar system
into account. For some initial considerations on astrobiology and sustainability, see
Arnould (2009).

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10 Sustainability’s promise of
salvation?
A Kuhnian reconstruction of
sustainability from resource
management to contingency
management
Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf

Introduction: the sustainability debate from the perspective

of the Kuhnian paradigm shift theory
Thomas Kuhn examined the “structure of scientific revolutions” and deter-
mined that the theory of paradigm shifts is applicable not only to the concept
of science and scientific disciplines but also to cultural history and nature in
general (Kuhn 1972: 122). In this context, we refer to the prevailing descrip-
tion of a paradigm shift in the sustainability discussion and reconstruct it
with the help of Kuhnian terminology. In so doing, we understand the idea of
sustainability as a ‘paradigm candidate’. Kuhn explains that “a crisis may end
with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing
battle over its acceptance” (Kuhn 1972: 84). We differentiated sustainability
as new paradigm candidate into sub-candidates providing different answers
to different sub-problems: Sustainability, when implemented, would there-
fore be a new paradigm. According to the mainstream discourse, the current
paradigm of the ‘Anthropocene’ (Ehlers and Krafft 2005) in its irreversibil-
ity of human- and company-induced climate change and underlying system
understanding of unlimited economic growth is incompatible with potential
future paradigms of sustainability (Redclift 2005). In Kuhn’s terminology they
are ‘incommensurable’. What is crucial here is the transition in which a new
paradigm replaces the prevailing paradigm after a “revolutionary phase” and
then reverts back to a “normal science” (Kuhn 1972: 10). Currently we are far
from sustainability as being the paradigm of human development. Our para-
digm could be considered more as unsustainability. Therefore, the candidates
we discuss here are to be seen as ideal or potential future paradigms. In the
sustainability debate different paradigm candidates, which interpret the idea
of sustainability controversially, compete with one another and with the pre-
vailing paradigm. In this regard, we also aim to reconstruct the sustainability
debate as ongoing and sustainability as an interpretative concept subject to
discourse.
In this chapter, we examine the predominant sustainability paradigm candi-
dates and differentiate these various types of sub-paradigm candidates of the term
110 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf
sustainability. In Kuhn’s terminology we analyse the “Diffusion of the new para-
digm” (Kuhn 1972: 169) along historically defined classifications since the idea
arose in the eighteenth century.
Building on this we pose our research question: How has the idea of sustain-
ability, as used and formed by individuals, corporations, NGOs and other stakeholders,
changed since its inception in the search to find answers to different and time-dependent
demands? Accordingly, our sustainability research subject is a diachronic system
classification. We introduce a typological schematization of the sustainability
concept in its chronological context. In so doing – and based on Redclift’s histo-
riographical study of the sustainability concept epochs (2005) – we understand
the idea of sustainability, in its function as a paradigm candidate (its thematic
content structure notwithstanding), to be a focused and future-oriented solu-
tion strategy. As such it proposes answers to practical problems pertaining to the
integrative relationship between societal and/or economic development and its
natural conditions (Christen and Schmidt 2012). Consequently, we are assuming
provisional sustainability conceptions, i.e. different interpretations of the con-
cept (cf. Grunwald 2013: 40; Christen 2013: 34), respective to the specific form
of the problem at hand. Based on the literature we classify them into three exist-
ing paradigm candidates. Candidate one, ‘sustainability as resource management’,
started with the forestry debate in the eighteenth century. Candidate two arose
in the mid-twentieth century and culminated with the ‘Club of Rome’-debate
on ‘Sustainability as environmental management’. With the publications by
the Brundtland Commission (WCED 1987) and the UN-Rio Conference (UN
1992) we can speak of candidate three as ‘sustainability as social management’.
Furthermore, we have recently seen indications that not only social management
is in focus, but increasingly also a connection emerges regarding the individual
and society’s sense-making and contingency – areas that are traditionally part and
parcel of the ‘offerings’ of mainstream religions. Hence, we propose a fourth para-
digm candidate under the heading ‘sustainability as contingency management’
addressing individual salvation mediated through a sustainable way of living.
In Table 10.1 the four paradigm candidates of sustainability are summarized.
We will explain and describe them in further detail in the next section. It should
be noted here that the four candidates are presented diachronically in order of
their emergence. However, the candidates do not present consecutive epochs
of paradigm candidates, but rather conceptions with a distinct emergence and
period of validity. Therefore, in the overview we present the four candidates
not only as diachronic but also as synchronic, and also illustrate the exponents of
the respective candidates in terms of their relevance today (for more historical
approaches, see e.g. Grober 2012; Heinrichs et al. 2016: Ch. 2).

Three existing paradigm candidates of the idea

of sustainability
As a first step we conceptually develop three paradigm candidates along the fol-
lowing criteria: What is the problem, the specific candidate provides an answer
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 111
Table 10.1 Overview of the sustainability conceptions as paradigm candidates

Sustainability Diachronic Synchronic Nature of the Guiding principle Normative

as . . . problem core

Resource Since the Carlowitz as Resource Economy

Living from
management eighteenth historical crisis renewable
century reference production
and not
from the
substance
Environmental Since mid- Club of Rome Environmen- Conservation Intrinsic
management twentieth tal crisis value of
century nature
Social Since 1987, Brundtland System crisis Quality of life The good
management 1992 Commission today and life for
Declaration tomorrow everyone
Rio today and
tomorrow
Contingency Twenty-first Sustainability Multi-crisis; Contingency Ending the
management century as religion appearance management multi-
of an crisis;
ultimate attaining
crisis world
healing
and
salvation
Source: Marius Christen, Lucas Zapf, Peter Seele

for? What is the intrinsic guiding principle? And what is the normative core idea
of the candidate?

Paradigm candidate one: sustainability as resource management

Fundamental problem: resource crisis

In the sixteenth century Europe began to suffer from the so-called ‘timber short-
age’, a scarcity of one of the main resources of that time (Sieferle 1982). Practi-
cal solutions were needed to meet the challenge of this resource crisis. It is not
surprising that the first written evidence of the idea of sustainability appeared in
these circumstances at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1713 Hans
Carl von Carlowitz’s solution to the timber shortage was the ‘sustainable use’ of
the forests. He proposed that only so much wood should be cut within a certain
phase as would grow again.1 The understanding of ‘sustainable use’ in that way
strives for a balance between availability and the use of a renewable resource in
a local regenerative ecosystem, i.e. the ‘maximum sustainable yield’. It espouses
that the management of a forest, for example, is sustainable when the current use
112 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf
of resources does not endanger the future availability of that resource. Of course
this ‘management principle of renewable resources’ is still valid today. The Forest
Steward Council (FSC) Standard’s Principle 5.6.1 e.g. requires that: “The sys-
tematic use of wood does not surpass the potential for sustainable exploitation”
(FSC Deutschland 2012). According to this paradigm candidate, sustainability
is understood to be a guideline for the management of renewable resources. This
resource approach is very prominent and an essential part of the following para-
digm candidates. However, it is nowadays nowhere found as an independent,
stand-alone paradigm candidate.

Guiding principle: economy

The fundamental idea behind this early understanding of sustainability is distinctly
economic. The management principle is not about protection of life in the forest.
The understanding is much more about securing the continuous potential use of
a resource. Human intervention should not be prohibited, but regulated. This
interpretation of sustainability has – as have all the following interpretations –
an inherent future prospect as well as a provision for the human-nature relation-
ship. Contrary to subsequent emerging conceptions, this first paradigm candidate
focuses exclusively on guaranteeing the management and exploitation of renew-
able resources.

Normative core idea: live from the interest, but not from the capital
This economic guiding principle is, as every interpretation of sustainability, ethi-
cally substantiated. The first paradigm candidate refers on an assumption of fair-
ness, namely that subsequent beneficiaries should receive at least as much as do
the current beneficiaries. Respectively, a pertinent mot has entrenched itself as a
management policy in the sustainability discussion: ‘Live from the interest, but
not from the capital’. Therefore, this first paradigm candidate is based on the
logic of a specific type of resource, i.e. renewable resources, and on an intergen-
erational principle of justice.

Paradigm candidate two: sustainability as environmental

management

Fundamental problem: environmental crisis

With continuing population growth and an enormous increase in economic per-
formance after World War II, the human-nature relationship changed dramati-
cally. On one hand, thanks to cheap primary energy there was an unprecedented
increase in prosperity in broad levels of the population unparalleled in human
history. On the other hand, these epochal dynamics led to an increasing exploita-
tion of non-renewable resources as well as to an immense additional burden on
natural systems through emissions (Steffen et al. 2004).
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 113
In contrast to the timber shortage as resource crisis this development has
intensified since the middle of the twentieth century to reach a wide-ranging
ecological crisis. Not only did it include the danger of a shortage in renewable
resources, more importantly it brought the threat of a complete resource scarcity –
if resources are exploited that do not regenerate – as well as an overload in
absorption capacity in natural systems. Debates on worldwide loss of biodiver-
sity (see e.g. Carson’s Silent Spring 1962), on the endangerment of the ozone
layer through CFC emissions (starting in the mid-1970s), anthropogenic climate
change (cf. the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in
1990) are some examples of the global, and to some extent irreversible, impacts
of human involvement in environmental systems.
This change in situation demands for a change in solution. Consequently, ‘sus-
tainability’ was not only interpreted as an answer to a local resource crisis but as a
response to the global ecological crisis (for example Meadows et al. 1972). Corre-
spondingly, the solution entails more than just the management of renewable use
of resources. Sustainability is conceptualized as comprehensive environmental
management policy. In addition to the above-described resource management
there appeared new rules for the use of non-renewable resources, output of sub-
stances in the environment, stress speeds and handling dangers and risks.
According to this second paradigm candidate, development is sustainable
when there is no danger to the present use of and stress on the environment, and
to the potential for its future local and global use. Sustainability is systematically
conceptualized as an environmental conservation principle (IUCN 1980) and
claims to regulate the relationship between society and nature at an encompass-
ing and global level.

Guiding principle: environmental protection

While continuous use of renewable resources is the main goal of the paradigm
candidate ‘resource management’, the environmental system in all its complexity
comes to the fore in the paradigm candidate ‘environmental management’. This
reflects the fact that increasing attention has been paid to the scientific examina-
tion of natural systems as well as to the impact of humans on their environment.
Terms like ‘ecosystem services’ or ‘resilience’ dramatically shaped the debate on
sustainability. From this perspective, it comes as no surprise that ‘sustainability’ is
often pushed into the ‘green corner’.

Normative core idea: intrinsic value of nature

The normative core of this paradigm candidate is the integrity of the relationship
between humans and nature. Sustainability is about protecting the environment
from human interference and misuse. Nature’s utility function moves into the
background or is only of secondary importance. Contrary, arguments highlight-
ing the intrinsic value of nature and its integrity gain significance (cf. influential
positions in early environmental ethics by e.g. Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, James
114 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf
Lovelock, Holmes Rolston, J. Baird Callicot etc.). At the turn of the millennium,
the Earth Charter, for example, formulated an entire programme of sustainable
development that is based on this environment-centred understanding that the
integrity of nature without reference to its (direct) use for humans constitutes the
ethical foundation for the demands for protection (Earth Charter 2000).

Paradigm candidate three: sustainability as social management

Fundamental problem: system crisis

In the 1980s a growing number of people perceived the environmental crisis not
only as a threat to nature, but also a social danger. With this understanding, the
problem receives the status of a system crisis. Emanating from two challenges
that were previously considered completely separate, the elimination of poverty
on the one hand and the overexploitation of nature on the other, the World
Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) developed an integrated
stance on the matter (cf. Di Giulio 2004). The pressure on nature and the crea-
tion of human wealth were seen as inextricably interwoven, following that the
environmental and poverty crises should not be regarded independent of one
another. The WCED warned that an improvement in the quality of life follow-
ing the model of the rich nations would endanger the “basic integrity” of the
global ecosystem. Conversely it also applies that the generation of prosperity
of those living in the rich nations has an increasingly critical impact on global
ecosystems.
According to the WCED, both challenges for societal development and the
environmental pressure can only be mutually solved. That means that, on the
one hand, long-term societal development is only possible when natural condi-
tions are taken into consideration, and on the other, that the environmental
issue can only be alleviated when societies develop in a certain way.
The sustainability idea then is interpreted as a guiding principle for societies
as a whole. It not only regulates the relationship between society and nature
but beyond that also makes provisions for development in the sub-system ‘soci-
ety’, whereby everyone can satisfy hers or his “essential needs” (WCED 1987:
43). This paradigm candidate affects all relevant development aspects of society
and thus its progress as a whole. With the WCED-report the perspective pivoted
from environmental management, i.e. from the focus on the natural conditions
of social development, to the subject of enabling good life while considering the
available natural preconditions.

Guiding principle: focus on society as a whole for the quality of life for all
With this broadening of the perspective, to guarantee the option of fulfilling
(basic) needs became a central factor in the discussion of sustainability. Sustain-
ability is no longer exclusively about regulating the exploitation and the pressure
on nature. Moreover, the formula for sustainability has become so generalized
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 115
that no human behaviour at all should endanger the basis for a decent life for
present and future human beings.
The new guiding principle then is a good quality of life for all human beings
living at present and in the future. This transcends the two previous paradigm
candidates in two aspects: First, in addition to the intertemporal and global per-
spective sustainability obtains an ethical-universal entitlement. Second, it con-
siders the interpretation of the intact functioning of the ecosystems as necessary,
but not as sufficient – since the use of nature could be organized in such a man-
ner that it ensures its future functionality, but at the same time drastically limits
other basic options for good life. According to this paradigm candidate, progress
in the direction of sustainability, thus, is incompatible with the establishment of
an eco-dictatorship, which regulates the relationship of society to nature in an
environmentally sustainable way but at the same time restricts the human quality
of life. Aspects such as the guarantee of health, education, political participation,
economic production capability etc. became essential parts of the sustainability
topic. This broad understanding is also reflected, for example, in the FSC stand-
ard. The FSC standard takes into account the well-being of all people affected
by forestry management, in addition to the regulation of the use of nature as
Carlowitz’s original idea of ‘sustainable exploitation’ had in mind.
The guarantee of a good quality of life must be in accord with the natural
preconditions. This interactivity of the developmental and environmental per-
spectives is just as essential to this understanding of sustainability as its forward-
looking character. It reflects the dominating interpretation of sustainability in
the political, social and economic discussions of our days.

Normative core idea: a good life for all today and tomorrow
The normative core idea behind this paradigm candidate is the universal right
to a decent life: “all human beings – those here and those who are to come –
have the right to life, and to a decent life” (WCED 1987: 41). It follows that all
human beings have the right to resource consumption. But the right to a good
life encompasses even more. Which other conditions additionally have to be
considered essential elements of sustainable development is one of the main top-
ics of the (theoretical) debate on sustainability. According to paradigm candidate
three, sustainability is an anthropocentric concept. From this standpoint, sus-
tainability formulates the most comprehensive and therefore the highest imagi-
nable ethical norm.

A new paradigm candidate? Sustainability as

contingency management
The connections between traditional religion and sustainability are diverse. For
one, religion can promote sustainable action. Johnston convincingly described
(2010, 2013) sustainability as advocacy for a mindful and respectful dealing with
godly creation that can serve as a guideline for secular, political advocacy. In
116 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf
other research, religious care for sustainability has been elaborated regarding the
degree and hierarchical value of sustainability within different religions, arriving
at a characterization of “dark green religions” (Taylor 2010: 10) placing nature
higher than humans. A trait that is not common in Christianity but sometimes
found as a political claim when taking action towards a more sustainable future.
Building on this idea, there are increasing – and critical – references made in
literature where sustainability is linked to religious traits, up to the point of being
considered a ‘sustainability religion’. There is a hidden motif in these attribu-
tions that we would like to explore further by developing the fourth paradigm
candidate, mindful of the three paradigm candidates of ‘sustainability’ presented:
sustainability as contingency management, as sense-making and as a way out of
the multi-crisis. The multi-crisis thereby is connected to the system crisis of can-
didate three and described by some as the ‘ultimate’ crisis, ending life on earth as
we know it. In view of this threat the well-being of the individual, and following
along the religious theme, the salvation of the individual in the sense of a positive
solution of the apocalyptic outlook is in danger. With the conception of sustain-
ability as contingency management, a solution-oriented approach will be found
that either improves or restores world healing and salvation of the individual.
Similar to the three previously described paradigm candidates, in the following
we will describe the possibility of such a fourth candidate along the three estab-
lished categories: Fundamental problem, Guiding principle and Normative core idea.

Fundamental problem: multiple crises and contingency

When a cluster of existential problems threatens the present and the future of
the humankind, we experience a multi-crisis. Therefore, the problem to which
the sustainability idea should react has intensified. It is increasingly considered
to be existential, with the extent and diversity of the problems threatening the
existence of the humankind as a whole. The result is a fundamental uncertainty,
a lack of clarity about where and how one is positioned in this danger.
The multi-crisis is reflected in economic, financial, climate, food and biodiver-
sity crises. In light of this assessment, the future seems to hold nothing short of
the collapse of the overall system (Metz et al. 2007).
The multi-crisis is unlike other perceptions of the world’s last days. Sustain-
ability holds out the prospect of an anthropocentric solution, because the cri-
sis is the result of human action. To avoid the threatening doom, the economy,
the interaction with nature and society as well as our individual behaviour must
change. The multi-crisis necessitates reflection, adjustment and renewal in all
spheres of life. Herein, sustainability is put forward as the guiding principle of
solution. Thus, the idea of sustainability is seen as a way out of the threatening
situation by ‘managing’ the contingency emerging from the multi-crisis.
The comprehensive change in all spheres of life calls the status quo into ques-
tion, thereby endangering the familiar (cf. Blumenberg 1981: 157–158). The
multi-crisis thus both generates and amplifies contingency. Contingency entails
that life experiences are fundamentally open-ended and uncertain. Situations
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 117
can arise as expected, but they very well can develop differently, too. Contin-
gency is the “cask of all conceivable alternatives to the case” (Hörisch 2013:
148). Contingency arises through the personal perspective: “events can be con-
tingent because of restrictions in the particular lenses” (Bruun et al. 2002: 108).
Another source of contingency is the lack of expectation value: “events can be
contingent because they fall outside any detectable trend” (108). Contingency
therefore is rooted in the person’s expectations of outcomes or developments
while depending on the variability of nature: Everything that is neither necessary
nor impossible is contingent.
‘Religion’ in this research is understood as concept that provides a strategy to
cope with contingency by providing guidelines for individual action and thereby
connecting the individual to a super-individual framework (or narrative). This
is a functional understanding of religion with a focus on the believing individual
and the effects thereon (cf. McCleary 2007: 50; Lübbe 1986: 219). ‘Religion’ in
this sense provides contingency with a structure and an objective. Contingency
management is considered a unique selling point of religion: “The characteristic
of religion through the function of contingency management refers religion to
that function in which nothing else can be a substitute” (Lübbe 1986: 227).
This refers both to concepts that are traditionally described as ‘religious’ (e.g.
Christianity) as well as concepts that offer the same functional framework, yet
are not traditionally viewed as religious concepts (cf. Zapf 2014: 256) – e.g. as
we will see, sustainability that serves as an individual guideline for action and
the contingency evoked through the apocalyptic narratives connected to it (cf.
Taylor 2010).
Religion provides a narrative with which human can position themselves in a
contingent world. The religious story contains stability and points to a transcend-
ent world. This transcendent world is not affected by inner worldly coincidences
and chaos, and therefore not by contingency (Troeltsch 1913: 771–772). By
contributing to contingency management, sustainability questions the religious
monopoly to contingency management.

Guiding principle: contingency management and the fear

of the collapse in the overall system
The message of the multi-crisis communicates: ‘If the behaviour of humans con-
tinues as it is, the overall system will collapse in the foreseeable future’. Presuppos-
ing human’s instinct of self-preservation, this assessment warrants the compulsory
challenge to take countermeasures. Only through immediate, planned and col-
lective action the multi-crisis, and with it the existential threat, can be over-
come. This guiding function is given to the idea of sustainability. Sustainability
offers a way out of the multi-crisis, overcomes the associated contingency and
provides guidance.
The perception of sustainability as a solution for apocalyptic conditions
is already apparent at the very start of the sustainability discussion. Fear of
the human-made destruction of livelihoods is stated in the work of Carl v.
118 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf
Carlowitz. He interprets the resource crisis as a punishment for human mis-
conduct willed by God. Humans and their sins, his ingratitude, laziness and
carelessness are the reason for the God-sent infertility. Carlowitz calls for a
reversal: Greater care and the duty to preserve creation are the sustainable
solution for this divine punishment and subsequent vegetative neglect (Car-
lowitz and Rohr 1732).
Today the sustainability discussion no longer needs to refer back to religion
to cope with contingency. Humans carry problems and solutions equally within
themselves and a metaphysical entity is no longer considered necessary.

Normative core idea: attaining world healing and salvation

The argumentative relation between sustainability and religion offers a new per-
spective in the exploration of the idea of sustainability.
For the first three paradigm candidates, sustainability refers to concrete chal-
lenges in resources, environmental and social management. It provides answers
to specific, current and tendentious perceptible or measurable problems.
Sustainability as contingency management goes further. It functions against
the backdrop of the multi-crisis whose threats are in part virtual and often
indirect. The disastrous consequences of the multi-crisis are subtle and vague,
but present. They often have the effect of a threat and nightmare scenario that
awaits us in future. The sustainability discourse responds to this indirect and
rather virtual threat with equally abstract analysis of the situation through sci-
entific justification, mathematical models and theoretical studies. At the same
time it offers visions and views of the future that provide information on the
passage into a new sustainable world. In Christian theology this form of contin-
gency management is called eschatology: an elaborate narrative that influences
human’s way of life by correlating their actions to an ultimate aim (cf. Edsman
1962).
Religious contingency management is related to the existence of risks in life
and existential insecurity. In western societies these challenges so far only exist to
a limited extent, because those dramatic risks and uncertainties are minimized by
progress and prosperity. As religion no longer assumes this function, a gap opens
for new forms of contingency and its management.
With respect to the contingency generated from the multi-crisis the absence
of religion indicates: With its contingency management, sustainability approxi-
mates religion in a functional way.
This transfer of contingency management from religion to (apparent) areas
that have little or nothing to do with religion is not new. This was done especially
with reference to the economy. Economics offer scientific strategies to manage
decisions in uncertainty, that is, in contingent situations. There are some useful
findings that, as Hörisch (2013) explains it, can be actually seen as baked goods
to reduce hunger. In view of the multi-crisis, sustainability provides a similar
function. In the face of the impending world destruction it indicates the way with
specific actions toward a future without multi-crisis.
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 119
In summary, sustainability has a dual function in contingency management
from which its strength as a paradigm candidate shapes a new world culture:

1 The social function: The end to the multi-crisis and the deliverance of humans
from the impact of threats to their existence. Sustainable actions demand
restrictions in the here and now: the Pay-off of these restrictions, if not
directly, then in every case perceptible in this world. While eschatology of
classical religions – e.g. Christian eschatology – promises redemption from
life’s hardships in a carefree afterlife, the eschatology of sustainability puts
this redemption into the temporal, inner worldly future (cf. Priddat 2010: 31
for the similarities of this process with regard to the economy).
2 The individual function: The individual function of sustainability comple-
ments the social function. Sustainability offers individual guidance for
action on three levels. On a cognitive and perception-forming level, when
existential threats like climate change and pollution are felt through per-
sonal experience and sustainability is accepted as an escape. At a linguistic
level when the sustainability discourse on these experiences provides respec-
tive content, expression and concepts. And on the intentional level when
out of this conflict situation the conviction of one’s own effectiveness arises
to avert the problems. Individual human actions and what is beneficial for
the environment are present in this level of sustainability. Its meaning tran-
scends the individual and entails the securing of world healing and salvation.
The rapidly increasing consumption of so-called sustainable products para-
digmatically displays this function.

With these reflections describing sustainability as an eschatologically charged

strategy for contingency management, we portray a new paradigm candidate of
sustainability. Through the individual’s sustainable thinking and actions arises a
paradigm that looks to be capable of supplanting unsustainable life styles because
individual understanding and actions are viewed as embedded in a life-threaten-
ing context.

Conclusion
Conceptualizing sustainability from a Kuhnian perspective allows for a new
understanding of sustainability as interpretative concept. This implies several
conclusions, but before we present the theoretical and practical conclusions in
detail, we present a summary of the conceptual contribution of the four discussed
paradigm candidates as well as the overall perspective from a Kuhnian paradigm
shift.
Incommensurability: It is important to note that sustainability here is seen as
approach of ‘revolutionary science’ seeking for an answer of the current paradigm
of the Anthropocene characterized as unsustainable. The Kuhnian approach here
is particularly instructive as the concept of incommensurability between the old
paradigm (Anthropocene) and the (possible) new paradigm (full sustainability)
120 Marius Christen, Peter Seele, Lucas Zapf

Status Quo: 4 Paradigm Candidates of (Possible) Future

Anthropocene Sustainability: Paradigm:
Unsustainability Recourses, Environment, (Full) Sustainability
Social, Con!ngency

Old Paradigm Revolu!onary Science: New Paradigm

Sustainability as interpreta!ve
and transforma!ve concept

(c) by Christen/Seele/Zapf

Figure 10.1 Overview of the sustainability conceptions as paradigm candidates

Source: Marius Christen, Lucas Zapf, Peter Seele

reveals that there is no coexistence, but a more distinct either-or. The ‘revolu-
tionary science’ aspect of the paradigm crisis and the emergence of new paradigm
candidates leads to the more existential and fundamental crisis, as discussed here
in religious term regarding salvation and contingency. Figure 10.1 summarizes
this conceptual model bearing theoretical (4.1) and practical consequences (4.2):

Theoretical implications
Kuhn’s conception of the diffusion of paradigm candidates right through to the
breakthrough of a new paradigm offers a novel version of how to understand the
transformative character of sustainability in conflict with its critical nature.
Therefore, our contribution consists of three points.
First, we have moved the sustainability discourse into the transitory logic of a
paradigm shift. This enables an understanding of sustainability as an answer to
existing challenges and crises.
Second, we differentiate between various types of sustainability paradigm
candidates.
Third, building on this methodology and the three existing interpretations
allows us to add a fourth candidate that we call contingency management, and
which contains the social as well as individual function of sense-making and
improvement/salvation through sustainability.
 Sustainability’s promise of salvation? 121
Practical implications
The historical examination of the sustainability discourse along the lines of the
paradigm shift theory of Kuhn also has consequences for the practical implemen-
tation of sustainability: All four candidates serve as responses to problems and
gaps that are considered unsolved today.
For example, the four candidates offer companies the potential to direct their
sustainability engagement according to the four solution approaches. In sustain-
ability reports that follow the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
fifty-six Key Performance Indicators (GRI 3.1) are enlisted to report on environ-
mental, social, ethical and economic issues (Knebel and Seele 2015). Here the
four candidates are called upon to address the various dimensions according to
the nature of the problem.
For resource management, it is worth reporting on the economic and environ-
mental aspects of corporate activities. For environmental management on the other
hand, pure environmental topics are important, in particular the preservation of
and benefit to nature. However, for social management it would be good to cite
social indicators to confront the system crisis.
As Gayá and Philips show, the focus on fundamental concerns like ‘a new era’
and the exposure to problems of contingency can achieve on an organizational
business-level “a meta-level counter-story which emphasizes their paradigm-
shifting and future-shaping potential” (Gayá and Phillips 2015: 17). Contingency
management therefore concerns a dimension of corporate activity that over the
last few years has played an increasingly important role in product design and
product responsibility. Sustainability presents a component that enables consum-
ers to connect to issues of contingency via the product – thereby connecting
religious and socio-ecological issues.

Note
1 Carlowitz also proposed other measures to combat the resource crisis: more efficient
utilization, increase in resources and the search for substitutes.

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Zapf, Chr. L. (2014). Die religiöse Arbeit der Marktwirtschaft: Ein religionsökonomischer Ver-
gleich. Nomos: Baden-Baden.
Part III

The arts, literature and

cultural sustainability
Theoretical, historical and
contemporary perspectives
11 Culture and the arts in
sustainable development
Rethinking sustainability research
Sacha Kagan

Introduction
In policy discourses concerned with sustainability/sustainable development
(besides any policies specific to the “cultural sector”), such as policies for sustain-
able urban development, culture is considered only marginally. However, there is
a growing awareness of some of the functions attributed to culture: When culture
is understood as a prerequisite for social change, the functions attributed are those
of value-system, mode of place-making and identity-building (Barthel-Bouchier
2012; UNESCO 2013a; Lehmann 2010). When it is seen as a motor for transfor-
mation, its functions are to enable creativity and engagement (James 2015; UN
Habitat 2013; UNESCO 2013a, 2013b). When it is perceived as a social chal-
lenge, its functions relate to cultural diversity and multi-ethnicity (DifU 2011;
Meuleman 2013). Further attributed functions of culture relate to “well-being”,
“happiness” and sustainable ways of life away from consumer culture (UNESCO
2013a; Davies 2015).
The groundwork for this growing attention to culture came from an increasing
number of discourses about culture and sustainability, carried out by professional,
academic and policy-related actors. In the years that followed the Brundtland
Report and the 1992 Rio UN Summit, a minoritarian – albeit growing – discur-
sive arena emerged that gave space to arguments for a greater attention to culture
in sustainable development policies, discourses, practices and research. Unsur-
prisingly, actors from the cultural sector and cultural policy were involved in this
development, and one UN agency that supported this trend from the start was
UNESCO. The UNESCO Summit on Culture and Sustainable Development in
1998 was the result of a process that lasted several years. Under the title “The
Power of Culture”, it proclaimed in general terms the interdependence of culture
and sustainable (mainly economic) development. Over the following decades,
several discourses around sustainable development and sustainability emerged
that introduced a cultural component, in a variety of ways (see section as fol-
lows).1 Furthermore, an imaginative and arts-informed approach to sustainability
has also emerged, which has gathered a growing attention and bears promising
potentials for the rethinking of sustainability (see second section).
128 Sacha Kagan
Four expressions of the relation between culture
and sustainability
One type of discourse that champions the integration of a cultural component
into sustainability does so around the notion of culture as a “fourth pillar of sus-
tainability”. The expression was explicitly foregrounded as the title of a publi-
cation by Australian cultural policy analyst and community arts advocate Jon
Hawkes in 2001 (The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: culture’s essential role in public
planning). His four pillar model of sustainability stressed cultural vitality as an
important dimension, pointing at the inherent value of cultural diversity and of
a vibrant cultural life amongst human communities, necessary to quality of life
(Hawkes 2001).
Hawkes’ discourse is connected to the policy field of “cultural planning”, which
emerged in the 1980’s in the US in urban and regional policy, and was further
articulated in Europe from the 1990’s onwards as a trans-sectoral approach to
policy-making, in particular by Franco Bianchini (1993). It is also connected to
“community cultural development”, which is a North American term for policies
supporting community arts and the cultural practices of communities under a
logic of “cultural democracy” and human development (see Adams and Goldbard
2001). Both policy fields are based on a rather wide (anthropological) definition
of culture as way of life and of cultural practices as rooted in the everyday lives of
local communities.
The fourth pillar discourse was taken up by other protagonists, including
“United Cities and Local Governments” (UCLG), an international organization
federating local governments, which since the mid-2000’s has been advocating
(with its “Agenda 21 for Culture”) for the strategic positioning of culture (and
culture-related policies) as a “fourth pillar” for sustainable development in its
own right, i.e. not only as an instrument for achieving goals related to the eco-
logical/environmental, social and economic “pillars” but also as an own domain,
acknowledging cultural goals for human development (UCLG 2004). Indeed,
the development of a rich, historically grounded, creative and lively culture is as
important to the sustainable development of human societies as a rich and evolv-
ing biosphere, an economy that meets human needs, and a society that is just and
equitable for diverse social groups.
Another discursive development emerging from the late 1990’s onwards – and
eventually finding some common ground with the fourth pillar discourse – took
the shape of discourses about “cultural sustainability”, i.e. investigation/research
into, and advocacy for aspects of culture that are deemed worthy of consideration
from the perspective of sustainability, as well as research on the ways in which
cultural processes and cultural institutions are sustaining human communities
and societies, as well as landscapes and other natural-cultural ensembles. The
term “cultural sustainability” is also sometimes used for investigations into “sus-
tainable” processes and effects located within “the cultural” field – which may
lead back to a deleterious fragmentation and re-disciplining process, defeating the
transdisciplinary ambitions of sustainability research. Meanwhile, some authors
 Culture and the arts 129
have also used the German equivalent of the expression “cultural sustainability”,
i.e. “kulturelle Nachhaltigkeit” (see e.g. Krainer and Trattnigg 2007), but in a
way that conceptually bears more resemblance to the discourses of “culture(s) of
sustainability” that I discuss later.
These sets of discourses stimulated the emergence of a research field on “cul-
tural sustainability”, hosting a diversity of themes, topics and approaches (from
memory studies to speculative fiction, making links to pre-existing fields such as
ecocriticism, geography and various branches of humanities and social sciences).
As a result, the expression “cultural sustainability” has thus been used in varied
ways over the past decade, and although no consensus emerged on one defini-
tional framework, some international research networks have attempted to sort
out the multiple understandings of cultural sustainability, such as e.g. the COST
Action network “Investigating cultural sustainability” (Dessein et al. 2015).
In the meantime, while continuing to pragmatically use the term “pillar”,
Hawkes noted the difficulties that come with the use of such “a limiting and
misleading metaphor” as that of pillars of sustainability/sustainable develop-
ment, reckoning that “lens, framework, dimension or perspective offer a much
clearer impression of the proposed applications of this conception” (Hawkes
2010: n.p.). A comparable direction, rejecting the sturdy symbolism of “pillars”,
had already been taken up in the late 1990’s in Germany by several authors
associated with the “integrative” definition of sustainable development, who
explicitly rejected a “pillarized” discourse on sustainability and called instead for
a recognition of a “cultural dimension of sustainable development” (Stoltenberg
and Michelsen 1999; Holz and Muraca 2010; Holz and Stoltenberg 2011; Holz
2016). This discourse is related to the field of “Education for Sustainable Devel-
opment”, whereby the importance of cultural education and of a transdiscipli-
nary, integrative approach to education, are heralded by the advocates of “the
cultural dimension”. According to this conception, one can never understand
the integrative challenge of sustainability/sustainable development as long as
one focuses solely on single dimensions taken separately from one another (be
they environmental/ecological, economic, social, cultural or other dimensions).
Indeed, the very question of sustainable development is one of a complex inte-
gration of different dimensions. Thus, any non-integrative conceptualization of
sustainability that merely perpetuates the traditional modernist juxtaposition
of sectorally conceived policies is a basic misunderstanding of the very question
at hand.
In parallel to these developments, discourses also emerged that advocated and
described elements, whether historical, contemporary or foreseen, of a culture/
cultures of sustainability (Rowson 1997; Worts 2006; Nadarajah 2007; Brocchi
2008; Kagan 2010). Another term used by a comparable strand of discourse is
“ecocultures” (Slack and Whitt 1992; Ivakhiv 1997; Böhm et al. 2014). The
“culture(s) of sustainability” approach aims to identify the characteristics of
cultures that are able to evolve and sustain human development in challenging
environments, and especially able to learn from crises and transform themselves
accordingly (Kagan 2012).
130 Sacha Kagan
Discourses surrounding “cultures of sustainability” understand “culture” in the
sense of a shared set of world views and value systems, and a shared symbolic uni-
verse. They argue that the move toward culture(s) of sustainability is comprised
of several ethical and normative elements:

a fundamental shift in contemporary culture away from a hyper-consumption

oriented, hyper-industrialised, hyper-modern culture and towards a culture
infused with an understanding of and a respect for life in all its complex-
ity; a culture empowering people to change their lives in order to re-invent
another, more sustainable “good life” that is inclusive of human groups until
now oppressed or disadvantaged.
(Kagan and Kirchberg 2016: 1490)

They also identify an epistemological quality to such a cultural change, which

involves developing a set of richer, more diversified and integrated skills, compe-
tences, capabilities, reflexivities and ways of knowing reality as a basis for re-invent-
ing possible futures in an inter- and transdisciplinary search process (Dieleman
2008; Kagan 2011; Eernstman et al. 2012; Shrivastava 2012; Eernstman and Wals
2013). Social creativity (i.e. combining individual and collective creativity – cf.
Montuori and Purser 1999), serendipity (Kagan 2012) and emergent cultures are
central to the cultural change process advocated for in this discourse because “we
need to learn to deal with complexity and uncertainty rather than learning a pre-
determined ‘sustainable’ set of values and behaviors” (Sandri 2013: 767).
Discourses on culture and sustainability have also been differentiated accord-
ing to the normative frameworks guiding them. One attempt in this direction
was made by Soini and Birkeland (2014) who conducted a systematic discourse
analysis of peer-reviewed articles including the term “cultural sustainability” in
the period 1997–2011 (i.e. focusing only on one of the key expressions I discussed
earlier), and identified four divergent frameworks (conservative, neoliberal, com-
munitarian and environmentalist). However, the discourses referred to previously
do not necessarily exclude each other and often exist in hybrid forms, whereby
the different expressions are often used interchangeably (also causing confusion).
Common across most of the discourses on culture and sustainability is the the-
sis that sustainability transformation, across and beyond all its “dimensions” or
“pillars”, requires wide-ranging cultural transformations (see e.g. Hawkes 2001;
Brocchi 2008; Kagan 2011; Holz and Stoltenberg 2011). Furthermore, these dis-
courses generally share the view (clearly articulated in Hawkes 2001) that sus-
tainability goals should include the vitality of cultural and artistic expression in
their definition of diversity, allowing for a rich cultural life and guarding against
cultural homogenization (as could unfortunately happen under the goals of eco-
nomic or ecological “efficiency”).

Culture, sustainability and the arts

All of the four directions introduced earlier (and most of the authors cited above)
do involve the arts in their discussion of the relations of culture and sustainability,
 Culture and the arts 131
albeit in partly different ways and with different foci. The fourth pillar discourses
usually advocate for the importance of renewed and extended support for the arts
through strategically central cultural policies that would allow professional arts
organizations as well as community arts initiatives to contribute to community
cultural development. The cultural sustainability discourses often add a specific
focus on the preservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage (also in relation to
landscape preservation) and on cultural memory.
Discourses on the cultural dimension of sustainability, for their part, often
stress the benefits of cultural education, including artistic, as part of an integrated
approach to education for sustainable development, as well as the contributions
of the arts to transversal and transdisciplinary thinking, ethical-reflection and
research for sustainability. In a similar vein, the discourses advocating cultures
of sustainability tend to focus on artistic research, arts-based research and artful
knowing rooted in a variety of arts practices, as well as the role aesthetics plays
as a form of experience (after John Dewey) and site of reflexivity (Kagan 2017).
They are thereby striving toward new transdisciplinary qualities in the search for
viable and desirable futures (Dieleman 2017). In this respect, some discourses
on cultures of sustainability have focused their attention on a range of creative
cultural practices: artistic practices rooted in the socio-ecologically transforma-
tive ambitions of “social sculpture” (initiated by Joseph Beuys and further devel-
oped by others such as Shelley Sacks at Oxford Brookes University); “ecological
art”, with its complex aesthetic, cultural and research-like qualities (Kagan 2011,
2014); the cultural-ecological reflexive practice of ecocriticism in relation to lit-
erature and cinema (cf. Zapf 2016a, 2016b); and the political potential of recent
“social practice” arts.
With regard to the part that I played in these discourses on the “cultural dimen-
sion” and on “cultures of sustainability”, I have focused on the need to cultivate
an “aesthetics of complexity” (Kagan 2011) and a culture of qualitative complex-
ity as a core element for (inter)personal, social and civilizational developments.
In my analysis, any culturally meaningful approach to sustainability should work
with a “procedural” definition of sustainability (Miller 2011) where “sustain-
ability is the emergent property of a discussion about desired futures” (Robinson
in Miller 2011: 31), not a Brundtlandian “universalist” definition that aims to
merely determine standards that can be agreed upon at the level of international
organizations. A procedural definition recognizes and works with the unavoid-
able and necessary conditions of emergence, unpredictability, uncertainty and
“situated knowledges” (Haraway 1988). Unlike universalist sustainability, it does
not level out cultural difference but instead engages in a process of articulation,
(re)interpretation and negotiation of cultural difference with respect to questions
posed by global sustainability challenges (cf. Bhabha 1994). This then implies a
departure from the illusion of direct control over the complex processes at play.
(This analysis of mine is, however, not necessarily shared across the whole range
of discourses relating culture and sustainability that I discussed earlier.)
In its procedural definition, sustainability is about re-inventing worlds, and is
thus primarily a cultural project. The importance of imagination becomes sali-
ent, as well as the interface of memories and futures in the production of social
132 Sacha Kagan
imaginaries and in the constant (re)negotiation of diverse goals and priorities.
Nevertheless, sustainability goals, even under a procedural definition, are not
completely free-floating, nor reducible to a “culturalist” dimension. Rather they
are bound to (1) consider all the dimensions of sustainable development and espe-
cially the interrelations (and contradictions) between them, and (2) acknowl-
edge certain planetary conditions about which a wide scientific consensus exists,
such as climate change and the massive extinction of species/biodiversity loss.
Consequently, I hold that the procedural definition of sustainability is best
associated with complexity-based “culture(s) of sustainability”. The “culture(s)
of sustainability” approach offers a distinct way to deal with a crucial dilemma in
the relationship between culture and sustainability, which is the relation between
normative prioritization and cultures. Normative prioritization is a general ques-
tion facing the diverse discourses of sustainability/sustainable development: On
the one hand, the infrastructural dependence of humanity on the planetary bio-
sphere demands a top-prioritization of the ecological dimension of sustainability,
whereas the economy should be considered as a means to achieve ecological, cul-
tural and social sustainability before considering economic ends in themselves.
Hence Niko Paech’s argumentation in favour of a prioritization whereby the eco-
logical dimension is granted highest priority and the economic dimension lowest
priority, i.e. the exact opposite of contemporary effective prioritization in inter-
national political practice (Paech 2006). On the other hand, this prioritization
should not annul the importance of manifold normative goals and the need to
strike balanced compromises between conflicting goals. As pointed out by Robert
Hauser and Gerhard Banse,

if values such as life, infant mortality, nutrition, or the ability to adapt to

changing environmental conditions are used as indicators of sustainability,
the fictitious people living close to nature probably would not compare well
with Western cultures.
(Hauser and Banse 2011: 45–46)

Furthermore, the very normative value-construction of sustainability (with its

principles of justice(s) and of responsibilities) is culturally determined (Hauser
2011), as are all interpretive frameworks by which we come to know reality.
Therefore, in order to be able to conceptualise the mutual grounding of the eco-
logical and cultural dimensions in one another, a meta-level must be reached
with a higher degree of complexity, where concepts no longer suffice, but “macro-
concepts” (Morin 1977) come into play that allow a “dia-logic” (in Morin’s
sense, not “dialogic” in Bakhtin’s sense) intellectual culture to emerge beyond
the limitations of both logical positivism/critical rationalism and dialectics, and
beyond the opposition of naturalism, culturalism and radical social construc-
tivism. While there exist no “sustainable cultures” per se, as Hauser and Banse
(and many others) argue, a complex, transdisciplinary (in the sense employed
by Basarab Nicolescu) and uniplural culture(s) of sustainability is called forward
that would allow both a planetary naturecultural co-piloting of the biosphere and
 Culture and the arts 133
a historically (and humanities- and social-scientifically) informed approach to
cultural complexity.
The imaginative yet scientifically informed process that is called forward, one
that is cultural yet recognizant of the non-human, entails a challenging and often
uncomfortable search. It is a search which cannot succeed without the develop-
ment of an acute sensitivity toward the manifold transdisciplinary “patterns that
connect” (Kagan 2011) different dimensions of our planetary interdependencies.
Training the capacity to perceive these patterns and to embrace a complex world
without fear (and without the subsequent simplification that would result in ideo-
logical impasses) is what I have been pointing towards with the notion of an
“aesthetics of complexity” (Kagan 2011, 2015a), which draws from John Dewey’s
and Gregory Bateson’s previous works on aesthetics together with Edgar Morin’s
paradigm of complexity. Deweyian aesthetics points at personal affectivity in eve-
ryday life experience and at a human being’s overall interrelationship with his/
her environments. I associate it with Batesonian aesthetics as sensibility to the
“pattern that connects”, i.e. a pre-ethical yet already transdisciplinary perceptiv-
ity for the linking patterns across different levels of reality, which can be further
informed by insights from the arts and sciences. An aesthetics of complexity, as
a co-evolving movement of the self in contact with the movements of the liv-
ing world (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1969; Ingold 2011; Weber 2013), forms a basis for
ethics, knowing and action through dynamic connections with a complex world
that involve the body-mind through multisensorial (Pink 2015), emotional and
cognitive processes in integrated ways. Complex interdependencies, tensions and
interpenetrations between culture and nature are thereby perceived, involving
cooperation, competition, antagonism and unity through mutual constitution
rather than a simple dichotomic opposition (or a likewise simplistic, “holistic”
unification of nature and culture).
From the perspective of an aesthetics of complexity, the arts and especially art
as a form of enquiry and (re)search process into the qualitative nuances of the
human experience of the world, bear special qualities. Arts-based approaches to
enquiry/research elicit unusual ways of thinking about social and natural phe-
nomena, through the stimulation of uncertainty, risk-taking, and confrontation
beyond superficial and taken-for-granted understandings and meanings, “broad-
ening and deepening conversations” (Savin-Baden and Wimpenny 2014: 79).
An arts-based approach opens up new ways of asking questions and uncovers new
questions to be asked (Leavy 2009: 12). It aims to make questions and enquiry
more interesting, to “stimulate problem formulation” (Barone and Eisner 2012:
171), rather than to directly and unequivocally answer research questions and
offer some “definitive” meanings, as it “revisits the world from a different direc-
tion, seeing it through fresh eyes” (Barone and Eisner 2012: 16).
Abandoning the claim to produce universal knowledge, arts-based research
generates multiple perspectives on the questions it poses, which are rooted in
multiple “attentions” (Mersch 2009: 37–38). Those attentions address complex
and subtle interactions and they make them noticeable in the first place. This
deepens our understanding of issues and makes it more (qualitatively) complex
134 Sacha Kagan
(Barone and Eisner 2012: 3). An “artful sustainability research” (Kagan 2017),
integrating the qualities of artistic and arts-based research briefly evoked here,
thus forms a desirable horizon for sustainability research and sustainability-ori-
ented activism. Examples of the manifold insights and resulting innovative per-
spectives that can result from the involvement of the arts in the search process
of sustainability already abound, for example in the works of ecological artists
over the past four decades (cf. Blanc and Ramos 2010; Kagan 2011, 2012, 2014;
Weintraub 2012; Blanc and Benish 2016; Mayer Harrison and Harrison 2016;
Demos 2016).
Procedural sustainability as a cultural project affects both the professional
worlds of culture and the arts, and the worlds of sustainability research and
advocacy/activism. It integrates arts-based enquiry into an artful sustainability
research agenda while re-inventing worlds and rooting itself in an aesthetics of
complexity. This results in potential opportunities and responsibilities for the
professional “cultural sector” (i.e. the fields of cultural expression and arts pro-
duction). Organizations working in this sector are potential bearers of “spaces of
possibility” where alternatives can be imagined, experimented with, designed and
directly experienced (Kagan 2016).

This is not just about professional artists (who of course can be very inspiring
initiators), or about artists in social practice and communities (also play-
ing essential roles), but it is also about sharing response-ability for more dif-
fused artful doing and learning by local communities in spaces of challenging
experience, imagination and experimentation.
(Kagan 2015b: 29)

Arts organizations deal directly with meaning-making and structures of meaning,

with world views and values, and with the histories and lives of cultural artefacts
and intangibles (practices, traditions, non-written transmissions, etc.). Thereby,
they contribute to memories and changes in the symbolic universe that we build
and inhabit, as well as to place-making in the locations in which we dwell. They
thus hold a share of responsibility regarding the ways in which individuals, com-
munities and societies (do not) relate to their environments, from local to plan-
etary scales.
Procedural sustainability as a cultural project poses a challenge to the busi-
ness-as-usual of sustainability research (including the neo-discipline of sustain-
ability science) and of sustainability advocacy, which both need to place social
imaginaries at the centre of their attention and imagination at the core of their
practice. Sustainability research and advocacy then need to integrate scientific
and arts-based forms of research, learning and expression. Sustainability research
requires a major qualitative shift in its transdisciplinary gravity point, away from
its current claim to form a “sustainability science” as a kind of neo-discipline and
towards the formation of an integrated research practice of artful sustainability.
Only a few of the leading researchers in this field have already realized this
need and acted upon this realization. One of them is John Robinson, who was an
 Culture and the arts 135
early proponent of procedural sustainability as “a kind of discursive playing field
in which [conflicting views] can be debated” and as “the emergent property of a
conversation about what kind of world we collectively want to live in now and in
the future” (Robinson 2004: 382). As Provost for Sustainability of the University
of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Robinson launched in 2014 the interdiscipli-
nary project “Sustainability in an Imaginary World” that developed an arts-based
platform to collectively explore visions of possible futures with the hope of stimu-
lating “deeper ontological and epistemological questions” on worlds-making, ide-
ally “challenging ontological presuppositions” (Bendor et al. 2015: 54–55).
Another current project integrating artful sustainability is the “City as Space
of Possibility” project at the Leuphana University Lüneburg (led by Volker Kirch-
berg, Ute Stoltenberg, Ursula Weisenfeld and myself). Our project investigates
creative and innovative approaches to sustainable urban development in the
city of Hanover, Germany. We look for physical, social and mental spaces where
potentially sustainable futures are already taking some shape, emerging and expe-
rienced in today’s urban society – involving networks or/and coalitions of various
urban actors including artists and other cultural professionals and creative prac-
titioners (and ‘life-artists’), civil society and social movements, educationalists,
local entrepreneurs, city-government administrators and policy-makers (Kagan
et al. 2018). Other sustainability research projects incorporating an artful sus-
tainability are being developed around the world (e.g. those by Hans Dieleman
in Mexico, Karen O’Brien in Oslo etc.). Early-career researchers pursuing this
approach are starting to organize themselves (e.g. at the international Workshop-
Conference “Realizing Potentials: Conversations and Experiments at the Fron-
tier of Art-based Sustainability” held in Barcelona in November 2016).

Conclusion
Over the last two to three decades, a variety of discourses around sustainable
development and sustainability have introduced and discussed culture in mul-
tiple ways. Beyond the differences, contradictions and confusions between dif-
ferent discourses (which I clustered in this text into four approaches: culture as
a fourth pillar of sustainability, cultural sustainability, the cultural dimension of
sustainability/sustainable development, and culture(s) of sustainability), certain
features know a near-consensus among many (if not most) researchers: the impor-
tance of a rich and lively cultural heritage and cultural development for the vital-
ity of human societies, and the need for wide-ranging cultural transformations in
contemporary societies and polities that are excessively ruled by a narrowly con-
ceived mainstream economic rationality. Most of these discourses also intersect
by or converge with approaches relating the arts and aesthetics to theoretical and
practical aspects of sustainability.
Some researchers stressed in particular the importance of social imaginaries
(as pools of cultural resources), and of the human imagination (as a generative
principle) as engines for potential social transformations. This direction can be
engaged with through procedural sustainability, understood as a cultural project.
136 Sacha Kagan
Furthermore, to deal with the complexity of sustainability’s multiple challenges, a
cultural continuous-learning process rooted in an aesthetics of complexity allows
an embrace of qualitative complexity, rather than a simplifying response strategy
reinforcing illusions of control, as do certain discourses of the so-called “anthropo-
cene” and certain solutionist sustainability discourses.2 Within this process, artistic
and arts-based practices of (re)search offer opportunities to both develop imagina-
tive approaches and deepen the qualitative enquiry into complexity. Cultural-aca-
demic and artistic-discursive reflections and their critiques of social developments,
including critiques of sustainability and sustainable development, may sometimes
allow a more challenging and thus more diverse and deeper reflective process than
do the usual academic fora of sustainability research. However, a more detailed
discussion of this aspect would fall outside the space available for this text.
In this sense, the discourses and research investigating the relation between
culture, the arts and sustainability/sustainable development not only constitute a
valuable sub-theme for specialized researchers and for cultural practitioners inter-
ested in this intersection. They also offer a crucial opportunity for sustainability
research to realize the potential of a deeper epistemological programme of trans-
disciplinarity, in order to help re-orient human development with more inven-
tive, imaginative and challenging reflective approaches and practices, beyond the
limitations of an engineering of sustainability-solutions into which sustainability
science may otherwise trap itself.

Notes
1 For an overview of the development of policy discourses on culture and sustainability
over the 1990’s and 2000’s, see Duxbury and Jeannotte (2010).
2 A discussion and critique of these complexity-obscuring trends lies beyond the scope of
this text.

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12 Cultural ecology and the
sustainability of literature
Hubert Zapf

Introduction: literature as cultural ecology

Let me start by outlining some of the main assumptions of a cultural ecology of
literature.1 Between an anthropocentric cultural studies perspective, in which
nature is dematerialised into a discursive human construct, and an ecocentric
naturalism, in which cultural processes are simply subsumed under naturalist
premises, cultural ecology looks at the interaction and living interrelationship
between culture and nature, without reducing one to the other. Literature is seen
as a cultural form in which this living interrelationship is expressed and explored
in specifically productive ways, providing a site of critical self-reflection of mod-
ern civilisation as well as a source of creative cultural self-renewal.
One of the primary theoretical references is Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecol-
ogy of Mind (1973), which explores what he calls ‘connecting patterns’ between
mind and life, expanding the mind of the individual ego toward an ecology of
vital interrelations with other minds and with their material as well as historical-
cultural environments. These patterns are shared across different epistemic and
cultural domains and do not designate fixed properties of given realities but non-
linear, emergent processes characterised by interacting networks and recursive
feedback relations. Another key reference is Peter Finke’s notion of ‘cultural eco-
systems’ (2006) that he develops from Bateson’s ecology of mind and from Jakob
von Uexkuell’s distinction between Umwelten and Innenwelten, between external
environments and internal worlds. Finke points out that the characteristic envi-
ronments of human beings are not just external but internal environments, the
inner worlds and landscapes of the mind, the psyche and the cultural imagination
which follow their own metabolic processes of energy transformation and make
up the habitats of humans as much as their external natural and material envi-
ronments. Literature, art and other forms of cultural creativity are, in this view,
essential to increase the richness, complexity and diversity of those cultural eco-
systems and to ensure their continuing evolutionary potential for self-correction
and self-renewal.
In this more specific sense, I am arguing that literature can itself be described
as the symbolic medium of a particularly potent form of ‘cultural ecology.’ This
involves the assumption that literature is not only a preferred site for complex
 Cultural ecology 141
representations of the culture-nature relationship but that, in its aesthetic trans-
formation of experience, it acts like an ecological force in the larger cultural sys-
tem. Literary texts have staged and explored the complex interactions between
culture and nature in ever new scenarios, and have derived their specific power of
innovation and cultural self-renewal from the creative exploration of this bound-
ary. Since the beginnings of literature, cultural narratives of personified natu-
ral forces, human-animal symbioses, hybrid trickster figures, and nature-culture
metamorphoses have shaped the literary imagination, and have supplied body-
and nature-connoted alternatives to instrumental reason and to an increasingly
self-referential anthropocentric civilisation. As Louise Westling (2006) among
others has pointed out, the ‘human animal dance,’ i.e. the performative staging
of a close symbiogenetic interaction between human and nonhuman life forms,
has shaped literary narratives from archaic to modern times, from the Gilgamesh
epic to Virginia Woolf. The liminal space between the wild and the domesticated
became a generative principle, inscribing the fundamental ecological interrela-
tionship between culture and nature into texts. The dance of life was translated
into a dance of words, and in this expressive symbiosis of wildness and language,
ecosemiotic communication in literary narratives evolved as a cultural analogue
to communicational energies and autopoetic processes of life itself, as Wendy
Wheeler (2016) has pointed out so persuasively in her recent work.
This attention to the life-sustaining significance of the mind/body and culture/
nature interaction became especially prominent in the era of romanticism, but
continues to be characteristic of literary stagings of human experience up to the
present. The aesthetic mode of textuality involves an overcoming of the mind-
body dualism by bringing together conceptual and perceptual dimensions, ideas
and sensory experiences, reflective consciousness and the performative staging
of complex dynamical life processes. Literature as a medium of cultural ecology
thus specifically focuses on this interactivity of mind and life as a liminal phe-
nomenon on the boundary between culture and nature, self and other, autopoetic
and ecopoetic processes (Zapf 2002, 2016a, 2016b, 2017). Literary texts provide
a transformative site of cultural self-reflection and cultural self-exploration, in
which the historically marginalised and excluded is semiotically empowered and
activated as a source of artistic creativity, and is thus reconnected to the larger
cultural system in both deconstructive and reconstructive ways. As the medium
of a potentially radical civilisational critique, literature simultaneously provides
a sustainable generative matrix for the continuous self-renewal of the cultural
ecosystem.

Sustainability and literature

The relation of sustainability to literature has only recently begun to be explicitly
addressed. Apart from occasional contributions in various journals, a special issue
of American Literary History has been devoted to the subject, in which the con-
cept of sustainability is examined in a spectrum of contributions addressing top-
ics such as the relation between the humanities and the sciences (D’Arcy Wood
142 Hubert Zapf
2012); environmental justice aspects of sustainability implied in the ‘indigenous
cosmopolitics’ at play in literary works by indigenous authors (Adamson 2012);
and more general epistemological questions on the potential contribution of
the humanities to the sustainability discourse – in terms of a critical and self-
reflexive metadiscourse on the categories that define it (Philippon 2012). All of
these aspects of the relation between literature and sustainability reveal, as Slovic
rightly points out, that sustainability is no fixed concept, content or programme,
but “a moving target, a distant goal, not a permanently achievable plateau of
being” (2012: 187). In a 2012 issue of PMLA, the topic was addressed from differ-
ent critical angles, ranging from a radical critique of the concept as an instrument
of corporate greenwashing, to the postulate formulated by Stephanie LeMenager
and Stephanie Foote that “we scholars of literary and cultural studies need to
claim our stake in sustainability” (2012: 577), and to Lynn Keller’s contention
that “the arts and the human imagination deployed by the arts have significant
roles to play” if, as she puts it, “popular ideas of sustainability are to be reclaimed
from the blurry, feel-good realm of corporate advertising and given meaningful,
hard edges” (2012: 581). In this sense, it is important, rather than only consider-
ing thematic issues and environmental contents, to explore the ways in which art
and literary aesthetics itself can be conceived of as a site and medium of cultural
sustainability.
This adoption of the term for ecocritical literary studies takes into account
that, as Stacy Alaimo observes, the dominance of a “sanitized term of sustainabil-
ity” that does not “in any way question capitalist ideas of unfettered expansion”
creates a problem especially for the humanities and for literary studies, because
its adherence to the “gospel of efficiency” involves a preference for disciplines
such as “engineering, the sciences, and maybe architecture,” at the expense of
“philosophical questions, social and political analyses, historical reflections, or
literary musings,” which seem a waste of time in the face of pressing environ-
mental realities and responsibilities and thus “irrelevant for the serious business
of sustainability” (Alaimo 2012: 560). In its adaptation to cultural and humanist
studies, then, the discourse of sustainability needs critical questioning and epis-
temic extension from such a narrow ‘techno-scientific focus’ towards an inclusion
of “issues of human choice involved in putting sustainability into effect and . . .
the socio-cultural practices, behaviours, and structures such choice involves”
(Goeminne 2011: 20). It requires recognition that “one’s very self is substan-
tially interconnected with the world” (Alaimo 2012: 561), and that this entails
a “regrounding of the subject in a materially embedded sense of responsibility for
the environments he or she inhabits” (Braidotti 2006: 137). Braidotti helpfully
differentiates the concept further by adapting Deleuze’s processual thought to
the idea of “sustainable becoming,” relating it to everyday practices of personal
life as “transformative micro-practices” (Alaimo 2012: 561), which should be
complemented on a collective level by practices of environmental justice and
environmental-health activism (561). Sustainability in this cultural sense would
then involve the transformation of a “technocratic, anthropocentric perspec-
tive” towards “more complex epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political
 Cultural ecology 143
perspectives,” which counter the tendency “to externalize and objectify the
world” and instead broaden this revised concept of sustainability by incorporat-
ing the “lively relationalities of becoming of which we are part” (Braidotti 2006:
393). It is my contention that literature and art provide one medium of cultural
representation and communication in which this more complex, self-reflexive
and ethically responsive concept of sustainability or “sustainable becoming”
(393) is part of its generative potential and transformative function within the
larger discursive system of cultural knowledge and semiotic practices.
A provisional definition of the notion of literature as a form of ‘sustainable
text’ would include the following aspects:

(1) a long-term perspective of culture-nature co-evolution vs. short-term

concerns;
(2) a double orientation on continuity and change, on past and future, cultural
memory and cultural creativity;
(3) a sensitivity to the multi-layered forms of relationality between self and other,
mind and life, humans and the nonhuman world, encompassing percep-
tual, sensory, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, communicational and creative
dimensions;
(4) an attention both to life-sustaining diversities and to patterns of connectivity
across the boundaries of categories, discourses and life forms;
(5) a transactive and participatory concept of sustainability that describes not an
objectively given set of properties, but rather a potentiality of texts that only
comes alive through its ever new actualisations by ever new generations of
readers, within always changing historical, social and individual conditions
of living across different periods and cultures.

Thinking sustainability is thus by no means opposed to innovation and crea-

tivity as such. While sustainability contradicts and endeavours to overcome
the currently prevalent short-term, instrumental and profit-driven form of
economic and scientific innovation, it necessarily presupposes an alternative,
more complex notion of cultural creativity oriented on the long-term survival
of cultural and natural ecosystems as interdependent realities enabling the con-
tinuation of life on the planet. It must constantly negotiate between the poles
of continuity and change, in the imaginative anticipation of possible future
scenarios in a newly conceived, democratically legitimated form of cultural
evolution, which combines the awareness of its natural-historical conditions
of emergence with the consideration of the ethical-ecological consequences of
its future agendas. Thinking sustainability in this sense involves “no dogma, no
fixed set of formulas and rules that tell you you have to do this and that in order
to be sustainable” (Dürr in Grober 2002: 175, my trans.). Rather, it provides
“a playing field where one can experiment” (175, my trans.). And it seems to
me that art and literature represent a form of cultural creativity that provides
important playing fields for such experiments in the interest of long-term cul-
tural evolution.
144 Hubert Zapf
Extending the frame of sustainability: ‘Wildness’ and the
regenerative energy of literature
To indicate some of the ways in which literature is such an experimental site of
sustainable cultural practices, I am addressing in the following the topic of ‘wild-
ness’ as a non-anthropocentric signifier of creative energy which has pervaded
the ecocritical as well as the literary discourse in connection with processes of
both natural and cultural creativity.
As an ecological force in culture, literature recurrently draws on narratives and
images of the wild, as an area untamed by human regulation and control, in order
to activate the critical and creative energies that it circulates in culture. In the
poiesis of literary texts, it is a source of radical disruption and defamiliarisation,
but also of imaginative counterdiscourses that reconnect the cultural system with
its excluded other, which nevertheless turns out to be its deeper condition of
survival. Thus wildness, as evoked in the language, metaphors and imaginative
scenarios of texts, signifies an ecosemiotic communication that opens existing
categories of thought and agency to the living processes of human-nonhuman
interaction, which have been subjected to an increasing economic and techno-
scientific control in the Anthropocene but are brought out in their own vital
dynamics in the aesthetic process.
In American culture, which is my special scholarly field, wildness has always
been a prominent topic. In its connection with the more concrete and essential-
ist concept of wilderness, it has been one of the key terms in classical American
Studies, which has been rightly criticised for its ideological implications in terms
of gender, race, colonialism and national exceptionalism. It helped to construct
an American master narrative that, on the one hand, demonised the wilderness
and its human and nonhuman inhabitants as a realm of darkness and evil that
had to be eliminated in the march of the nation across the continent; and on the
other hand, it ennobled wild nature as the true origin of American democracy
and timeless justification of existing power structures.
In American literature, however, these inherent contradictions and ambigui-
ties were themselves becoming the topic of poetic and narrative explorations. In
Henry David Thoreau’s writings, wilderness and the wild gained shifting mean-
ings, ranging from deep ecology to political ecology, and covering the spectrum
from spiritual-empathetic to social-critical connotations of wildness, from wild-
ness as personal freedom to wildness as ecological community of multispecies
coexistence. In this spectrum, the environmental imagination in American
nature writing has developed as part of the larger cultural discourse on civilisa-
tion and nature in the U.S., and as such has certainly served, beyond its ideo-
logical shortcomings, as a significant inspiration of environmental awareness and
environmental policy.

Textual examples I: American novels

I would like to focus here, however, not on this nonfictional tradition of nature
writing but on some of the major fictional works of American literature, in
 Cultural ecology 145
which wildness is used in less conspicuous but nevertheless substantive ways as
a source of critical, counterdiscursive and regenerative energy in the narrative
process. I am specifically referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
(1986/1850), Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1956/1851), Kate Chopin’s The
Awakening (1993/1899) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1991/1987).
In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, ‘wild’ as an attribute first appears in the “wild
rose bush” that grows by the prison door, that “black flower of civilized society”
(1986/1850: 76) from which Hester Prynne emerges at the novel’s beginning to
be presented with her illegitimate child to the assembled community of Puritans,
the scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. In the course of the novel, Hester is
herself associated with that wildness in her publicly stigmatised erotic transgres-
sion and her life on the border between town and forest, as is her daughter Pearl,
who dances and communicates with wild animals and is explicitly associated with
the wild rose bush, while also personifying the scarlet letter as the cultural sign
of her mother’s stigmatisation. This sign, however, gains itself a dimension of
‘wildness’ in that it exceeds, both in erotic-artistic and in gothic-demonic ways,
the original meaning ascribed to it, turning into an ecocultural energy source
that drives and transforms the relationships between the characters and their
environments. This is underlined in the element of fire, which is associated with
the creative force of the letter A. Already in the metafictional frame narrative
of “The Custom-House,” a fiery energy is emanating from this material signifier
as the narrator finds the faded piece of cloth in the archive and drops it to the
floor because of its “burning heat . . . as if the letter were not of red cloth, but of
red-hot iron” (62). In the perception of the townspeople it assumes a demonic
force: “They averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in earthly
dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight,
whenever Hester Prynne walked about in the night-time” (112).
In Melville’s Moby-Dick, the narrative voice of Ishmael builds up an alter-
native, contrastive view to Ahab’s biophobic demonisation of the white whale,
arising from the recognition of the human species’ “Siamese connexion with a
plurality of other mortals” (1956/1851: 254). Through Ishmael’s perspective, the
white whale as an embodied signifier of wildness becomes the central agency
of an imaginative counterdiscourse that undermines and overwrites Ahab’s civi-
lisational will-to-power over creation. Moby-Dick’s irreducible co-agency with
the human actors in the narrative, which is conveyed in Ishmael’s account of
the events, undermines Ahab’s civilisational hubris and turns the whale into a
medium of trans-species connectivity. This imaginative counterdiscourse already
emerges early in the novel when the narrator projects his half real, half dream-
like sea journey as a journey towards his deeper self. This self, however, is not
a separate entity but co-exists with the whale in the shared medium of that
“ungraspable phantom of life” (24) which connects all beings in a continuous
process of metamorphic becoming that is translated into the imaginative process
of the text:

The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my
146 Hubert Zapf
innermost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all,
one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
(26–27)

The innermost centre of the narrative self is expressed in the imagery of whales. The
‘essence’ of the self is defined by its relation to a nonhuman other, whose irresistible
presence overflows the boundaries between self and other, outside and inside. The
figuration of the interior world of the narrator’s mind fuses human and nonhuman
domains, chaos and order, solid and fluid, wildness and the sacred in such a way
that the white whale emerges as its unavailable ground and highest manifestation.
The self’s encounter with the whale implies the dissolution of the anthropocentric
narrator-subject towards an ‘intra-action’ (Barad) between inseparable internal and
external, material and mental, cultural and natural forces in the medium of a fluid
imagination, in which the whale signifies an ecosemiotic reality that is co-emergent
with the deeper reality of the human self, and which always also conceals itself in
the forms of its manifold revelations (“one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill
in the air”). The mythopoetic language of the imagination is employed here in such
a way that it envisions the process of the novel as an aesthetic transformation of the
same forces that underlie the shapes and metamorphoses of life itself.
In Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s resistance to imprisoning con-
ventions and role patterns takes a twofold form: a conscious, intellectual form
in her withdrawal from the imposed rules of social institutions, as evidenced in
her growing defiance toward marriage, monogamy and the economic rational-
ism of her husband’s stock market mentality; and an unconscious, intuitive form
in her opening to the influence of the sea. As a compositional leitmotif of the
text, the ‘voice of the sea’ becomes the source of an ever-intensifying rhythm
of emotional, bodily and erotic awakenings that creates a wave-like, ‘oceanic’
(Den Tandt 1997) form of discourse and undulating flow of the narrative. In an
ekphrastic way, this fusion of the elemental rhythms of the sea and the transfigur-
ing effect of art is illustrated in a performance of Chopin’s music (doubtlessly an
ironic self-reference to the novel’s author), to which Edna reacts in a deeply pas-
sionate way that is conveyed in images of intense bodily experience and immer-
sion in the waves:

The very first chords . . . sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal
column. . . . [T]he very passions themselves were aroused within her soul,
swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She
trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.
(Chopin 1993: 44–45)

Again, an analogy is established here between the experience of art as transform-

ative medium of cultural self-expression and self-exploration, and the experience
of passion and ‘wild’ nature, which is metonymically associated with the sea. In
the artificial order of musical signs and sounds, an original chaos becomes audible,
 Cultural ecology 147
in which the control of self and world threatens to be lost, but from which both
art and life can gain the energy for creating ever new patterns of emergent order,
thus ensuring their continued vitality. This ekphrastic scene is related to the nar-
rative process of the novel as a whole, which aims at the ‘dionysian’ reconnection
of life and art, culture and nature, in the paradoxical tension between linguistic
articulation and prelinguistic experience, which Edna encounters in the medial
translation of Chopin’s music.
In Morrison’s Beloved, the imaginative counterdiscourse to the system of nine-
teenth-century American slavery that forms the cultural-historical context of the
novel is personified in the ghost of Beloved, the murdered child who returns into
the present as an incarnation of the repressed past, initiating a multi-voiced pro-
cess of ‘rememory’ that shapes the nonlinear dynamics of the narrative. Beloved
makes possible the confrontation and overcoming of the trauma of slavery in the
polyphonic story-telling which is sparked off by her reappearance, and in which
Morrison combines modern stream-of-consciousness techniques with forms of
African-American folklore and jazz, as indicated in the name of the “Blues[-]tone
Road” on which Sethe’s haunted house is located. Beloved represents the count-
less anonymous victims of slavery, but also the return of the power of feelings, of
‘loving’ and ‘being loved,’ which had been symbolically destroyed in Sethe’s kill-
ing of her own child as her desperate, self-destructive act of resistance. Beloved
reintroduces a sphere of tenderness, longing and excessive desire as a world of
magic and reenchantment, and as a wild force of strange but irresistible attrac-
tion, which counteracts the violence of racial, cultural and personal separations.
Beyond her role as victim, Beloved becomes a powerful agency, a catalyst of radi-
cal change and metamorphosis, resembling in some ways the trickster figure of
African American folk tales, which transgresses cultural taboos in order to lib-
erate the subliminal fears and desires of human beings. Beloved is a medium of
metamorphic contact and transformation, which emerges from water as a spectral
hybrid being on the boundary of culture and nature (“A fully dressed woman
walked out of the water.” [1991/1987: 63]), and in the end returns into her ele-
ment of water as a pregnant naked woman, “with fish for hair” (328). Human
and nonhuman agency converge as water, trees and the regenerative cycles of
more-than-human life contribute to an ecosemiotic counterdiscourse that is also
expressed in another central recurrent signifier of the narrative, the deep scar on
her mother Sethe’s back, which is the brutal mark of her violent slavery past that,
in the course of time, assumes the shape of a blooming tree. The metamorphic
blending of the bodily trace of her trauma with a signifier of possible regeneration
is a transformative process which characterises the imaginative process of the
novel as a whole (cf. Bonnet 1997).
Wildness in these major works of American fiction from different periods and
cultures of writing becomes the source of imaginative counterdiscourses to a bio-
phobic civilisation, activating critical and regenerative energies in ecopoetic
transformations that envision more sustainable communities both among the
living beings depicted in the narratives and between the texts and their readers.
148 Hubert Zapf
Textual examples II: American poetry
In American poetry, Walt Whitman is certainly a prime example of this poiesis
of regenerative energy when he invokes “Nature without check with original
energy” as the source of his Leaves of Grass (Whitman 2002: 27). He famously
adopts the “barbaric yawp” (77) of the spotted hawk as a poetological motto for
his “Song of Myself,” in which the experimental openness of his democratic free
verse gains its avant-garde modernism precisely through its translation of the
creative energies of wild nature into the flow of his dionysian verse. Grass as cen-
tral symbol becomes an inspirational source of both infinite diversity and infinite
connectivity, which in the end includes the poet himself, who metamorphs in a
very material sense into the regenerative cycle of nature: “I bequeath myself to
the dirt to grow from the grass I love,/If you want me again look for me under your
boot-soles” (77) – a metamorphosis of text into life which autopoetically reflects
back to the ongoing regenerative energy transaction between text and reader.
Whitman’s influence on American poetry has of course been immense and has
shaped its forms of writings through modernists like William Carlos Williams
and Wallace Stevens, Beat Poets like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, and into
the present. This also involves a critical assessment of the ways in which the
expanding civilisation threatens to undermine itself by the increasing subjuga-
tion and colonisation of the wild, as Wallace Stevens’ well-known poem “Anec-
dote of the Jar” (1979: 1154) illustrates. The poem is clearly structured in its
sequence of three four-line stanzas. The flow of its four-stressed iambic rhythm
is however fractured in several places, such as at the close of the first and second
stanzas, before it regains dominance at the end with the triumph of the “Jar” over
nonhuman nature. The poem deals with the relationship between culture and
nature, with the autonomisation of a civilisational order that defines the natu-
ral ecosystem not in terms of living interconnectedness but as a mere external
environment (“it made the slovenly wilderness surround that hill,” 1979: 1154).
The first person speaker is the symbolic agent of this anthropocentric civilisa-
tion, which realises its goal of superior order through the total control of nature.
At the time of the New Criticism and beyond, the “Jar” was seen as a symbol of
the artwork, which achieves an imaginative control over an otherwise chaotic
reality. On closer inspection, however, the aesthetic process of the text consists
in undermining this claim of dominance and authorial omnipotence (“it took
dominion everywhere,” 1979: 1154), and in conveying the apparently harmless
domestication of the wilderness as an all-pervading paralysis of life, in which the
uniformity and monotonous circularity of the civilisational system goes hand in
hand with the paralysis of the poetic imagination (“the jar was gray and bare,”
1979: 1154). The death of the wilderness is the death of the imagination, and the
living interrelationship with nonhuman nature appears not only as a vital condi-
tion of human life but of poetic creativity. This signifies a counterdiscursive force
in the text whose subliminal presence is marked by the fractures in the rhythm
and the blind spots of the anthropocentric perspective, but also in the gro-
tesque and fantastic mode of representation. In its polysemic meaning, the word
 Cultural ecology 149
“jar” (connoting not just a “container made of glass or pottery, especially one
used for storing food,” but also something that is “incongruous in a striking or
shocking way,” OED) introduces a cognitive dissonance in the text implying ten-
sion, conflict and incongruity in the relation between cultural object and natural
environment. As a signifier of the silent noise contained in expanding circles of
exclusion, the jar, which grows in its eerily magnified relation of size to its sur-
roundings, furthermore contains a socioeconomic meaning connected with its
commercial use, which has been linked to a real brand of marmalade from the
time named Dominion Wide Mouth Jar (see Pearce 1977: 65), thus pointing to
an industrial use of nature in a mass consumer society. In its mixture between
sublime artefact and monstrous ready-made, the jar simultaneously satirises and
pathologises the pressures of cultural normality and normativity. Stevens’ jar
could also be understood as what Timothy Morton calls a ‘hyperobject’ of civili-
sation; evidence of the Anthropocene, whose surreal scale reshapes and deforms
the precivilisational world of nature (see Morton 2013).
Something similar applies to other admirers of Whitman like Christopher Mor-
ley, whose 1921 poem “Elegy Written in a Country Coal-Bin” critically rewrites
the pastoral vision of an iconic poem of early romanticism, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy
written in a Country Churchyard,” in the light of the crisis of coal energy in
his time and region. I have this example from the very useful volume co-edited
by Scott Slovic, James E. Bishop and Kyhl Lyndgaard, Currents of the Univer-
sal Being, which provides highly illustrative texts, films and other cultural forms
in connection with sustainability and the energy of literature (Slovic, Bishop
and Lyndgaard 2015). In another example from this volume, John Updike in his
poem “Energy: A Villanelle” (1993), employs the pastoral form of the villanelle
to convey, within its insistently repetitive verse and rhyme structure, the rising
ecological costs of the expanding use of fossil energy. The poem consists of varia-
tions of this theme, contrasting the self-sustaining energy cycles of the earth with
the massive costs of our petroculture, which destroys huge amounts of “micro-
organisms” (Updike 2015: 166) for very small amounts of petroleum and fuels a
machinery of capitalist exploitation that pervades our everyday motorised lives
(“every tire is by the fiery heavens lightly spun,” Updike 2015: 167) and threatens
the eventual eclipse of the planetary ecosystem (“So guzzle gas, the sunless night
draws nigher,” Updike 2015: 167). A purely economic thinking in terms of costs
and profits is overwritten here by a holistic-ecological thinking that ironically
exposes the long-term, self-destructive consequences of that anthropocentric
utilitarianism. Literature as cultural ecology, as exemplified in these poems, is
thus both a critical reflector of unsustainable cultural practices and the resulting
ecological crisis, and a medium of translating this crisis into poetic form while
inscribing its sustainable energies into the discourses of culture. The ‘literature of
energy,’ as Slovic calls it, transforms into the energy of literature, which manifests
itself in manifold ways in contemporary poetry.
Of the numerous examples I would just like to refer here to the recently pub-
lished volume Lyrik im Anthropozän (Poetry in the Anthropocene) (2016), edited by
Anja Bayer and Daniela Seel in collaboration with the Rachel Carson Institute
150 Hubert Zapf
and the German Museum Munich, in which manifold poetic approaches taken
to the Anthropocene in the German-speaking context are anthologised. These
approaches radically confront the global ecological crisis but also practise an
experimental poetics that turns language, texts, images, the self and human-non-
human relationships into high-energy fields of regenerative creativity even in the
face of threatening disaster.

Conclusion
As ecological metanarratives of their culture, literary texts follow an underly-
ing dynamic of transgression and polysemic excess which enables processes of
revitalisation and symbolic regeneration – even if such regeneration is almost
never fully achieved on the level of mimesis and plot but only in an aesthetic
reflexivity of discourse that is to be realised in the cognitive-emotional partici-
pation of the reader. The ‘life’ to which literary texts relate includes, but also
goes beyond, individual life. ‘Life’ as a precarious process of constant semiosis,
interpretation and adaptation between self and other, autopoiesis and ecopoie-
sis, is also a crucial dimension of the way in which imaginative texts, as texts,
are acting as an ecological force in culture. In their performative and commu-
nicative dimensions, they are primary examples of what has been distinguished
as “in vivo knowledge” from the “in vitro knowledge” of the objectifying natu-
ral sciences (Nicolescu 2008: 3). They enact their aesthetic processes in force-
fields between the poles of culture and nature, mind and matter, self and other,
chaos and order, traumatic disruption and regenerative transformation. From
the microstructure of tropes to the macrostructure of narratives, the imaginative
processes of texts are made up by such tensions and connecting patterns, which
transgress the separations of hegemonic discourses and release creative energies
that can be activated for the continuous self-criticism and self-renewal of the
cultural ecosystem.

Note
1 In my essay, I will in part be drawing from my recent book, Literature as Cultural Ecology:
Sustainable Texts (2016a), London: Bloomsbury.

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13 An entangled history of
environmental and cultural
sustainability
Satirical reflections on the
German forest and the German
oak as resources of cultural energy
Evi Zemanek

Introduction
In Sustainability Studies the modern concept of sustainability as the capacity
of ecological, economic, sociocultural, or political systems to remain infinitely
productive is commonly traced back to its roots in forestry. The German term
‘Nachhaltigkeit’ was introduced by Hans Carl von Carlowitz in his groundbreak-
ing treatise on forestry Sylvicultura oeconomica, oder haußwirthliche Nachricht und
Naturmäßige Anweisung zur wilden Baum-Zucht (1713), a text written in reaction
to the scarcity of timber after large-scale clear cuttings. Von Carlowitz promoted
a careful, farsighted forest management, what he described as “the conservation
and cultivation of wood in a way that guarantees a continuous, durable and sus-
tainable utilization, because it [the wood] is an essential thing, indispensable for
the essence/character of the country” (von Carlowitz 1713: 105–106).1
Significantly, von Carlowitz does not primarily argue with the economic value
of the wood, its indispensability for industry, house building and the military,
but he asserts its ethic and aesthetic values for the people, and he does so even
in this central passage of his treatise. In other words, von Carlowitz emphasized
the importance of sylvan nature for a culture’s sustainability, and others adopted
his point of view. In fact, early forestry’s narrow focus on yield increase has been
broadened since by the acknowledgement of the multiple functions of the forest,
not only as a source of raw material and as a protective barrier, but also as an
important factor in the ecological system (in view of photosynthesis, air purity,
water balance and climate altogether), as an aesthetic factor in landscaping, and,
last but not least, as a space for recreation (cf. Steinsiek 2012: 94) – and even
for self-fulfilment and creativity, as I want to add. Consequently, the present-day
German law for the preservation of the forest (Bundeswaldgesetz) equally provides
for the sustainment of its economic, ecological, aesthetic and recreational func-
tions, while balancing the interests of the public and the forest owners.
Thus, the planting of trees for future generations is one of the oldest forms
of provision and sustainable action that has been documented in sources and
154 Evi Zemanek
conveyed in pictures (cf. Steinsiek 2012: 92–93). To repair the already visible
damage, von Carlowitz recommended reforestation and tree nurseries: Their Ger-
man term ‘Baumschulen’ emphasizes the cultural formation of nature. The future-
oriented symbolic meaning of reforestation was again taken up after the Second
World War when in 1948 the Deutsche Mark was introduced and the new
50-pfennig coins showed a woman planting a tree – an oak tree, precisely, which
has a long career as an outstanding symbol of German national identity.
The association of the German (or Germanic) people with their forests, and
in particular with their oaks, can be traced back to the Romans. The idea has
been taken up at several crucial moments in German cultural history. Going
much further than von Carlowitz in the semantization of the forest, the cultural
historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl promoted his conviction of “the close bond
between landscapes and peoples” (Riehl 1854: 25) in his widely read Natural
History of the People (Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen
Socialpolitik, 1854–1869). He relates the different characters of peoples to their
natural environments, on the one hand meaning that they were shaped by their
environments – a basic idea of climate theories as proposed by Aristotle and
Montesquieu – and on the other hand that their own shaping of their environ-
ments, especially their handling of the forest, not just through landscaping but
also through artistic representation, reveals their characters. Delineating a collec-
tive German identity in contrast to its European rivals, his ‘ethnography’ begins
with the assertion that only Germany still has a “real forest” with a “social mean-
ing” (Riehl 1854: 25). He argues that the wild forest, as all untouched nature,
is a source of strength for humans, thus it needs to be protected for the sake of
the culture’s sustainability.2 Famous is his plea: “We must preserve the forest,
not just to keep the oven warm in winter, but also to make sure that the peo-
ple’s pulse keeps beating warm and merrily, and that Germany remains German”
(Riehl 1854: 32). Riehl's last words do not have a racial connotation, as could
be assumed when the quote is isolated from its context. They refer to his ideal of
a ‘natural’ lifestyle, which can only be realized in “personal freedom, untouched
by police surveillance” and “free of moral pressure” (Riehl 1854: 34). Thereby he
means a freedom of movement and opinion he terms “Germanic Waldfreiheit” in
contrast to other nations’ restrictive policies (34).
According to Peter Finke, who promoted the renewal of cultural studies as
“Cultural Ecology”, important criteria to measure the sustainability of a culture
are, besides its resource management and generally its interaction with the natu-
ral environment, its diversity and its creative potential (cf. Finke 2003: 267). He
links creativity to diversity by assuming that, just as biodiversity offers various
survival strategies, cultural heterogeneity offers a whole range of lifestyles that
foster creativity (cf. Finke 2003: 264). In this perspective, which rests on a com-
parison between cultural systems and ecological systems, languages are considered
the most important sources of cultural energy, since they create and transform the
structures of civilizations or cultural ecosystems (cf. Finke 2003: 271). Language,
in turn, is the medium of literature and many art forms, “whose task is the con-
stant critical examination, imaginative exploration, and creative self-renewal of
 An entangled history 155
these cultural sign systems” (Zapf 2016a: 65), as Hubert Zapf phrases it. Zapf's
theory of literature as a powerful form of cultural ecology departs from the obser-
vation that literature and other arts act like ecological forces within the cultural
system.3
These recent approaches are relevant for my essay in a twofold way: By pre-
senting satirical texts and drawings from German magazines of the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth century that display concepts of sustainability, this
essay analyses discourses of environmental and cultural sustainability with the
aim of showing their historical entanglement. However, looking at satirical works
that mock unsustainable uses of natural resources, unsustainable cultural politics
and even certain concepts of sustainability is not the same as studying writings
that seriously promote sustainable practices. Some studies trace the conceptual
history of sustainability in various cultures and disciplines, and some of them may
criticize earlier concepts of sustainability from today’s perspective, but this essay
tries to see these historical concepts through the eyes of contemporary satirists
and cartoonists. It does not present a selection of caricatures in order to prove or
illustrate a history of ideas that has already been written, but it considers these
artworks for their own sake: It looks at the cultural function of these verbo-visual
artworks, which are themselves a form of cultural energy to be taken into account
within an ecology of knowledge. Furthermore, it reveals the enormous role mass
media has played (and still plays) in the development and popularization of sus-
tainability concepts, and it shows how deeply they are rooted in the German
culture’s very own history of ideas. In the late nineteenth century, different dis-
courses emerged – such as landscape preservation and animal protection – that
articulate proto-ecological thought without ever mentioning the proper term
“Nachhaltigkeit”. The latter is the keyword, however, in all discourses on the
forest, and here the entanglement of environmental and cultural sustainability is
more evident than in any other field.
The artworks I discuss in this essay require some preliminary remarks on the
media history of caricatures and satirical magazines.4 In newspapers and maga-
zines from the second half of the nineteenth century, the dominant discourse
consists of success stories that quite uncritically describe humans’ conquest of
nature. In newspapers like the Illustrirte Zeitung (1843–1944) or the entertaining
and educational bourgeois journal Die Gartenlaube (1853–1944), which appeared
weekly from mid-century, readers were being informed continually about techni-
cal innovations as well as the expansion of industrialization and infrastructure.
Only after the readers had been made familiar with all these aspects of sweeping
modernization could the ‘achievements’ be called into question through a dem-
onstration of their downsides. The papers mentioned above, however, usually did
not intend to alarm their readers. This goal was instead pursued by satirical mag-
azines like Fliegende Blätter (1845–1928), Kladderadatsch (1848–1944), Kikeriki
(1861–1933), Der wahre Jacob (1879–1933) and Simplicissimus (1896–1944).
Besides poems, short stories and advertisements, these magazines featured count-
less caricatures. Unfortunately, historians often treat them as mere illustrations
of events instead of unique verbo-visual forms of cultural criticism, sometimes
156 Evi Zemanek
being the only possible form of a critique otherwise too dangerous to be expressed
publicly.
Since satire, and especially caricature, aims at making its readers or beholders
realize that something is wrong, it deforms and exaggerates its subject, often to
a degree that makes it seem ridiculous, although not all satires provoke laughter.
Even if it uses wit to attract attention, its main goal is to make people think about
the problem it displays. Its other common techniques are parody, irony and sar-
casm, and they rely on allegation and provocation. They cannot be understood
without knowing their horizon of reference, the sociopolitical status quo and the
ideal they thwart. Both must be known in order to recognize them as dissent. It
has to be kept in mind, however, that magazines had to respect censorship regula-
tions for mass media.5
Leafing through satirical magazines of the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, it becomes clear that satire primarily targeted the lifestyles of bourgeoisie
and gentry, class conflicts, patriarchy, women’s emancipation, children’s educa-
tion and other explosive sociocultural topics. During the German Empire much
critique was directed against the monarchy and imperialism, the politics of the
Kaiser and chancellor Bismarck, the military and warfare. Generally, caricature’s
favourite topics rest on human mistakes which do not have disastrous conse-
quences and thus can be laughed at. Of the far fewer caricatures that depict
industrialization, modernization and urbanization, some call attention to the
consequences for human life and the natural world. Among those, only few
address visible environmental problems of the time, such as air or water pollu-
tion, while more can be found that focus on the fate of the woods.
As is well-known, Germany’s pristine woodlands had been shrunk and trans-
formed, notably through being turned into timber, throughout the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Environmental historians have asserted that an early
consciousness of nature’s value can be discerned in complaints of a wood short-
age (“Holznot”), complaints that had been widespread in central Europe since
the eighteenth century.6 Whether these complaints were justified or not, they
were motivated mainly by economic calculations and existential fear, rather than
by the impulse to protect nature for its own sake. Some early environmentalists
nevertheless did consider the excessive clear-cutting as historically the first step
towards humanity’s destruction of nature (cf. Schultze-Naumburg 1916/1917:
12). However, I would like to defend the thesis that forest clearance receives
attention mainly because the destruction of the German forest is regarded as an
existential threat to both nature and culture.

German forest and German oak: nature as a cultural symbol

The ‘German forest’, as described in poetry and fairy tales, hailed in folk songs,
imagined in paintings and referred to in political discourse, has always been more
than a natural landscape and even more than a cultural landscape. Going back to
ancient times, it has become a national myth and a symbol of German culture; its
 An entangled history 157
popularity grew enormously between 1800 and the Nazi Regime, while its con-
notations varied over time.7
The earliest descriptions of the German forest date back to the Romans (e.g.
Caesar’s De bello Gallico, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historiae, and Tacitus’ Germa-
nia) and deserve to be briefly mentioned because these accounts, notably from a
Mediterranean perspective, already prefigure its striking mythification. The for-
ests of Germania, most often called the Hercynian forests, were described as pris-
tine and endless, scary and mysterious, consisting of giant oaks (Pliny), inhabited
by strange animals such as unicorns (Caesar), and populated by brave Germanic
tribes, prototypical forest people, which were considered humble and hospitable
by Caesar, and coarse and barbaric by Tacitus.8 The latter mentions the decisive
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (or Hermannsschlacht) in 9 CE, that is, the vic-
tory of the Germanic tribes headed by the Cheruscan Arminius (Hermann the
German) against Rome’s legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus. Here already,
Hermann is idolized as “the liberator of Germania”,9 who was well suited to
serve as a heroic model for the emerging German nationalism in the nineteenth
century. In this view, Hermann stood for freedom from foreign rule and for the
united ‘nation’ yearned for in the decades before 1871, but also for a genuine for-
est people (Waldvolk, Waldgemeinschaft). The Germans’ self-understanding as
descendants of the Germanic people naturally implies their self-perception as a
forest people, now defined by exclusively positive attributes.
In the German Renaissance, the humanist Conrad Celtes, who edited Tacitus’
Germania and complemented it with his own Germania generalis (around 1500),
uncritically revived the idealized image of a vast Germanic forest full of giant
oaks. In fact, according to forest historians, at least two thirds of this central Euro-
pean territory was densely wooded until the Middle Ages, during which period
deciduous and mixed forests were much more prevalent than they are today, as
now the forests are mostly conifer. Beginning in the middle ages there were sev-
eral phases of extensive deforestation, which were already perceived as a problem
in the sixteenth century, and complaints of a lack of wood did not stop before
the mid-nineteenth century. It is commonly agreed that between 1750 and 1850
the Central European forest was in its worst condition, before coniferous forests
were created in large-scale reforestation projects. Today, approximately one third
of Germany is covered by forests, roughly the same extent as in the Renaissance.
During the following centuries, various influential poets (e.g. Casper von
Lohenstein, Klopstock, Kleist and Grabbe) studied Tacitus and chose Hermann
as a hero for fictions imagining the origins of the Germanic or German people.
Klopstock especially took up the adoration of the oak tree, which symbolizes the
Cheruscans and the fatherland in his drama (cf. Klopstock 2009: 30, 32, 34, 71, 80).
In his odes, he turns it into a symbol for “genuinely German poetry”, considering
oak leaves more appropriate to crown a German poet than the classical laurel
wreath.10 Thus, by ‘germanizing’ the classical images of Greek poetry, Klopstock
ties poetic inspiration, that is, cultural creativity and ultimately German culture,
to the natural surroundings of a typically ‘German’ forest.
158 Evi Zemanek
The increasingly differentiated symbolic spectrum ascribed to the oak tree and
the forest becomes evident when Klopstock compares the German language of
his earliest ancestors to a forest wilderness and states that Martin Luther, with his
Bible translation, has transformed it into a grove (cf. Klopstock 1975: 157). He
was not the only one in his times to compare language – as the prerequisite for
culture – and its different stages of development with forests cultivated to various
degrees. But while some, like Klopstock, favoured a highly cultivated language,
others idealized its most ‘natural’ state, like the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm: they edited the most famous German fairy tale collection (Kinder- und
Hausmärchen/Grimm’s Fairy Tales, first published in 1812), promoted the literary
tradition in their journal Altdeutsche Wälder (1813–1816) and initiated the great
German Dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch, published since 1854) in order to pre-
serve cultural and linguistic heritage for future generations. In view of one satire
discussed later it is worth mentioning that the Grimms metaphorically describe
both folk poetry and the development of the German language as plants that
need to grow naturally and undisturbed. Jacob speaks of his native language as
a ‘giant tree’, which, as he explains in his German Grammar (Deutsche Gram-
matik, 1819), is threatened by ‘weeds’, meaning foreign loanwords (cf. Grimm
1884: 557; Grimm 1881: 519–520).11 His ideal of a ‘pure’ language was shared by
many of his contemporaries; significantly, the journal published by the “Associa-
tion for the Promotion of the Pure German Language” (Verein zur Beförderung
der deutschen Reinsprache, founded in 1848), which promoted language purism
much more uncompromisingly, was named “The German Oak; Journal for the
Promotion of German Sense, German Civilization, and Pure German Language
through Instruction and Entertainment” (Die deutsche Eiche. Zeitschrift zur Förder-
ung deutschen Sinnes, deutscher Gesittung und deutscher Reinsprache durch Belehrung
und Unterhaltung).12
Besides their predilection for sylvan metaphors, the Grimm brothers played a
key role in mythifying the forest through their widely read fairy tales. Not only
are many of the collected tales set in the woods, but in the editorial process the
Grimms also amplified the fictional forests and emphasized their essential meaning
as an exceptional sphere in which people and nature still exist in organic unity.13
This corresponds to their ‘Zeitgeist’: Since deforestation and monocultural plan-
tations had become a visible concern, verbal and visual imaginations of a healthy
primaeval forest had become ever more popular. A few examples should suffice to
demonstrate this: The political connotation of the German forest becomes vis-
ible in paintings from the French period in which German volunteer units (like
the Lützowsche Freikorps) seek shelter in an oak grove as in Georg Friedrich
Kersting’s painting Auf Vorposten/On an Outpost (1815) or in which the French
enemy is getting lost in the dark German forest as in Caspar David Friedrich’s
Der Chasseur im Walde/The Soldier in the Forest (1814).14 Additionally, historical
paintings depicting scenes from the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest popularized
the German forest. Of even greater importance for the context of this essay is the
pictorial association of the forest with core areas of culture such as religion (e.g.
Adrian Ludwig Richter’s Genoveva in der Waldeinsamkeit/Genoveva in the Forest
 An entangled history 159
Solitude, 1841), architecture (e.g. August von Kreling’s Erwin von Steinbach im
Waldesdom/E. v. S. in the Sylvan Dome, 1849), painting (see Carl Spitzweg’s Der
Maler auf einer Waldlichtung unter einem Schirm liegend/The painter lying in a for-
est clearing under an umbrella, ca. 1850), music (e.g. Moritz von Schwind’s Des
Knaben Wunderhorn/The boy’s magic horn, 1848) and poetry (e.g. Carl Spitzweg’s
Der Lieblingsplatz/The Favorite Place, 1849). When we look at these paintings of
the forest as a sphere of the sacred and the sublime, of art and leisure, it becomes
obvious why German Romanticism is often specified as “Forest Romanticism”
(“Waldromantik”). Besides these paintings, it is very often Romantic poetry that
serves as a point of reference for the verbo-visual satires discussed in this essay.
When asked about the most popular forest poems, literary scholars usually first
of all name Joseph von Eichendorff, who often described an idyllic sylvan nature
that stands in stark contrast to the urbanizing world and the political turmoil
of his times (see, for example, Klage/Lament, 1809). The Catholic Eichendorff
spent his childhood on a Silesian estate amidst vast forests before he experienced
the drastic sociocultural transformations of the nineteenth century. Surprisingly,
scholarship has largely neglected the fact that he witnessed nothing less than the
destruction of the forest due to war, fire and overexploitation.15 Extensive clear
cuttings, which he explicitly criticized in personal notes, did not even spare oak
forests (cf. Frühwald 1994: 19). Even his own mother sacrificed a forest belonging
to the family to pay her debts (cf. Frühwald 1994: 20). Of course, these grim reali-
ties were no adequate subject for Romantic poetry. Eichendorff instead concealed
the loss in his forest imaginations, which have often been called “landscapes
of yearning” (“Sehnsuchtslandschaften”) and should, more precisely, be seen as
“endangered landscapes” and the “aesthetic revival of the lost nature experience”
(Frühwald 1994: 17–18).
This is not the place to offer a comprehensive overview of Eichendorff’s forest
imaginations. In this essay, it is most important to note the forest’s function as a
place of both ethical and artistic inspiration: Firstly, it is a model of morality and
a shelter for those who want to live a faithful, upright life which includes respect
for the achievements of their predecessors (see Der Jäger Abschied/The Hunters’
Farewell, written 1810/published 1837, and Abschied/Farewell, 1815). Secondly,
Eichendorff naturally locates the creation and recitation of song and poetry in
the forest, implicitly arguing that only a beautiful environment offers inspiration
(see also Die Zauberin im Walde/The Fairy in the Forest, 1837), and this inspiration
is needed to fulfil the poet’s duty: to communicate his homeland’s beauty. How-
ever, both cultural and natural heritage are in danger and need to be preserved: In
his poem Trost/Consolation (1837) he mourns the death of great singers/poets, but
at the same time he optimistically reminds his audience that their heritage can be
sustained as long as the poems are being remembered and the forest greens every
spring. Thus, the singer/poet prays for the forest, most prominently in the final
line of Der Jäger Abschied/The Hunters’ Farewell: “Schirm dich Gott, du schöner
Wald!”/ “May God protect you, beautiful forest!”. Here, hunters leaving the for-
est to fulfil their political duties praise it for being their spiritual home, which
inspires them to loyalty and national feeling – they associate the forest with the
160 Evi Zemanek
German banner. It is one of Eichendorff’s best-known poems, which, along with
Abschied/Farewell, had been set to music by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy; it
belonged and still belongs to the standard repertoire of choirs.16 The poem’s first
lines (“Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald/Aufgebaut so hoch da droben?”/ “Who
has built you, beautiful forest, so high up there?”) and its refrain (“Lebe wohl,/
Lebe wohl, du schöner Wald!”/ “Farewell, farewell – you beautiful forest!”) has
been quoted many times in various popular contexts and taken up repeatedly in
parodies modifying the poem’s original content – or rather bringing its concealed
subtext to the surface.

The fight over the forest in parody and satire

As early as in 1873, the hunters’ personal farewell was reinterpreted as environ-
mental lament: The satirical journal Fliegende Blätter dedicated a full page to a
poem framing two illustrations under the heading Elegie/Elegy (Figure 13.1). The
parodistic poem and the two realistic pictures – as a whole signed by Crassus [Sig-
mund Krassberger] – contrast past and present, a once healthy, beautiful forest
versus an ugly field of tree stumps. Alluding to the first lines of Eichendorff’s origi-
nal, the question “Who has built you . . .?” is replaced with “When will [the forest]
be cut down?” (rhyming: “auferbaut” – “niederg’haut”; as a fitting English trans-
lation one could think of an equally forced rhyme: “By whom were you built?” –
“When will you be killed?”). The parody ends with the grandchildren blaming
the stock company for the destruction of the forest.
This was only the beginning of the parodistic echo of Eichendorff’s poem
that could be heard well into the twentieth century, and sometimes even today.
More than twenty years later, the same journal, Fliegende Blätter, featured another
verbo-visual parody, titled Abschied vom Walde/ Farewell to the Forest (1895)17 just
like the poem’s musical version by Mendelssohn. Its single picture by E. Wagner
shows a bald hill, sawing woodworkers, and a wagoner handling the horses that
carry away the dead trunks. Its text, written by Friedrich Detjens, is even closer
to Eichendorff’s original in its structural and metrical composition. Quite similar
to the parodistic poem by Crassus, it alters the famous opening apostrophe to the
forest by replacing “built” (“aufgebaut”) with “cut” (“abgeholzt”), and its final
lines also explain that sellout of the forest is a result of greed for money. The later
parody from 1895, however, is a stronger plea for environmental and cultural
sustainability. Explicitly criticizing that the sounds of the hunter’s horns and the
poets’ songs inspired by nature have been replaced by the noises of tree-sawing
and horse-whipping, it demands that the younger generation protect what their
ancestors had protected: both nature and art.
Once the potential of Eichendorff’s poem for environmental critique had been
discovered, its matrix was taken up at various occasions during the following
decades, for example to call attention to the destruction of the Grunewald Forest.
Before coming to this particular case, it has to be mentioned that in the second
half of the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of accelerating industrial-
ization and urbanization, the forest had become more and more important as
Figure 13.1 Crassus (1873). “Elegie”. Fliegende Blätter, 58(1452), 159
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/fb58/0163 [Accessed 1 August 2017].
162 Evi Zemanek
a recreation area for the bourgeois and, a little bit later, also for working-class
urbanites. While the Romantics around Eichendorff had famously described their
wanderings in the forests, only several decades later, hiking became a fashionable
leisure activity for the masses. In the last third of the century, growing conflicts
over the question of to whom the forest belongs and whose needs should obtain
priority (be it the urbanites and tourists or the landlords or the foresters) led
to a series of controversial public and parliamentary debates, and finally to the
Feld- und Forstpolizeigesetz/Field and Forest Police Law (1880).18 This law’s purpose
was to protect the property rights of the forest owners against theft of wood by
limiting the public use of the forest. Interpreted as an attempt to deny the people
access to the forests and thus denying them nature, fresh air, freedom and leisure
altogether, the law provoked an unprecedented wave of protest, which mani-
fested itself in satire and caricature.19 In the end, this law did not keep the masses
out of the forest.
The Grunewald, located in the western part of Berlin, had been mainly used as
an aristocratic hunting ground, until the rapidly growing city’s dwellers conquered
it in the 1880s in search of ‘nature’. Reacting to public will, Wilhelm II finally
stopped his hunting activities in the Grunewald around 1904 and announced
that it would be turned into a public park, but the Prussian ministry for agri-
culture, led by Victor von Podbielski, nevertheless planned to sell it as land for
building.20 Already, with the expansion of the city, parts of the Grunewald had
been turned into building land, for example the “Villenkolonie Grunewald”, an
upper-class residential area developed in 1889. The forest clearance carried out
for this purpose was publicly criticized in the satirical popular song Die Holzauk-
tion/The Wood Auction (“Im Grunewald, im Grunewald ist Holzauktion”), which
was widely known and sung in and around Berlin beginning in 1892. In a similar
vein, but addressing its critique of the forest’s sellout and the state’s greed more
eloquently and more explicitly, the poem Der Grunewald bei Berlin. Ein Zukunfts-
bild nach bekannter Melodie/ The Grunewald Forest in Berlin. A Picture of the Future
in well-known Tunes (J.S. 1909) offers a dystopic vision of a near future in which
all the forest, along with its sales revenues, has gone. This poem, which once
again takes up Eichendorff’s opening lines and refrain, and modifies both accord-
ingly, appeared in the journal Der Wahre Jacob in 1909, in the May issue. In the
same month, the newly built racecourse “Rennbahn Grunewald”, for which again
part of the forest had been sacrificed, was to be inaugurated.21
In 1908, when the construction of the racecourse was well under way, another
verbo-visual artwork appeared in the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch which
emphasized the interdependence of nature and culture, or, respectively, the
entanglement of nature’s destruction and culture’s decline. The picture (Fig.
13.2) signed by Arthur Johnson fills an entire page and bears the title Das
Schweigen im Grune-Wald (frei nach Böcklin)/The silence of the Grunewald forest
(after Böcklin). Below the picture it says “Hier malte Walter Leistikow seine schön-
sten Bilder”/ “Here, Walter Leistikow has painted his most beautiful pictures”.
Only readers familiar with art history and contemporary painting might have
been able to decipher the meaning of the double reference to two painters.
 An entangled history 163

Figure 13.2 Johnson, A. (1908). “Das Schweigen im Grune-Wald (frei nach Böcklin)”.
Beiblatt zum Kladderadatsch, 61(35), 1 (30 August 1908)
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kla1908/0617 [Accessed 1 August 2017].

Johnson’s drawing is a parody of the painting Das Schweigen des Waldes/The Silence
of the Forest created by the famous symbolist Arnold Böcklin in 1885. His paint-
ing shows a unicorn strolling through a healthy forest and carrying a crowned
woman on his back. In sharp contrast, Johnson’s satirical picture shows a dead
164 Evi Zemanek
unicorn lying among the stumps of cut trees. The noble fabulous creature has
been understood as a symbol of fecundity and purity, an elegant, but wild animal,
which can only be tamed by a virgin. Being a creature that only exists within
the realm of myth and art, it ultimately stands for art itself, or the marvellous.
Significantly, it is only to be found in the forest, which protects it from reality.
Thus, Johnson’s picture implies that art inevitably dies along with the forest.
While in the title of Böcklin’s painting the ‘silent forest’ refers to a sacral sphere,
the silence in Johnson’s satirical picture indicates the death of nature, art and
culture. Besides the loss of the Grunewald, the picture also bemoans the death
of the painter Walter Leistikow, who was well-known for his paintings of the
Grunewald and had died just a month earlier. Assuming that Johnson’s satire is
a friendly obituary for Leistikow, it suggests that the painter’s death inevitably
means the death of Grunewald painting. On a more complex level the satire
implies that Leistikow’s Grunewald can never be surpassed artistically, since the
forest as he saw it has been destroyed; only in his immortal paintings is it pre-
served forever. Interestingly, although this was probably not intended by the art-
ist, the unicorn has special significance in the context of environmental damage
because its horn was said to be able to clean contaminated wells and waters (cf.
Wehrhahn-Stauch 1958: 1534). If the animal dies, environmental contamina-
tion cannot be reversed.
At first sight, most caricatures that address the destruction of the German for-
est and the negative consequences on culture seem semantically less complex
than the example discussed previously, but at a second glance they leave much
room for (mis-)interpretation and often make it difficult to discern their object
of mockery. This, however, is the prerequisite for reaching their double goal of
entertaining the readers and influencing their political opinion. Often they cyni-
cally comment on a critical issue without offering solutions, like the following
page-filling drawing (Fig. 13.3), whose heading ironically proclaims: “Nieder mit
dem deutschen Wald!”/ “Down with the German forest!” The picture from 1921,
presumably created by Hans Maria Lindloff, shows a man in fancy, but old-fash-
ioned clothes sitting on a lonely oak amidst a field of tree stumps. The first line of
the text below the picture says: “Der letzte deutsche Romantiker auf dem letzten
deutschen Waldbaum (singend): ‘Schirm Dich Gott, du deutscher Wald!’ ”/ “The
last German Romantic on the last German forest tree (singing): ‘May God pro-
tect you, beautiful forest!’ ” The second line identifies the stout, timely dressed
man beneath the tree holding an axe as a wood speculator. He impatiently yells
at the Romantic above: “Sie da, runter! Wird’s nu bald!”/ “You there, come down!
Hurry up!”. He unmistakably tells us that the Romantic era has definitely come
to an end, especially now after the defeat in the First World War. Romantics are
being chased away, the reign of the Realists and the sell-out of German culture
have begun.
We could simply interpret this piece as one of many attacks against speculators,
who sacrifice nature for money. Alternatively, we can read it as a critique of an
exaggerated emotional attachment to nature and thus laugh about the Romantic
who believes in the possibility of a harmonious relationship between humans and
Figure 13.3 Anon. [signature unidentifiable] (1921). “Nieder mit dem deutschen Wald!”
Kladderadatsch, 74(42), 2 (16 October 1921)
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kla1921/0585 [Accessed 1 August 2017].
166 Evi Zemanek
nature. In this sense, it mocks the whole Romantic discourse represented by the
other satires discussed earlier. Or, the ridicule could be directed against the revival
of such an emotional attachment in a climate of growing nationalism. It should
be noted that many caricatures from this time comment on the First World War
reparations demanded from Germany by the Allied Powers in the Treaty of Ver-
sailles. Chancellor Joseph Wirth’s policy of complying with the Allies’ demands
was criticized by conservatives and industrialists. This caricature appeared one
week after his Minister for Reconstruction, Walter Rathenau (who resigned only
a few weeks later), had reached an agreement with Loucheur, the French Min-
ister of Reconstruction. The Treaty of Wiesbaden, signed on October 6 and 8 in
1921, allowed Germany to replace monetary payments with material goods such
as wood.22 Its many critics bemoaned the handing-over of the German forest, the
symbol of German identity, to the French (cf. Escherich 1924).23 In any case, the
field of stumps and the fight over the forest is intended to mirror the deplorable
state of the German nation, once pictured as a mighty oak forest.

In search of cultural identity – caricatures of the German oak

There is more than enough proof that before the mid-nineteenth century the asso-
ciation of the German oak and the German people had become a commonplace.
This development is best documented by satire, whether in the form of poetry or
verbo-visual caricature. Heinrich Heine, the last poet of Romanticism and the one
who overcame it, is well-known for his satirical attacks on German society and
morality, having been a critical observer of rising nationalism. The poet of Jewish
origins mocks in particular the German’s metaphoric self-image as a faithful oak.
In his poem Zur Beruhigung/For Reassurance (1844), for example, he criticizes the
people’s lack of a revolutionary spirit by ironically praising its loyalty to its rulers.
As delineated before, the roots of the symbolic German forest with its leg-
endary oaks extend back to pre-modern times, but new emphasis has been put
on it since the early nineteenth century, and these symbols became ever more
popular up until the Second World War. All journals bear witness to this fact,
but satirical magazines especially document that the oak “soon became pro-
verbial as a patriotic icon of bravery, power, and strength”, which was held up
against domestic political disruptions as well as used as a means of self-assurance
in international conflicts (Zechner 2011: 20; cf. Hürlimann 1987). After 1871,
many pictures show, without any need for explanations, an oak being trimmed,
split and uprooted. In most cases the oak simply stands for the state or nation
being shaken by all kinds of political issues.24 In some cases, however, it explic-
itly symbolizes a transnational German culture, as in the caricature Die deutsch-
österreichische Eiche (Fig. 13.4) that appeared on January 27, 1898, in the popular
Austrian satirical magazine Kikeriki.
Here, the icon of German identity was shared by the Austrians, reminding
us of the “Greater German Solution” (“großdeutsche Lösung”) once considered,
but then abandoned in 1848. In the centre of the picture we see a giant oak,
which is being attacked from two sides, but does not succumb to the pressure. The
 An entangled history 167

Figure 13.4 Anon. (1898). “Die deutsch-österreichische Eiche”. Kikeriki. Humoristisches

Volksblatt, 38(8), 2 (27 January 1898)
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=kik&datum=18980127&seite=2 [Accessed 1 August 2017]

political background of this caricature is the nationalities’ struggle in the multi-

national state Austria-Hungary (“Nationalitätenkampf”). The subtext reads: “Du
Erdäpfelstaude und du Paprikapflanze, Eure Anstrengungen, mich zu entwurzeln,
werden keinen Erfolg haben!”/ “You potato plant and you pepper plant, you won’t
succeed in your struggles to uproot me.” These words are ascribed to the German-
Austrian oak addressing the Slavs (represented by the potato) and the Hungarians
(represented by the pepper). The ‘pepper’ invokes the Austro-Hungarian Com-
promise of 1867 (the so-called “österreichisch-ungarischen Ausgleich”), which
established the dual-monarchy, that is, it re-established Hungarian as one of two
official languages. All other ethnic groups of the monarchy envied the Magyars
for their partial autonomy. Especially the Czech national movement demanded
equalization in view of the Magyars and the Germans, but the requested com-
promise (the so-called “österreichisch-tschechischer” or “deutsch-tschechischer
Ausgleich”) soon collapsed. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the Ger-
man-speaking minority in the Czech lands felt threatened by the Czech culture’s
fight for autonomy. Bowing to the growing pressure, in April 1897 the Austrian
minister-president Count Kasimir Felix Badeni issued an ordinance called the
“Badenische Sprachverordnung”, which made Czech (besides German) the sec-
ond official language in Bohemia and Moravia, thus requiring bilingualism in
those who wanted to become civil servants. This ordinance – which the ‘potato’
holds in his hands against the ‘oak’ – incited protests and boycotts in the parlia-
ments of Prague and Vienna instigated by the German Nationalist Party, and it
led to Badeni’s resignation at the end of November 1897, two months before the
caricature appeared in Kikeriki. Since the political turmoil continued, Badeni’s
successor had to restrict this language ordinance, and in 1899 it was repealed.
168 Evi Zemanek
In this caricature, it is not the oak and thus the Germans’ self-image that is
being ridiculed; instead, some readers might laugh at their opponents in the clash
of cultures, while others laugh about the whole topic, the seemingly unresolvable
cultural conflicts. While this caricature still emphasizes the steadfastness of the
oak and thereby the dominance of German-Austrian culture, it foreshadows the
fatal development of this conflict and the eventual fall or split of the oak.
Unsurprisingly, during the First World War, German journals show an
increased need for self-affirmation and self-encouragement. On the one hand, we
find poems praising the invincible oak combined with realistic drawings of giant
oak trees, without any humorous note.25 On the other hand, (self-)doubt and fear
concerning the Germans’ military strength is expressed via images of bending or
mutilated trees. At worst, the unbendable oak is replaced by other tree species,
indicating that the Germans can no longer be associated with oaks.26
The satirical journal Simplicissimus features the German oak on so many of
its covers, that they would deserve a separate examination in view of this maga-
zine’s own ideological history. During the Wilhelmine Era, the journal was well-
known for its satirical attacks on the authoritarian state as a whole, particularly
its military and its police. After the declaration of war, however, the journal gave
up its focus on internal enemies in favour of external ones and displayed a new
patriotism. In the run-up before the First World War, it articulates the domestic
political crisis by images of a hollowed oak trunk infested with parasites. Differ-
ent parties are alternately given the role of the animal pests which gnaw on the
oak (Fig. 13.5): the German Centre Party or Catholic Centre Party (Deutsche
Zentrumspartei), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands) or the National Liberal Party (Nationalliberale Partei) were
in turn attacked satirically for policies considered culturally unsustainable.27 Of
course, all criticism is articulated metaphorically.
During the war, of course, Germany’s war opponents figured as the oak’s ene-
mies, who, in the first years, did not succeed in bringing down the oak. Interest-
ingly, even in caricatures in which Germany’s opponents are depicted as iconic
national stereotypes in human form, the Germans are still rendered as a tree that is
being attacked with axes, while the peaceful plant itself does not carry a weapon:
as in a caricature from 1915, in which the members of the Triple-Entente try in
vain to fell the oak (Fig. 13.6). After the lost war, the defeated nation is depicted
as a defoliated oak.28 One year later, a cover (Fig. 13.7) anticipates the ratifica-
tion of the controversial Treaty of Versailles by showing the felling of the Ger-
man oak and commenting sarcastically: “Der Friede ist perfekt – der Krieg kann
weitergehn”/ “The Peace is perfect – the war can continue”. Subsequently, cari-
catures from the early 1920s mirror the Germans’ discontent with their leading
politicians’ compliance with the Treaty’s reparations – a compliance (“Erfüllungs-
politik”) which was interpreted by many as a surrender of the nation’s identity,
and a threat to its cultural sustainability.29 In the following years various crises
were met with pictures showing a saw being taken to the oak. In summer 1922,
with the onset of hyperinflation, a Simplicissimus cover depicted a defoliated oak
being felled in order to be processed into paper urgently needed for banknotes.30
Figure 13.5 Heine, T. (1907). “Ein Blatt aus der deutschen Naturgeschichte”. Simplicis-
simus, 11(49), 1 (4 March 1907)
www.simplicissimus.info/uploads/tx_lombkswjournaldb/1/11/11_49_789.jpg [Accessed 1 August 2017].

Figure 13.6 Heine, T. (1915). “Siege in Ost und West”. Simplicissimus, 20(7), 1 (18
May 1915)
www.simplicissimus.info/uploads/tx_lombkswjournaldb/1/20/20_07_073.jpg [Accessed 1 August 2017].
170 Evi Zemanek

Figure 13.7 Gulbransson, O. (1919). “Die Ratifikation”. Simplicissimus, 24(31), 1 (28

October 1919).
www.simplicissimus.info/uploads/tx_lombkswjournaldb/1/24/24_31_409.jpg [Accessed 1 August 2017].

And in 1923, when Bavaria declared a state of emergency and turned its back on
the young Weimar Republic in an act of separatism, the Bavarians virtually saw
off the branch on which they are sitting.31 Almost ten years later, in late 1932,
the oak finally lies on the ground cut into many pieces, the picture visualizing the
political fragmentation in the Reichstag.32

Racial discourse and its satirical reflection

In the early twentieth century climate of increasing nationalism impregnated
by racist ideas, cultural sustainability primarily meant protecting the ‘purity’ of
the German people in order to secure their future. This notion, as one can imag-
ine, provoked various satirical reactions.33 However, these are not always easy to
evaluate. Some poems and caricatures do not condemn nationalism and racism
altogether; some of them seem to approve of a moderate nationalism, but ridicule
a nationalism based on racist ideology; others solely mock the projection of racial
ideas onto the forest.
In view of this essay’s interest in the entanglement of verbo-visual discourses
on cultural and environmental sustainability, it is worth taking a closer look at
the racial connotations attributed to the German forest within anti-Semitic
discourse. One very early example that demonstrates the instrumentalization
 An entangled history 171
of the German forest for anti-Semitic propaganda appeared in 1896 in the
Austrian magazine Kikeriki. The journal was founded in 1861 and published
in Vienna until 1933. Its founder, Ottokar Franz Ebersberg, was known as
a democrat who promoted religious tolerance and stood up for the under-
privileged. In its first three decades, the magazine represented liberal and
pro-Semitic views, but between the early and mid-1890s, under the growing
influence of the Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei Österreichs)
and its founder Karl Lueger, the magazine began to promote anti-Semitic
ideas. Thus, until the mid-1890s we find caricatures that mock and critique
anti-Semitic discourse, while in the second half of the decade this discourse
is affirmed and incited.34
As revealed by the names written below the drawing, this caricature, titled Im
Hochgebirge/ In the high mountains (Fig. 13.8) features Kikeriki, the rooster mas-
cot of the magazine, addressing Karl Lueger, who was at that time vice mayor
of Vienna and known for his anti-Semitic politics.35 As we learn from the sub-
text of the caricature, the rooster, who represents the naïve lower-class citizen,
is astonished to see the vice mayor acting as woodcutter. Lueger is depicted with
axe and saw, ready to fell the trees marked by the inscriptions “Jüdische Presse”
(Jewish press), “Corruption”, and “Großkapital” (high finance). The part of the
subtext attributed to Lueger tells the reader: Only after those growing ‘trees’ are
eliminated, will the “German forest” and the “Kircherl” (the small church in the
background representing Christianity, or, more precisely, Catholicism) receive
enough light and air to grow and thrive again (“Freili – i muß da a so a paar gar
z’üppige Stämm’ aushauen, damit unser deutscher Wald und das Kircherl drinn’
wieder Licht und Luft kriegen!”). Drawing on the stereotypical enemy image of
the wealthy and corrupt Jewish elite in control of mass media and thus a power-
ful cultural force, the caricature articulates the fear of being outnumbered, or,
in accordance with the forest metaphor, of being overgrown by foreign peoples,
especially Jewry.
As in most caricatures, it is up to the reader to recognize the object of
mockery, here, to recognize whether Lueger’s anti-Semitism is being affirmed
or ridiculed. While we would naturally expect satire to mock Lueger’s posi-
tion, in this case the radical change of the journal’s political line and other
aggressively anti-Semitic jokes in the same issue argue against a critique of
anti-Semitism. It seems to be a rather affirmative pictorial comment on Lue-
ger’s propaganda, yet there is a confusing little detail in the centre of the
picture. How shall we interpret the fact that the rooster, when speaking to
Lueger, drops his cigar, and thus risks setting fire to the whole forest and
burning down not only the ‘foreign’ but the ‘domestic’ trees as well? In view
of this, the caricature could be a warning that this anti-Semitic discourse
can, again metaphorically speaking, lead to an uncontrollable ‘forest fire’.
It remains a matter of speculation how contemporary readers might have
interpreted this contribution. In this essay, it serves as another example that
locates culture – religious culture to be more precise – within the sphere of
Figure 13.8 Anon. (1896) “Im Hochgebirge”. Kikeriki, 36(74), 4 (13 September 1896)
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=kik&datum=18960913&seite=4& [Accessed 1 August
2017]
 An entangled history 173
nature and associates natural heritage (the forest) with cultural heritage (the
church). This seems to be underlined by the title Im Hochgebirge: The high
mountains were considered the last region where one could still find wilder-
ness in the sense of a natural nature – a genuine source of cultural energy that
could guarantee cultural sustainability (cf. Riehl 1854: 64–65).
Another caricature that plays with the potential for a racial semantization of
the German forest undoubtedly ridicules anti-Semitic discourse: The contribu-
tion Deutscher Wald im Dritten Reich/German Forest in the Third Reich (Fig. 13.9)
appeared more than three decades later, in 1932, shortly before the Nazis’ seizure
of power, in Der Wahre Jacob. The satirical journal, which had been published
since 1879, was politically close to the Social Democratic Party; due to its sharp
attacks on Nazi politics, it was prohibited in 1933.
This caricature depicts a Nazi and a forester inspecting the forest, standing in
front of a beech tree. The Nazi asks the forester to “draw some sap” from the tree
in order to “have it tested for ‘Semikokken’ ”,36 the latter being a fictitious term
hinting at ‘Jewish bacteria’. At the time, this word creation was not entirely new.
It had been coined a few years earlier in an anti-Semitic discourse that associ-
ated the Eastern Jews with infectious diseases.37 The caricature mocks the Nazis’
pseudo-scientific racism. In the same issue of the journal, another caricature turns
the disease metaphor around and uses it against the Nazis themselves: In a draw-
ing of the German Michel (Deutscher Michel), his back is dotted by swastikas
indicating that he suffers from a bad rash. The caricature’s critique of the Nazis’
idiotic extension of their ideology to nature itself was not far from reality: In
Nazi documents such as Hermann Göring’s famous speech “Ewiger Wald – ewiges
Volk”/“Eternal Forest – Eternal People”, the military leader describes the forest
as the “foundation of German culture” (“Grundlage deutscher Kultur”, Göring
1940: 250).
Interestingly, in this caricature the oak is for once replaced by the most com-
mon deciduous tree in Germany: the beech, more precisely, the copper beech
(or European beech), called “Rotbuche” or “Blutbuche” in German. Using
the botanically equally correct term “Blutbuche”, the subtext reinforces the
pseudo-medical context of the blood test and at the same time hints at the
Nazis’ blood and soil ideology (“Blut und Boden”). Less known, but also inter-
esting, are other connotations of the beech, which is an ambivalent symbol (cf.
Zumsteg 2008). It stands for strength, but also for cultural creativity and for
calamity: While praised as genius loci in many German poems (e.g. by Eduard
Mörike), it also figures as a gallows tree in famous texts (most prominently
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche). Most importantly, this tree
is a basic symbol for text culture due to the etymological link between “Buch”
(book) and “Buche” (beech), resting on the fact that the Germanic peoples
had used beech rods for writing. Choosing the beech (along with the oak) as a
symbol for a people or nation means characterizing it as both closely connected
to nature and as highly civilized. In view of that period’s brute nationalism,
caricatures can only ironize this self-image.
Figure 13.9 Lange-Christopher, K. (1932). “Deutscher Wald im Dritten Reich”. Der
Wahre Jacob, 53(12), 14 (4 June 1932)
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/wj1932/0194 [Accessed 1 August 2017].
 An entangled history 175
Outlook and conclusion
If we accept one of the central premises of Finke’s and Zapf’s cultural ecology and
assume that diversity is a precondition for cultural sustainability, the national-
ist and racist approaches doubtlessly pointed in the wrong direction. After the
Second World War, the German forest and the German oak as national icons
almost completely disappeared from political and cultural discourse, but a special
attachment to the forest was still articulated in popular culture such as the post-
war Heimatfilm (e.g. Grün ist die Heide, 1951; Der Förster vom Silberwald, 1954).
However, since the key words, German forest and German oak, had no political
function for a while, all satire that focused on current issues spared these seem-
ingly discarded icons. It has to be added that satire as a medium did not thrive in
the decades following the war. Most satirical magazines had to close down during
the Second World War; it was the end of a flourishing German culture of verbal
and visual satire. In the second half of the twentieth century, satirical magazines
did not play the same role as before. The most prominent German magazine,
Titanic, was founded as late as 1979 – just in time to witness the public panic over
the “Waldsterben” (forest dieback), which brought the German forest back into
the centre of public attention.38 Here is not the place to discuss the countless
caricatures and the satirical treatment of this topic, but it should be mentioned
that the amount of media attention and concern for this environmental problem
can partly be explained by the semantization of the forest in German cultural
history. This is in line with the observation that the Germans brought more emo-
tion to the debate on forest damage than their European neighbours, who were
more concerned about the general effects of air pollution, not least on humans
(cf. Metzger et al. 2009: 43). During this period, German media reports fell back
on old ideas, as they tended to interpret the forest dieback as a threat to cultural
sustainability.39 The emerging environmental movement and the Green Party
(founded in 1980) greatly profited from the Germans’ emotional attachment to
their forest. This has been noticed and commented on in caricatures that mock
the instrumentalization of the German forest for political goals, especially by the
Green Party. In the twenty-first century, Klaus Stuttmann depicts the ‘German
forest’ as a wind farm that, with its many wind turbines standing in dense rows
and covering a great part of the land, resembles a forest (Figures 13.10 and 13.11).
The visual analogy hints at the ambiguity between the mythification of the
German forest and the pleas to protect it on the one side and its use as a natural
resource on the other side. These caricatures suggest that the Germans now wor-
ship wind energy instead of the forest; both idealizations are considered stupid,
the adoration of the wind turbines perhaps even more so. Above all, the cartoons
criticize the presumed ideological and emotional elements in energy politics. The
cartoon published on the occasion of the Green Party’s twenty-fifth anniversary
(Fig. 13.10: “25 Jahre Die Grünen. Schützt den deutschen Wald!”/ “Save the Ger-
man forest!”) implies that in the twenty-first century the Germans’ wind farms
have become as famous as the German forest had been for two thousand years.
But it also criticizes the Germans for concentrating on another object of fancy,
Figure 13.10 Stuttmann, K. (2005). “25 Jahre Die Grünen. Schützt den deutschen
Wald!!” Der Tagesspiegel (13 January 2005)
www.stuttmann-karikaturen.de/karikatur/660 [Accessed 1 August 2017].

Figure 13.11 Stuttmann, K. (2004). “Wenigstens der deutsche Wald ist gerettet!!” Der
Tagesspiegel (2 April 2004)
www.stuttmann-karikaturen.de/ergebnis/326 [Accessed 1 August 2017].
 An entangled history 177
thinking that they have already saved their forest by environmental protection
policies, while they destroy landscapes by building wind farms, which could be
considered as disastrous as forest clearings. The other caricature’s message (Fig.
13.11: “Wenigstens der deutsche Wald ist gerettet!”/ “At least the German forest
has been saved!”) is equally ironic, since it calls attention to the fact that wind
turbines, even if they slightly resemble trees from afar, are no adequate substitute
and neither fulfil the animals’ nor the humans’ needs. These new ‘German for-
ests’ may provide power, but no cultural energy.
In conclusion, it could be noted that in recent satire on environmental
transformations the whole concept of a ‘German forest’ is decidedly exposed to
ridicule. Satires that use the term improperly for non-natural anthropogenic phe-
nomena not only point to a change in values, but they also suggest that any cul-
tural mythification of nature is illusionary, and its discursive instrumentalization
is reactionary. This does not mean, however, that discourses on environmental
sustainability and on cultural sustainability can be disentangled. To the contrary,
‘quality media’ often quietly presuppose a common understanding that cultural
sustainability always depends on environmental sustainability, while ‘sensational
media’ and politics tend to the mythification and instrumentalization mentioned
above. Today, the protection of landscapes is still propagated by emphasizing
their cultural meaning, but the nationalist view has gradually been replaced by
a global perspective – just as sustainability altogether has become a transcultural
issue.

Notes
1 All translations from German sources into English are mine unless otherwise noted.
2 See Riehl’s critical comments on the forest clear cuttings of the nineteenth century
and on the substitution of deciduous forests with conifers as well as his plea for special
protection of the oaks (Riehl 1854: 35–37).
3 For more detail, see Zapf (2016b).
4 These remarks can be found at greater length in Zemanek (2017).
5 These remarks can be found at greater length in Zemanek (2017).
6 In our context it suffices to refer to the debate, regardless of the thesis that the degree
of the alleged wood shortage did not correspond to reality. Cf. Radkau (2011: 40–42).
7 Zechner (2016) considers it as an ‘imagined landscape’ and traces its facets from the
Romans to the Nazis. My essay owes much background knowledge and many refer-
ences to this study.
8 See Gaius Plinius Secundus. Naturalis historiae, book XVI, ch. 2; Julius Ceasar. De bello
gallico, book VI, ch. 21, 23, 25–28; and Publius Cornelius Tacitus. Germania, ch. 2–5.
9 Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, book II, ch. 88.
10 See Klopstock’s odes Thuiskon, Der Hügel und der Hain, Unsere Fürsten and Mein Wäld-
chen (Klopstock 2010: 248, 300–304, 278–279, 365). For more details see Zechner
(2016: 21–23).
11 For references to the Grimms’ writings, I am indebted to Zechner (2016: 83–104).
12 On the language purism movement, see Gardt (2000).
178 Evi Zemanek
13 They express this idea in many of their writings; most prominently: Grimm, J. and
Grimm, W. (1812): VI. On the Grimms’ mythification of the forest, see Ono (2007);
Zechner (2013). For an ecocritical interpretation, see Stobbe (2017: 298–304).
14 For forest imaginations in German Romantic art, see Maringer (2009); for the devel-
opment of the German forest, see Bernhard (2012).
15 For an exceptional focus on environmental history in Eichendorff scholarship, see
Frühwald (1994).
16 In Mendelssohn’s works the songs are titled “Der Jäger Abschied”, also known as
“Jägers Abschied” or “Der deutsche Wald” (“Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald”)
op. 50,2 (1840) and “Abschied vom Wald” (“O Täler weit, o Höhen”) op. 59,3
(1843).
17 For a discussion of the picture (Detjens, F. and Wagner, E. [1895]), see Zemanek
(2017, 132–134). – All artworks mentioned that appeared in Fliegende Blätter, in Klad-
deradatsch and in Der wahre Jacob are in the digital library of Heidelberg University
available at: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de.
18 For an explanatory comment on this law, see Amtspresse Preußens (1882).
19 For example: “Das Forst- und Feldpolizeigesetz” (Anon. 1880).
20 There was an outcry against Podbielski articulated in the liberal leftist press inflamed
by Berlin workers and citizens who wanted to secure the forest as recreation area. See
the caricature “Pod der Waldverwüster” (Stutz 1904). – For a detailed account of the
fight over the Grunewald, see Wilson (2012a: esp. 86–131; 2012b).
21 On the building of the Grunewald racecourse, see “Die neue Rennbahn im Grunewald
bei Berlin” (Anon. 1907). – Podbielski also played a key role in the construction of
the racecourse. The protests against the sell-out of the forest culminated once more
in January 1909 at the “Zweiter Berliner Waldschutztag”/“Second Berlin Forest Pro-
tection Day”. In 1915, finally, the Prussian state sold the Grunewald to Berlin; the
city assured its inhabitants that the newly bought 10000 hectares of forest would be
preserved and exclusively used as recreation area.
22 Still searching for a solution concerning the conflict over reparations, Walther
Rathenau, who as a successful Jewish business man also had to face anti-Semitic
attacks, was assassinated on June 24, 1922.
23 This view was also articulated in poems, e.g. in another one that appeared in Kladdera-
datsch in 1923 titled “Abschied vom Walde” (Anon. 1923), which again begins with
the parodistic question “Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald,/ Abgeholzt. . . ?” and answers
“Frankreich hat Dich, schöner Wald!” (“It is France who has got you now, beautiful
forest!”).
24 Again, many caricatures could be mentioned here. A typical early example from
Kladderadatsch: “Wie man das Hindernis wegschafft für eine große liberale Partei”
(Anon. 1880).
25 See “Die deutsche Eiche” (Anon. 1917).
26 See the text-image-combination titled “Einst und Jetzt” (Anon. 1911) from Kikeriki.
All artworks mentioned that appeared in Kikeriki are available at: http://anno.onb.
ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=kik [accessed 1 Aug 2017].
27 For caricatures depicting these parties as animal pests, see also “Die deutsche Eiche”
(Schulz 1904). – All artworks mentioned that appeared in Simplicissimus are available
at: www.simplicissimus.info [Accessed 1 Aug 2017].
28 See the caricature “Deutscher Herbst” (Gulbransson 1918) that appeared one week
after the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
29 See, for example, “Erzberger und die deutsche Eiche” (Arnold 1920).
30 See “Dividenden über alles” (Arnold 1922).
31 See the caricature “Bayern und Reich” (Arnold 1923), which appeared two weeks
before the Munich Putsch.
32 See “Einstimmigkeit” (Gulbransson 1932).
 An entangled history 179
33 See the poem “Treueschwur”, which appeared in Simplicissimus in 1907 next to a cari-
cature drawn by Eduard Thöny (Thoma and Thöny 1907). The poem was written by
Ludwig Thoma, who was at that time chief editor of the Simplicissimus and known for
his biting left-liberal critique, which is why he covered his identity with the pseudonym
Peter Schlemihl. His poem mocks a pledge of allegiance to Germania; the statue is part
of the Niederwalddenkmal close to Rüdesheim on the shores of the Rhine River.
34 On Kikeriki’s political outlook, see Holzinger (2015). On caricatures of Jews, see
Schäfer (2005).
35 When this caricature appeared in September 1896, Lueger had just been elected
mayor of Vienna, but since the Emperor Franz Joseph I resented Lueger’s blatant
anti-Semitism and prevented his appointment several times, Lueger had to serve
as vice mayor until Franz Joseph finally conceded to a plea by Pope Leo XIII and
accepted him as mayor. In 1893, Lueger, a zealous Catholic, had founded the Christ-
lichsoziale Partei, who won their voters from the petite bourgeoisie with anti-capi-
talistic and anti-Semitic propaganda. During his mayoralty Lueger was very popular
thanks to infrastructural reforms that improved everyday life in the metropolis – not
the least important of which being the transformation into a green city – but also
due to the emergence of a personality cult that would later be imitated by Hitler’s
entourage.
36 The German subtext reads: “Von der Blutbuche zapfen Sie mir mal ein kleines
Fläschchen Saft ab. Ich will sie mal auf Semikokken untersuchen lassen.”
37 In 1926, the magazine Vorwärts – the official voice of the Social Democratic Party
since 1876 – included a caricature in which a doctor examines the members of the
Reichstag and tests their blood for “Semikokken”. Cf. Nemitz (2000: 67).
38 On this public debate, see Metzger (2015); Bemmann and von Detten (2013).
39 ‘Old ideas’ refers to the attribution of a cultural value to the forest, not to nationalist
or racist ideas. Cf. Metzger et al. (2009: 45).

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14 The cultural sustainability of
Victorian waste
Ursula Kluwick

Introduction
Cultural sustainability has the ring of a new buzzword. It is probably most readily
associated with the replacement of the three-pillar model of sustainable develop-
ment with a four-pillar model that includes cultural as an addition to ecological,
economic, and social aspects to indicate that the role of culture is increasingly
being taken into account as a key component of sustainability. However, and
as my phrasing already suggests, the idea that cultural sustainability is in some
way new is entirely a matter of perspective. Because if we disregard the fact that
the attention paid to the role of culture in sustainability is new, we are left with
the impression that there is in fact really nothing particularly novel about the
involvement of culture in questions of sustainability. Indeed, sustainability has
everything to do with culture, be it culture as a way of life (after Raymond Wil-
liams) or culture as specific artistic and intellectual practices. My contribution
to this volume highlights this through a historical perspective on the concept of
cultural sustainability and through a focus on the conversation between the two
meanings of culture just indicated. I zoom in on a specific controversy in Victorian
Britain that circulated around what I argue is a question of sustainability: waste
management, in particular discussions about the utilisation of human excrement
as manure and the relative merits of a dry conservancy versus a water-borne sys-
tem of sewage removal. I look at the interdiscursive engagement of Victorian
literature with this issue, arguing that it can be read in terms of a form of cultural
sustainability. Literary representations of water in the nineteenth century helped
naturalise the connection between water and sewage, thereby to some extent also
supporting the actual re-organisation of waste disposal. In this sense, literary pro-
duction contributed to a climate in which a form of waste disposal was adopted
that, as far as the use of resources is concerned, was arguably less sustainable than
the traditional dry conservancy method that had hitherto been practiced. In this
sense, water-borne sewage disposal was culturally sustainable because in the cul-
tural imaginary it figured as a more endurable method enabling a healthier future.
One of the main objectives of my essay, then, is to draw attention to the mecha-
nisms by which a culture which valued sustainability (the recycling of manure)
nevertheless made possible a shift to an environmentally less sustainable form of
sewage disposal as an imaginatively sustainable change.
184 Ursula Kluwick
Waste management in Victorian Britain
I begin with the controversy surrounding the introduction of a widespread system
of water-borne sewage removal in London in the mid-nineteenth century. This
is well-trodden ground1 and I only sketch the discussion here with respect to
questions of sustainability. In the briefest of summaries, then, until the early to
mid-nineteenth century, human excrement in Britain was mainly collected in
cesspits, chambers in the ground into which domestic waste was conducted by
means of soil pipes. Cesspools were periodically emptied by nightsoilmen, who
removed their solid contents during the night. Nightsoil could be lucratively sold
as manure, and it was hence treated not as a waste product, but as something
valuable – valuable, that is, as long as it was in the right place and used for the
correct purpose.2
Outside its designated place, nightsoil was increasingly being viewed as danger-
ous. Cesspools were often leaky, with their leakage contaminating groundwater as
well as direct sources of drinking water, such as wells. Numerous sanitary reports
and drawings3 document the anxieties raised by the possibility of such contami-
nation. In addition, a possibly even greater source of concern was the fact that
the sheer moisture created by such leakages was, according to Victorian medical
theories, dangerous in itself as the potential breeding ground for disease. As a
result, moisture, particularly moisture created by festering organic matter such
as excrement, was regarded as a serious health hazard. To prevent the accumula-
tion of moist matter in the vicinity of habitations and within cities accordingly
developed into one of the main aims of Victorian health officers, and the search
for alternative systems of waste disposal into one of the major preoccupations of
the sanitary reform movement.
Two different desiderata, therefore, drove the mid-century controversy over
the reformation of the system of waste disposal. On the one hand, we have pro-
ponents of a shift to a water-borne system as the most effective and quickest way;
these were motivated by health concerns relating to the ongoing presence of
sewage near or inside human dwellings. On the other hand, and bearing witness
to the ecological and economic attractiveness of excrement, we find proponents
of the dry conservancy method, who deplored the potential loss of ingredients of
nightsoil valuable for agricultural purposes, and regarded the water-borne system
of sewage removal as inherently wasteful.
One outspoken partisan of the dry conservancy method was Baron Justus von
Liebig, who in his criticism of the loss of manure through aquatic sewage removal
frequently used Great Britain as an example. In letter 11 from his Letters on Mod-
ern Agriculture (1859), for instance, Liebig denounced the waste of human excre-
ment as manure in Europe and the import of guano – dried bird droppings which
were imported from South America – as uneconomic and thriftless:

In the flesh and the produce of the field we have for centuries supplied to the
large towns the constituent elements of guano, and have never brought this
guano back again; . . . In the year 1855–1856 above 10 million cwt. of guano
 Cultural sustainability of Victorian waste 185
were imported . . . yet all this mass of manure is not worth mentioning when
considered in relation to the arable surface of Great Britain, and is but as a
drop when compared to the sea of human excrements carried by the rivers
to the ocean.
(1859: 179)4

What lies behind Liebig’s denunciation of the British system of sewage disposal as
wasteful is a circular concept of agriculture which regards the nutrients contained
in nightsoil as crucial components of agricultural production. In Liebig’s vision of
a self-sustaining cycle of nutrition, nutrients were transferred from the soil to the
crop or meat (of the cattle feeding on grass), thence to the human bodies feeding on
the produce of the fields, and then restored to the fields in the form of human excre-
ment used as manure. The use of rivers as open sewers, and eventually, the insti-
tutionalisation of the water-borne system of sewage disposal constituted a breach
of this cycle by allowing nutrients to flow away, hence disrupting their circulation
within a network of people and land. Significantly, for Liebig, this unsustainability
was also a cultural problem, as becomes clear in his praise of the Chinese practice of
restoring manure to the fields “in exchange for every sack of corn or hundredweight
of rape, turnips, and potatoes sold in the market” (Brock 1997: 257). As Brock
points out, Liebig developed an argument of cultural supremacy from this compari-
son, based on the fact “that the Chinese civilization, unlike Roman civilization,
had existed for thousands of years” (1997: 257).
What Liebig’s vision of self-sustainability also implies is that the recycling
of nutrients is a natural process, any deviation from which is potentially
harmful. This line of reasoning was reinforced by an ethical argument voiced
by other critics of the water-borne system of sewage disposal, such as Charles
Kingsley Jun., whose novel Yeast: A Problem (1851) argued that the flush-
ing away of sewage was both unnatural and morally wasteful. In Christopher
Hamlin’s words, Yeast regards the water-borne system as “blatant violations
of the Creator’s laws of the natural economy of matter”, with its careless
approach to organic resources resulting in “moral, physical, and mental waste”
(Hamlin 1985: 402).
Financially and economically as well, the water-borne method of sewage
removal was regarded as reprehensibly thriftless by proponents of dry conservancy.
As Luckin explains, “[e]conomic orthodoxy dictated that there must be a profit-
able interaction between the urban and the rural sectors” (1986: 14), and while
the dynamics of exchange in the use of human excrement as manure observed
this rule, the interaction between the rural and the urban was disturbed by the
dilution of human excrement in water. In this respect, it is important to stress
that the water-borne system of sewage disposal as originally envisaged was also
cyclical. Just like the adherents of dry conservancy, Edwin Chadwick, author of
arguably the most seminal sanitary document, the Report on the Sanitary Condition
of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842), and ideological mastermind
behind the lobbying for a water-borne system, imagined a cyclical exchange of
nutrients between food, human waste, and soil, even while promoting an aquatic
186 Ursula Kluwick
system of sewage removal. In Finer’s summary, for Chadwick, water enabled the
immediate restoration of the nutrients contained in human excrement to the
countryside:

The whole town was comprehended in one arterial system. . . . From the
river, in a constant running stream, [water] flowed into the taps and water-
closets of each house. From these it flowed away, together with the house
refuse into the sewers . . . these streams of water rushed the sewage smoothly
and rapidly to the fringe of the towns; and from there it flowed off to the
neighbouring fields to manure the crops, while the river from which it was
originally drawn, remained pure and sweet and unpolluted.
(Finer 1952: 224)

The underlying conception of sewage disposal here is not categorically differ-

ent from the one espoused by Liebig. Once again, a cyclical exchange is implied
through which nutrients pass back and forth between bodies and soil. Originally,
then, the controversy between adherents to the dry conservancy and support-
ers of the water-borne method primarily concerned the fact that human excre-
ment was rendered less valuable through its dilution in water, something that for
the proponents of the latter method was compensated by the swifter and more
hygienic manner of sewage disposal by means of pipes and water. The main thrust
of their visions, though, was identical, and this points to the strong cultural reso-
nance of the concept of sustainability.5
However, in London in the 1850s, a far less self-sustainable version of the
water-borne system of sewage removal eventually carried the day, a system by
which it was hoped the city would get rid of its waste, once and for all. John
Bazalgette’s construction of a sewerage system for the metropolis relied on huge
outfalls east of London, where raw sewage was ejected into the River Thames and
eventually the sea. The Times deplored this as a destruction of financial resources,
arguing in November 1859 that “now that ratepayers had paid handsomely for
Bazalgette’s cloaca maxima, which took sewage out to sea, ratepayers were throw-
ing their money away” (qtd. in Brock 1997: 258) because the loss of the potential
revenue of sewage had to be added to the costs of construction. Nevertheless,
Bazalgette’s drainage of London became a model for other cities, thus initiating
a shift towards an arguably less sustainable method of sewage disposal supported
by cultural views of water which were extremely powerful, and which continue
to influence us today.

Literary water: Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend

For the rest of this essay, I want to use Charles Dickens as a case study for
the discussion of the cultural sustainability of Victorian waste. Dickens was an
active supporter of sanitary reform and frequently used his public appearances
to endorse water-borne sewage removal. At the same time, however, the liter-
ary water imagery he developed in his interdiscursive engagement with sanitary
 Cultural sustainability of Victorian waste 187
reform is not categorically different from that of other Victorian writers. It can
thus be used to gauge the dynamics at work in the replacement of the dry con-
servancy by the water-borne method as culturally sustainable. I want to pursue
this point with the help of Dickens’s last finished novel, Our Mutual Friend,
published in 1865.
With the exception of his novel on education, Hard Times, Dickens never
wrote thesis novels, and Our Mutual Friend is no exception. Nevertheless, the
novel engages with sanitary reform in a variety of ways. It starts with the dis-
covery of a corpse in the river, and this beginning has two effects. On the one
hand, the Thames is at once connected with crime and with the abject, and this
automatic link helps foster the naturalisation of the association between water –
particularly the water of this river, which played such a central role in Bazalgette’s
sewerage scheme – and organic waste matter. The Thames here emerges as the
natural receptacle of what has been discarded and from what the city is supposed
to be cleansed. At the same time, the manner in which the corpse is discovered
also immediately inscribes the Thames into an alternative economy. The corpse
is brought in by Jesse – “Gaffer” – Hexam, a dredgerman who searches the river
for salvageable goods, making a living from what others have thrown away, as
well as from the rewards offered for corpses and from the money found on them.
The body retrieved from the river in the opening scene is called Gaffer’s “luck”
by a fellow dredgerman (Dickens 1997: 15; bk. 1, ch. 1), and this implies that the
river is also a valuable, if sinister, source of wealth.
The River Thames is one of two symbols which signal Dickens’s interdiscursive
reintegration of sanitary discourse and which form the two imaginative centres
of his novel; the second one is the dust heap, which partly alludes to the dry con-
servancy method. In order to contextualise my discussion of these symbols, a brief
summary of the plot of the novel is useful at this point. Our Mutual Friend con-
tains various interrelated parallel and sub plots, but the main storyline revolves
around the apparent death of a young heir upon his return to England, John Har-
mon, whose supposed corpse is the body discovered in the first chapter. Harmon’s
recently deceased father, whose property he has come to claim, made his wealth
from dust heaps, that is, from the collected rubbish of the city. In addition to all
sorts of debris from streets and households, one significant constituent of such
dust heaps is likely to have been animal and human excrement,6 a fact that links
Harmon’s dust heaps to the dry conservancy method. The latter’s economic value
is implied in the fabulous wealth these dust heaps have generated: they have
turned Harmon into an immensely rich man.
Part of the plot is concerned with the mystery of what really happened to John
Harmon. He turns out not to have died after all, and the body mistaken for his
own at the start of the novel is revealed to belong to his doppelgänger, a sailor
who intended to kill him for his money. The dust heaps, therefore, are not only
related to the production of wealth, but they also become the cause of crime.
Harmon survives, but assumes a series of false identities in order to be able to test
Bella Wilfer, a young woman wholly unknown to him but intended by his father
for his bride, without marriage to whom Harmon will not be able to enter into
188 Ursula Kluwick
his inheritance. While Harmon is believed dead, his father’s old servants succeed
to his wealth, and young Harmon, in disguise, becomes their private secretary in
order to protect them against fraudsters.
Through Jesse Hexam’s discovery of Harmon’s presumed corpse, the Hexam
family also becomes involved in the plot, and this strand of the story centres on
the River Thames as a negatively connoted social space, part of the topography
of urban crime. The banks of the river are populated with characters regarded as
the debris of society: dredgermen, dishonest paupers, villains, thieves, and even
murderers. The riverside characters are represented in terms of a moral pollution
explicitly connected with the river as a sewer: they are the “accumulated scum of
humanity . . . like so much moral sewage . . . pausing until its own weight forced
it over the bank and sunk it in the river” (Dickens 1997: 30; bk. 1, ch. 3). The
river, in this sense, constitutes a semi-criminal place in which environmental
and moral pollution are equated, and from which morally sound characters need
to distance themselves to preserve their integrity. The novel emphasises this in
its focus on Lizzie, Hexam’s daughter, and her relationship with Eugene Wray-
burn, a barrister who wants to seduce her and to whom she is eventually married.
Through Lizzie and her struggles to escape the vicinity of the river, the novel
delves deeply into the life of and on the Thames, and it is here that Dickens cre-
ates some of his most compelling water imagery.
Harmon’s dust heaps and the polluted Thames are obviously connected in Our
Mutual Friend, not only because they are the two single most important symbols
of the novel, but also because they stand for two methods of cleansing the city
of its filth. Economically and socially, the two are presented as occupying oppo-
site ends of a broad spectrum. As indicated earlier, the dust heaps are lucrative
objects, part of a thriving economy,7 while the Thames is associated with those
living on the margins of society, scavengers who carve out a meagre existence
from their collection of rubbish. When Mr and Mrs Boffin, Harmon’s servants,
inherit the money Harmon made from his business as a dust contractor together
with the dust heaps themselves, they are immediately accepted as members of
genteel society. Their new status as nouveaux riches is expressed in their new
appellation: Boffin becomes “The Golden Dustman” (Dickens 1997: 137; bk. 1,
ch. 11), suggesting his social rise and good fortune. However, this moniker also
implies that Boffin is now wholly associated with his new position and wealth,
and thus reduced to the role of a lucky parvenu. His kind disposition is ignored
by the people who suddenly fawn over him, and his apparent naivety exploited
by sycophants. In this manner, the dust heaps are shown to be a mixed blessing.
Most significantly, they carry the negative legacy of the unhappy Harmon family
and their history of repression, sterility, and death. As the novel reveals through
flashbacks, Harmon Senior turned out both his children, causing his daughter’s
death in poverty as well as his son’s emigration. The servants who inherit Har-
mon’s wealth recall their former master’s coldness and Harmon Junior remembers
himself as an emotionally starved child. His very inheritance is burdened by his
father’s despotism through the legal condition that he can only succeed to the
family’s large fortune if he marries after his father’s choosing. Following Harmon
 Cultural sustainability of Victorian waste 189
Senior’s death, the fortune he earned from dust becomes the centre of a web of
betrayal, greed, and murder: It is in order to inherit fraudulently that Harmon
Junior’s doppelgänger tries to drug and murder him only to perish in the attempt
himself. Likewise, old Harmon’s eventual heir Boffin also becomes the target of
swindlers. Thus the wealth generated by the dust heaps, far from becoming part
of a productive form of circulation, appears to corrupt everybody who comes into
contact with it. It is only cleansed and can only become the basis of a healthy
future for young Harmon and his wife once it has been disowned and lost and
freely returned by the honest and kind-hearted Boffins. As a symbol of avarice,
exploitation, isolation, and sterility, then, the dust heaps are far from offering a
vision of sustainability. Instead, they stand for a manner of accumulating wealth
that is divorced from social principles. Sitting in Harmon’s garden and attract-
ing nothing but fraudsters and swindlers, they appear as an emotional and social
dead end.
Compared with the sterility of the dust heaps, the Thames emerges as
extraordinarily fertile, an image of connection that reaches across and links the
various characters and plots of the novel and that points to the fact that Dick-
ens himself found water an inexhaustible source of poetic creativity. Though
also associated with death, not only at the beginning of the novel, but at vari-
ous points throughout, the river at the same time functions as a symbol of life.
The atmosphere of death, for instance, is already challenged in the very begin-
ning of the text when Gaffer reproaches his daughter Lizzie with her dislike of
the river:

How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that
warmed you when you were a babby [sic!], was picked out of the river along-
side the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed
ashore. The very rockers that I put upon it to make a cradle of it, I cut out of
a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or another.
(Dickens 1997: 15; bk. 1, ch. 1)

As Gaffer insists, the Hexams’ existence is intimately intertwined with the life
of the river. They are dependent on the goods it brings them, but they also help
cleanse it by gathering and removing the debris it carries. Their lives are built
on the recycling of waste – and this includes human waste, such as bodies –
and it is through the river that they are joined to the rest of society, not only
through what this society discards but also through the encounters which the
river makes possible between the delicately interconnected strands of Dickens’s
plot. This vision of riparian life as part of a larger cycle of existence in its turn
subtly endorses the concept of circulation associated with Chadwick’s concep-
tion of water-borne sewage disposal. In Our Mutual Friend, the river indeed
deposits its waste – members of the “waste population” (Allen 2008: 60), such as
Lizzie – in the countryside, only to retrieve it and return it to the city once it has
been translated into an invigorating source of sustenance (Lizzie’s influence, for
instance, purifies and restores the morally weak Eugene). As such, the function
190 Ursula Kluwick
of the river in the novel fosters a vision of water-borne waste removal as produc-
tive and sustainable.8
Finally, and perhaps most relevantly, it is precisely the dirty and sewage-
polluted Thames that fires Dickens’s imagination, becoming the ground of a
powerful aesthetics of water. Throughout his oeuvre, Dickens returns to the topo-
graphically, morally, and aesthetically liminal space of the Thames to explore the
imaginative possibilities of the interaction between water, riverside, and riverside
population. In doing so, he draws closely on literary history, which attests to a
vibrant tradition of connecting (mostly dirty) water with negative morality. But
while this link is often approached by other writers in a stereotypical fashion, as
mere platitudinous repetition, Dickens’s water imagery is immensely rich, breath-
ing new life into a stale trope. Thus images as diverse as the description of Gaf-
fer’s clothes as seemingly “made out of the mud that begrimed his boat”, which
characterises him as part of the riverside filth (Dickens 1997: 13; bk. 1, ch. 1),
various shadowy female figures flitting along the banks of the river in different
Dickens novels (such as Oliver Twist [1838], David Copperfield [1850], or Bleak
House [1853]) as signals of the link between female transgression and water, a
female servant’s barefooted walk through wet grass which indicates her criminal
inclinations (Dickens 1996: 299–300; ch. 18), or the discovery of Rogue Rider-
hood and Bradley Headstone’s drowned bodies in the “smooth pit” of a Thames
sluice, “lying under the ooze and scum behind one of the rotting gates” in Our
Mutual Friend (Dickens 1997: 781; bk. 4, ch. 15), all strengthen the aesthetic
function of water as a literary indicator of moral corruption and, at the same
time, an agent capable of cleansing society of its filth. As an expression of what
is regarded as valuable, what as worthless, and what as capable of new inscription
and re-evaluation, Dickens’s water is thus intimately connected with questions
of un/sustainability.

Conclusion: Dickens and cultural sustainability

The specific poetic use of water described here, highly relevant also today, certainly
did not originate with the Victorians, but equally certainly it was reinforced in liter-
ary texts written during the age of sanitary reform. The very fact that the symbolic
link between water and questionable morality is still so active in contemporary
literature (which is just as prone to turn bodies of water into settings for crime,
or to create sinister atmospheres from aquatic imagery) points to the power of a
vision that was popularised and naturalised by writers such as Dickens. In their
interdiscursive engagement with sanitary reform these writers brought together lit-
erary history and its great water lore with their specific socio-cultural context. One
effect of this was a narrativisation of sanitary reform – in Dickens’s case particularly
through the symbolic convergence of images of rebirth and recycling, through the
pervasive influence of Thames imagery on his more general water imagery, and
through the function of the river as a link between various characters and plots. In
addition, the naturalisation of the connection between water, dirt, pollution, and
purification accomplished by Dickens and other writers indirectly also formed an
 Cultural sustainability of Victorian waste 191
endorsement of the vision offered by the water-borne system of sewage disposal.
Victorian writers’ interdiscursive engagement with sanitary reform – and Dickens’s,
as I have argued, is one of the most compelling approaches to this – can thus serve
as a case study of the intricate intertwining of culture as a way of life and culture as
artistic creative practice that I see as key to questions of cultural sustainability. The
acceptance of the imaginative link fostered between water, corruption and pollu-
tion, and cleansing and purification in Victorian writing thus also supported the
shift in waste disposal methods by making it culturally sustainable. In this way, the
force of a compelling cultural imaginary helped render acceptable measures that
were probably less sustainable environmentally than the method they displaced.

Notes
1 See, for instance, Michelle Allen (2008), Pamela K. Gilbert (2004, 2007), Stephen
Halliday (2009), and Anthony S. Wohl (1983).
2 In fact, how lucrative the removal of nightsoil really was is not quite clear. Edwin Chad-
wick, for instance, challenged its profitability. What is clear, however, is that “the belief
in the economic value of this waste was widespread” (Handy 1995: 121).
3 One eloquent example of the latter is T. Pridgin Teale’s illustrated guide to sanitary
problems (Teale 1878).
4 Published in 1859, this letter actually predates the opening of John Bazalgette’s new
sewers for London in 1865, though it was published after Parliament had passed the Act
enabling their implementation. Liebig here also deplores the drain of nutrients from
the country to the city through demographic shifts. However, even before Bazalgette’s
great reform of the sewerage of London, rivers played an important role for the disposal
of sewage, and the dry conservancy method was on its way out. Edwin Chadwick’s sani-
tary report of 1842 (see below) is a key document for the promotion of the water-borne
system of sewage removal. In the decade following this report, various government acts
encouraged the disposal of waste in waterways.
5 As Catherine Gallagher points out, the economic model that sanitarian reformers fol-
lowed formed a counterpoint to Malthusian economics in conceptualising waste as a
basis of growth. Thus sanitary reform relied on “a model of self-sustaining growth based
on the continual recycling of the population’s own remains (the more people, the more
waste; the more waste, the more food; the more food, the more people, etc.)” (2006:
104). Food and excrement, in this sense, were literally two sides of the same coin.
6 On the composition of dust heaps, see Allen (2008: 86–87), Cotsell (2009: 30–33),
Handy (1995), and House (1960); also Dickens (1997: 805n20).
7 It appears that by the time the novel was published, however, the value of dust heaps
had fallen. See Cotsell (2009: 30).
8 The extensive use Dickens makes of the ancient symbolic equation between immersion
and (spiritual) rebirth also supports this function of the river. At the same time, most
of the criminal characters of the novel are killed by drowning. This suggests that they
do not offer society anything worth recycling and are hence discarded in an effort to
cleanse society.

References
Allen, M. (2008). Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London. Athens:
Ohio University Press.
Brock, W. H. (1997). Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gamekeeper. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
192 Ursula Kluwick
Chadwick, E. (1842). Report to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department
form the Poor Law Commissioners, On an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labour-
ing Population of Great Britain; With Appendices. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament,
By Command of Her Majesty, July 1842. London: W. Clowes and Sons.
Cotsell, M. (2009). The Companion to Our Mutual Friend. [1986]. Abingdon: Routledge.
Dickens, C. (1996). Bleak House. [1853]. Ed. and Introd. N. Bradbury. London: Penguin.
Dickens, C. (1997). Our Mutual Friend. [1865]. Ed. and Introd. A. Poole. London: Pen-
guin, 1997.
Finer, S. E. (1952). The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. London: Methuen.
Gallagher, C. (2006). The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy
and the Victorian Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gilbert, P. K. (2004). Mapping the Victorian Social Body: SUNY Studies in the Long Nine-
teenth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Gilbert, P. K. (2007). The Citizen’s Body: Desire, Health, and the Social in Victorian England.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Halliday, S. (2009). The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the
Victorian Metropolis. Stroud: The History Press.
Hamlin, C. (1985). “Providence and Putrefaction: Victorian Sanitarians and the Natural
Theology of Health and Disease”. Victorian Studies 28(3), 381–411.
Handy, E. (1995). “Dust Piles and Damp Pavements: Excrement, Repression, and the Vic-
torian City in Photography and Literature”. In C. T. Christ, and J. O. Jordan (eds.). Vic-
torian Literature and the Victorian Literary Imagination. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 111–133.
House, H. (1960). The Dickens World. [1941]. London: Oxford University Press.
Kingsley, Ch. Jun. (1851). Yeast: A Problem. London: John W. Parker.
Liebig, J., Baron von (1859). Letters on Modern Agriculture. Ed. J. Blyth. New York: John
Wiley.
Luckin, B. (1986). Pollution and Control: A Social History of the Thames in the Nineteenth
Century. Bristol: Adam Hilger.
Teale, T. P. (1878). Dangers to Health: A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects. Lon-
don: J. & A. Churchill; Leeds: Charles Goodall.
Wohl, A. S. (1983). Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain. London: J.M.
Dent & Sons.
15 The moral dilemma of
unsustainability
Eco-dystopian fiction as cultural
critique
Alexa Weik von Mossner

Introduction
Something remarkable took place in the literary world shortly after Donald J.
Trump had been sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Within
hours of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s cheerful declaration that press sec-
retary Sean Spicer had expressed “alternative facts” in relation to the size of
Trump’s inaugural crowd, George Orwell’s novel 1984 began its climb to the top
of the Amazon bestseller list. Journalists promptly began to analyze the reasons
for this sudden surge of popular interest in an almost seventy-year-old dystopian
classic. Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani went as far as declaring
1984 a “must-read” in 2017 because the novel’s “world of endless war, where fear
and hate are drummed up against foreigners, and movies show boatloads of refu-
gees dying at sea” mirrors so closely the political vision of the Trump administra-
tion. Kakutani suggests that Orwell’s dystopian gaze into a totalitarian future in
which 2 + 2 equals 5 “has found a nervous readership in today’s ‘post-truth’ era”
in which “the acceptance of bad arithmetic simply becomes a testament to the
power of rulers to define reality and the terms of debate” (2017: n.p.). Other com-
mentators have either agreed or singled out other dystopian texts – from Octavia
Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
(1985) and her more recent MaddAddam Trilogy (2003, 2009, 2013) – as must-
reads, suggesting that if we do not watch out their dark visions of the future may
swiftly become our present reality.
In this essay, I want to take the recent resurge of interest in dystopian fiction
as a starting point for an investigation into the relationship between speculative
storytelling and the cultural discourse on sustainability. While Orwell’s novel is
more interested in the cultural and psychological fallout of totalitarian regimes
(particularly of the Stalinist kind) than in the ecological havoc that such regimes
might wreck, Atwood and Butler belong among those writers who have fore-
grounded in their works the close connection between the personal, the cul-
tural, and the ecological. That connection is not always easily made in scholarly
debates on issues of sustainability. In their 2013 study Ecological Sustainability,
Robert Northrop and Anne Connor posit that “human ecological sustainability”
is affected by a wide range of factors, among them human population, freshwater
194 Alexa Weik von Mossner
supplies, energy supplies, food supplies, natural resources, the economy, emerging
diseases, and pollution (1). Human cultural production is not even on the list, let
alone anything so specific as speculative fiction. And yet, it is my contention that
such works make important cultural interventions that must be accounted for in
any discussion of ecological sustainability. As Sunny Moraine has observed, the
alternative worlds we encounter

As Sunny Moraine has observed, the alternative worlds we encounter “in specu-
lative fiction don’t exist apart and separate from the world we live in” (2017:
n.p.). Instead, such fictional worlds make claims on a reality they are fundamen-
tally connected to. “As a genre,” writes Moraine, “speculative fiction allows us to
remake our own present. It allows us to imagine a future for ourselves. It allows
us to make a way out of whatever unbearable moment we seem to be stuck in”
(2017: n.p.)

This makes speculative fiction an important, even vital contribution to the cul-
tural discourse on sustainability.
My focus will be on a subsection of speculative fiction that in previous publica-
tions I have called the critical eco-dystopia.1 Following the lead of Lyman Tower
Sargent, the science fiction scholar Tom Moylan defines the critical dystopia as

a textual mutation that self-reflexively takes on the present system and offers
not only astute critiques of the order of things but also explorations of the
oppositional spaces and possibilities from which the next round of political
activism can derive imaginative sustenance and inspiration.
(2000: xv)

The critical eco-dystopia is a text that fits that definition but is also marked by
an interest in ecological sustainability. Set in an uncertain future, it imagines
the harsh fates of humans who live in severely degraded environments and are
forced to realize that their very existence is predicated on a set of ecological
conditions that have been thrown out of balance. Its protagonists often learn
the hard way that the nonhuman world possesses multiple forms of agency elud-
ing human control as they try to cope with the unintended consequences of
the lifestyles of previous generations. Its authors often admit that their text
is meant as warning, which makes it an interesting genre for an investigation
of the ways in which cultural texts influence their readers’ perceptions of sus-
tainability. I will argue that an ecocritical approach that draws on research
in cognitive narratology and neuroscience is particularly helpful for such an
investigation, because it can give insight into the ways in which eco-dystopian
fiction allows readers to experience not only mentally, but also on the physical
level what it is like to live in an unsustainable future environment. How do the
social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of an environment emerge before
our inner eye as we read through a dystopian text? And how do such texts
engage us on the affective and cognitive level? These are some of the questions
I aim to address in this essay. Butler’s Parable of the Sower will serve as my prime
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 195
example for a speculative text that invites us to a visceral imaginary experience
of an unsustainable future world and asks us whether we would want to live in
such a world.2

Experiencing imaginary environments: how literary

texts involve us in a world
Like any literary text, speculative fiction sheds light on the human condition
and on the social, cultural, and ecological conditions of its survival. Hubert Zapf
defines literature as a cultural form in which the living interrelationship between
nature and culture “is explored in specifically productive ways, providing a site of
critical reflection of modern civilization as well as a source of creative cultural self-
renewal” (2016: 3). As Zapf’s contribution to this volume demonstrates, under-
standing literature as a vital part of a larger cultural ecology is productive not
only for ecocritical analysis, but also for an interdisciplinary discussion about the
role and function of literary texts in the quest toward more sustainable societies.
Many ecocritics will readily assert that literature plays an important role in how
we see, feel, and act in the extra-textual world. But not only ecocritics or even
literary scholars have made such assertions. In Cultivating Humanity (1996), the
philosopher Martha Nussbaum states that “narrative imagination is an essential
preparation for moral interaction” (1997: 90) and goes on to assert that literature
can play a vital role in creating more empathetic and morally responsible citizens.
Social science scholars David Lewis, Dennis Rogers, and Michael Woolcock have
acknowledged that “[n]ot only are certain works of fiction ‘better’ than academic
or policy research in representing central issues relating to development, but they
also frequently reach a wider audience and are therefore more influential” (2008:
198). What unites these two positions is the conviction that literary texts, par-
ticularly fiction, offer something that other forms of human communication are
missing and that this uniqueness makes them an important contribution to the
cultural discourse on issues of concern. “A novel which exposes the reader to a
sense of injustice or to a dilemma”, write sociologists Shai Dromi and Eva Illouz,
“and which imbues these dilemmas and injustices with emotional value is not
only a work of fiction but what we may call a critique” (2010: 352). It is the
combination of ethical, experiential, and affective appeals, then, that makes the
effects of fiction unique, and eco-dystopian texts are critiques in this sense: they
present readers with a dilemma and then imbue that dilemma with emotional
value.
But how do we analyze the narrative structures and strategies involved in both
the presentation of a dilemma and the subsequent saturation with emotional
value? And how do we find out what effect they may have on readers? On the the-
oretical side, there is a long history of approaches that focus on the relationship
between narrative structure and its reception, among them reception aesthet-
ics, reader response theory, psychoanalytical and other psychological approaches,
as well as some strands of postclassical narratology, including cognitive narra-
tology. On the empirical side, we can consult a range of studies in linguistics,
social psychology, cognitive psychology, and, in more recent years, neuroscience.
196 Alexa Weik von Mossner
A particularly exciting development has been the emergence of cognitive cultural
studies, a relatively young field of research that Lisa Zunshine has defined as a
combination of “literary and cultural analysis with insights from neuroscience,
discursive psychology, cognitive evolutionary psychology and anthropology, cog-
nitive linguistics, and philosophy of mind” (2010: 1). Cognitive cultural studies,
it becomes clear from this definition, is a highly interdisciplinary affair that draws
on cognitive science and related fields for a better understanding of cultural texts,
one that combines an astute interest in the narratological properties of a text
with an attention to psychological and contextual factors. In my book, Affective
Ecologies (2017), I have argued that this interdisciplinary approach is particularly
useful for ecocritical investigations (2). Not only can it give us a better under-
standing of how cultural texts create virtual environments in our minds, but it
also helps us analyze how they invite us to care about both those environments
and the characters that populate them.
I want to single out one concept from cognitive cultural studies that I consider
particularly fruitful for the analysis of eco-dystopian fiction because it helps us
understand how we experience a speculative future world in ways that are vivid
and emotionally engaging. The concept of liberated embodied simulation has been
developed by the literary scholar Hannah Wojciehowski and the neuroscientist
Vittorio Gallese, one of the leading figures in mirror neuron research. Gallese
has argued that “[t]he sharp distinction, classically drawn between the first- and
third-person experience of acting and experiencing emotions and sensations
appears to be much more blurred at the level of the neural mechanisms mapping
it” (2011 442). This blurring of the distinction between one’s own body and that
of another is what he calls embodied simulation. Complex processes of “neuronal
reuse” allow us to map the motions of other agents onto the respective areas of
our brains, although our own body is not currently engaged in the same motion
and might not even be capable of it (for example, when we watch a professional
ballet dancer). The same is true for the perceptions and emotions of other agents,
regardless whether we perceive actual agents in our immediate environment or
fictitious agents in a film or a novel. However, there is nevertheless a difference.
In a co-authored article, Wojciehowski and Gallese argue that when we engage
with fictional characters

our embodied simulation becomes liberated, that is, it is freed from the bur-
den of modelling our actual presence in daily life . . . Through an immersive
state in which our attention is focused on the narrated virtual world, we
can fully deploy our simulative resources, letting our defensive guard against
daily reality slip for a while.
(2011: n.p., emphasis mine)

Important in our context here is that embodied simulation not only allows us
to understand the actions and emotions of an experiencing agent in a narrative
text, but also plays a crucial role in our understanding of the larger storyworld
that surrounds that agent.
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 197
Following the lead of cognitive narratologists such as Richard Gerrig and David
Herman, ecocritic Erin James defines the storyworld as “a mental model of con-
text and environment within which a narrative’s characters function” (2015: x).3
In Affective Ecologies, I use the example of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic
novel The Road (2006) for an illustration of the processes of embodied simulation
that feed that model of context and environment, and I also make clear that it is
not only a mental model but one that resonates in the reader’s body as well (Weik
von Mossner 2017: 1). When we read that McCarthy’s nameless protagonist
“pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his
wrist” (2006: 4), we literally map those movements onto the motor cortices of our
brains as the mental processing of action verbs activates the respective neurons.4
When we read that the protagonist gazes through his binoculars at “segments of
road down there among the dead trees” and watches “the ashen daylight congeal
over the land” (4) we are cued to simulate his visual perception as well as his
affective state. Depending on the narrative situation (for example in the case of
omniscient narration), a story might also give us information about its storyworld
independently of the character’s perception of it, but that doesn’t change the fact
that experiencing agents placed within the storyworld tend to strongly influence
our understanding and emotional relationship to it.
The question that poses itself is whether dystopian fiction that contains expe-
riencing agents – as virtually every dystopia does – can offer something to the
experiential systems of our brains that makes it valuable for a better understand-
ing of sustainability. If it is the combination of a dilemma and our emotional
engagement in a character’s confrontation with that dilemma that makes a novel
a cultural critique, as Dromi and Illouz have claimed (2010: 352), then what role
does embodied simulation play in that engagement? Ecocritic Eric Otto reminds
us that environmental speculative fiction shares with environmental nonfiction
“a rhetoric of estrangement and extrapolation that compels readers toward criti-
cal reflection on seemingly invisible everyday attitudes and habits” (2012: 7).
The elucidating effect of speculative fiction depends on a carefully calibrated
balance between cognition and estrangement, argues Otto with reference to
the influential work of science fiction scholar Darko Suvin. The features of the
speculative world must be familiar enough to be understandable for the reader,
and yet strange enough to point their attention toward something that they may
have overlooked or taken for granted (Otto 2012: 7). It is within this force field
between the familiar and the unfamiliar that Moylan locates the potential for “an
enlightening triangulation between an individual reader’s limited perspective,
the estranged re-vision of the alternative world on the pages of a given text, and
the actually existing society” (2000: xvii). Having been confronted with a recog-
nizable and yet estranged version of one’s actually existing society in a dystopian
novel, one might behold that actually existing society not only with new eyes,
but with new feelings as well.
With all that in mind, I want to turn to Butler’s Parable of the Sower, a novel
that presents us with a world that isn’t quite as devastated as the one we find
in The Road, yet is scary nevertheless. Butler is subtler than McCarthy in her
198 Alexa Weik von Mossner
portrayal of ecological unsustainability and at the same time she is much more
direct in her imagination of the relationship between human culture and eco-
logical carrying capacity. As Chelsea Frazier points out, Butler’s dystopia “trans-
ports us to a not-so-distant future in which the world has slowly but steadily
descended into social, environmental, and economic chaos” (2016: 40). Just like
The Road, Parable of the Sower follows a desperate quest of vulnerable humans on
broken roads. And just like The Road, it asks existential questions about how to
survive and act morally in an anarchic world that is dominated by scarcity and
violence, a world almost devoid of oil, clean water, food, and any other number
of resources that we now take for granted. But this is where the parallels end. Par-
able of the Sower does not give us the “clean slate” scenario of a global apocalypse
of unknown origin that we find in McCarthy; instead, it is set in the climate-
changed near-future world of 2025 and in a Southern California that is dark but
decipherable. At the outset of the story, California still is a vaguely coherent
socioeconomic and political entity, but collapse is imminent due to unsustainable
environmental, economic, and social practices. It is a vile world that Butler has
created for us, one that is even more difficult to bear because she aligns us with a
young woman who suffers from hyperempathy – an incurable condition that was
induced by the drug abuse of her mother and that forces her to share the pain of
others. Lauren Olamina is a 16-year-old African American girl who narrates her
story in the first person through her journal entries. It is through Lauren’s per-
ceptual apparatus, her cultural knowledge, and her hyperempathetic mind that
all elements of this future world are channelled. My analysis will pay attention
to the ways in which the text links readers’ visceral imaginative experience of
that world to Lauren’s evolving positions on questions of ethics, environmental
justice, and sustainability.

Experiencing unsustainability: simulation and speculation

in Parable of the Sower
From the outset, the central theme of Lauren Olamina’s journal entries is change.
“All that you touch/You Change”, read the first lines of the novel, “All that you
Change/Changes you. The only lasting truth/Is Change. God Is Change” (1993: 3).
In addition to a pattern of repetition, it is the idiosyncratic capitalization in
these verses that emphasizes the importance of Change in Lauren’s world view.
It is a world view that will eventually crystalize into Earthseed, a new religion
that is meant to promote and enable a sustainable, just, and peaceful life on and
with the Earth. Throughout the novel, Laura mixes the verses that are the cor-
nerstones of her evolving religion with the recounting of her past experiences
and future expectations. Her style of narration is itself subject to change and
adapts to whatever situation she finds herself in. At times it is pensive, reflexive,
even ruminant. In other moments, she is a breathless and overwhelmed narra-
tor who jots things down to keep a record of the events that change her life in
often disruptive and shocking ways. Lauren’s narration is unreliable not only
because of her limited knowledge of the world, but also because she is often
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 199
highly emotional and at an age where she is still trying to figure things out. The
fact that we read her journal entries makes her account very personal, even
intimate. This quality of the novel’s narrative situation in turn determines our
experience of its dystopian world.
I have suggested that characters are of central importance for our understand-
ing of a storyworld, and this is particularly true in the case of first-person narra-
tion. By definition, a first-person narrator is an experiencing agent within the
storyworld and therefore subjected to the physical conditions of that world and
to the limitations of his or her own body. If it is the only narrator and the main
protagonist of the story, as it is the case in Butler’s novel, this inevitably means
that readers’ imaginative worldbuilding entirely depends on this one experienc-
ing agent. We only sense what Lauren senses and chooses to share with us, and
while we are free to judge her subjective impressions, we have no way of going
beyond them in our experience of the storyworld. External and potentially con-
flicting views on that world can only be related through written documents or
reported dialogues of other characters, and even the content of those utterances
is filtered through Lauren’s consciousness. The first incident she entrusts to her
journal is her recurring dream about trying to fly without instruction. “Not a very
subtle image”, she acknowledges, “but a persistent one” (1993: 4). And indeed,
the metaphor is pertinent since so much in Lauren’s life depends on her being
able to master difficult, even seemingly impossible tasks without much prepara-
tion or help.
At the beginning, Lauren’s circumstances are difficult but stable, and they are
defined by the presence of walls. Together with her father, her half-siblings, and
her stepmother Cory, she lives in the walled-in community of Robledo just out-
side the anarchic urban space of Los Angeles. “None of us goes to school any-
more”, she writes, “Adults get nervous about kids going outside” where “things
are so dangerous and crazy” (1993: 7). Lauren’s father is a Baptist minister who
“once had a church just a few blocks outside our wall” (1993: 8), but who now has
resigned himself to holding his services for his congregation in the front rooms of
the family home. At this point in the story, Lauren’s life is marked by a sense of
enclosure and omnipresent risk. According to her father, Los Angeles “is a carcass
covered with too many maggots”, but Lauren is painfully aware that “not all the
maggots are in L.A. They’re here, too” (1993: 9). Addicted to a drug that makes
them love fire and living in a constant state of poverty, hunger, and despair, these
“maggots” shave their heads and paint their faces, and then mug, rape, and mur-
der people right outside of the walls that protect her.
That is why the members of her community are heavily armed. “By now there
are at least two guns in every household”, notes Lauren, and even her father “car-
ries a nine millimeter automatic pistol whenever he leaves the neighborhood”
and hides an illegal “silenced nine millimeter submachine gun” at home (1993:
38–39). The minister also teaches his children to shoot, in accordance with this
conviction that “[a]rmed people do get killed – most often in crossfires or by
snipers – but unarmed people get killed a lot more often” (1993: 38). Lauren
has internalized this brutal logic, but she is also aware that the people her father
200 Alexa Weik von Mossner
calls maggots are the direct outcome of steadily worsening environmental condi-
tions. She warns her friend Joanne that “[p]eople have changed the climate of the
world” (1993: 57), leading to devastating tornadoes, blizzards, and other seem-
ingly “natural” catastrophes throughout the Midwest, while “[i]n New York and
New Jersey, a measles epidemic is killing people” (1993: 54). When Joanne gives
back that they “can’t do anything” (1993: 57) and that not even her own father
believes the scientists, Lauren loses patience. She tells her friend that, whether
they see it coming or not, their community will be “hit and hit and hit, then the
big hit will come” (1993: 55) and so they better prepare themselves for the worst.
By the end of the chapter, Joanne is frightened enough to take home the books
Lauren has given her, books that “might help [her] to survive out there” (1993:
58) once the sturdy walls that protect their community are breached.
Throughout the first half of the novel, Lauren’s first-person narration thus
cues readers to imagine the storyworld as a strict dichotomy between a mor-
tally dangerous outside and a relatively safe but unsustainable inside. “Robledo’s
too big, too poor, too black and too Hispanic to be of interest to anyone”, she
asserts. “What it does have is street poor, body dumps, and a memory of once
being well-off – of shade trees, big houses, hills, and canyons” (1993: 120). The
walled-in community offers more than just a memory of these attractive envi-
ronmental assets, however. In the very next sentence, Lauren acknowledges that
“[m]ost of those things are still here” (1993: 120), and she also repeatedly men-
tions the community’s many crop-bearing gardens, which provide the basis for
their survival. Its inhabitants might not belong among the super-rich, but com-
pared to the misery that surrounds it, Robledo’s green and fertile space neverthe-
less constitutes what the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has called
“a pocket utopia” (1988: 60). And the problem with all pocket utopias, Robin-
son’s protagonist Tom Barnard recognizes in his novel Pacific Edge (1988), is that
they cannot be sustained. “We stand on little islands of luxury”, Barnard writes
down in the prosperous and seemingly safe city of Zurich in Switzerland, “while
the rest – great oceans of abject misery, bitter wars, endless hunger” (1988: 60).
But such islands of luxury cannot exist in isolation, no matter how high they
build their walls, and no matter how many weapons they carry. At some point
those walls will come crumbling down and their weapons will be overpowered by
the sheer onslaught of desperation. Both Robinson and Butler therefore problem-
atize the idea of the isolated and enclosed pocket utopia in their novels and have
their protagonists embrace more equitable and ecologically sustainable visions of
human conviviality.5 But whereas Robinson dares to imagine a utopian world in
which humanity has found political solutions to a breakdown in the past, Parable
of the Sower focuses on the time before and immediately after the breakdown, and
on the morally fraught question of what we should do when our bulwarks against
the “oceans of misery” give way.
Whenever Lauren leaves the enclosed space of her community, her subse-
quent journal entries allow readers to viscerally experience, with and through
her, what it feels like to be exposed to that ocean of misery: “Most of the street
poor – squatters, winos, junkies, homeless people in general – are dangerous”,
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 201
she tells us. “They are desperate or crazy or both. . . . Worse for me, they often
have things wrong with them. They cut off each other’s ears, arms, legs. . . . They
carry untreated diseases and festering wounds” (1993: 10–11). These words cue
a sense of uneasiness in readers and not only because Lauren calls the situation
dangerous. Gallese has shown that processes of embodied simulation are trig-
gered by “words referring to face, arm, or leg actions, or listening to [or reading]
sentences expressing actions performed with the mouth, the hand, and the foot”
(2011: 443). Reading about people cutting off each other’s limbs, about diseases
and “festering wounds” leads us to vividly imagine those actions and injuries and
automatically triggers feelings of horror and disgust, feelings that parallel those
felt by the protagonist. Lauren, however, has an additional problem: “As I rode,
I tried not to look around at them, but I couldn’t help seeing – collecting – some
of their general misery” (Butler 1993: 11). Because of her hyperempathy syn-
drome, Lauren does to an extreme degree what everyone would do in her situa-
tion: she not only witnesses other people’s suffering but empathically feels it in
her own body. “I can take a lot of pain without falling apart”, she asserts in her
journal entry, “I’ve had to learn how to do that” (1993: 11). She is used to deal-
ing with her condition, but she nevertheless knows it is a dangerous liability that
will likely leave her incapacitated when she is forced to absorb too much of the
pain of others.
What exactly this means for Lauren’s survival in the outside environment
becomes clear in the moment when her worst fears come true and the walls
around her community can no longer protect her and her family:

Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning, the trees,
the people: Burning.
Smoke awoke me, and I shouted down the hall to Cory and the boys.
I grabbed my clothes and emergency pack and followed Cory as she herded
the boys out. The [alarm] bell never rang. Our watchers must have been
killed before they could ring it.
Everything was chaos. People running, screaming, shooting. The gate had
been destroyed. Our attackers had driven an ancient truck through it. . . .
They must have been pyro addicts – bald people with painted heads, faces,
and hands. Red faces; blue faces; green faces; screaming mouths; avid, crazy
eyes, glittering in the firelight.
They shot us and shot us and shot us. I saw [our neighbor] Natalie Moss,
running, screaming, then pitching backward, her face half gone, her body
still impelled forward. She fell flat on her back, and did not move again.
(Butler 1993: 154)

In this fateful moment of violent intrusion, the reader is cued to share Lauren’s
perceptive experience of it. Rather than telling us how anxious and horrified
she felt, thereby describing her emotions, Lauren goes into “showing mode” and
gives us an impressionistic sketch of the situation that cues us to vividly imagine
the scene and react emotionally to it. Her description is highly economical and
202 Alexa Weik von Mossner
effective, relying on the repetition of action words (“They shot us and shot us
and shot us”), visual impressions (“red faces; blue faces; green faces”) and the
combination of the two (“I saw Natalie Moss, running, screaming, then pitching
backward, her face half gone, her body still impelled forward”). It is worth noting
that this is remembered perception and action rather than currently occurring
perception and action. Lauren uses past tense rather than present tense, and
she makes clear that she is writing down these words after the fact, in a quieter
moment that allows her to take a breath and attend to her journal.6 And yet,
she chooses to relate the events in short, breathless sentences, thereby stimu-
lating the reader to adapt to her pace and to imagine the events almost like a
sequence from an action film as they simulate in their minds Lauren’s perception
and movements.
In the same breathless style of narration, Lauren also shares her own emotional
and physical reactions to what she sees:

I fell with her, caught up in her death. I lay there, dazed, struggling to move,
to get up. Cory and the boys, running ahead of me, never noticed. They ran
on.
I got up, felt for my pack, found it, and ran. I tried not to see what was
happening around me. Hearing the gunfire and the screams didn’t stop me.
A dead body – Edwin Dunn – didn’t stop me. I bent, snatched up his gun,
and kept running.
(Butler 1993: 154)

Lauren here relates an experience that the reader cannot fully share because they
do not share her hyperempathy condition. However, as the cognitive narratolo-
gist Patrick Hogan has argued, we need not be like a fictional character to be able
to empathize with them. By empathizing with the character’s situation, we can
approximate the character’s feelings and concerns, even if that character is dif-
ferent from ourselves. Such situational empathy can lead us to feel with members
of an out-group with whom we do not share a great number of group-defining
features (Hogan 2003: 140–46). This explains why we can not only empathize
with characters from a different gender, ethnical group, or sexual orientation, but
also with characters in speculative forms of fiction that may have superpowers or
other abilities that we would not generally expect in our fellow humans. Once we
have accepted Lauren’s hyperempathy condition as a fact of the narrative world,
we will also be able to empathize with her in this as well as in ensuing situations
when she finds herself physically incapacitated for the sole reason that she sees
the pain of a suffering other and feels that pain with the same intensity. The
moment – brief as it is in Lauren’s record – gives us a first inkling of what it means
for her to see other people hurting, but it also informs us that she is nevertheless
able to function enough to save her own life. In addition, it becomes clear here
that dead people – even dead people she knows and cares for – do not affect her
in the way that injured or dying people do because they no longer feel any pain
or emotions she could share. In a darkly ironic twist, Lauren will soon find out
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 203
that it is best for her to kill attackers rather than just shooting to injure, since the
latter would negatively affect her own ability to survive.
As Kimberley Ruffin has pointed out, Butler uses “Christian and other reli-
gious discourse as a means to transform the negative human behaviours that have
resulted in endangered human and nonhuman lives” (2010: 95). Lauren’s attitude
and behaviour, however, is at odds with the Christian moral imperative “Thou
shalt not kill”, and it also sheds an interesting light on the relationship between
empathy, morality, and prosocial behaviour. Scholars in the fields of philosophy,
psychology, political theory, and religious studies have offered different takes on
that relationship. Psychologist Martin Hoffman, for instance, has argued that
empathy – and related processes of embodied simulation – is of central impor-
tance to moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour (2011: 231). Philosopher Jesse
Prinz has taken the opposite position, arguing that empathy “is so vulnerable to
bias and selectivity that it fails to provide a broad umbrella of moral concern”
(2011: 227). Butler’s novel sensitizes us to another important dimension in the
relationship between empathy, morality, and prosocial behaviour, namely the
role of egoism, an extreme form of bias. Even at the outset of the narrative, Lau-
ren’s community demonstrates the bias that Prinz has in mind: the urge to protect
the interests of one’s in-group against the interests of an out-group. Once Lauren
has been forced to leave that community, however, her journal entries suggest
that killing others is a necessity for her own survival. Christian ideals of pacifism
and selfless altruism have become unsustainable in a world full of “people who’ve
made such a hell of life here on Earth” (Butler 1993: 21). Lauren’s creation of
Earthseed is an attempt at providing both hope and better guidance in those cir-
cumstances. It states that “All successful life is Adaptable,/Opportunistic,/Tena-
cious,/Interconnected, and/Fecund” (1993: 124–25) thereby stressing ecological
principles.7 Only lifeforms that are willing to connect with others, to be creative,
and to adapt to changing circumstances will be ultimately sustainable in a deeply
dystopian world. These are the things that Lauren tells everyone who is willing
to listen, and she quickly starts collecting a group of followers that share or take
on her beliefs.
At first, these followers are other people from her community who accompany
her on her way “[u]p toward Canada” where Lauren hopes to “get to a place where
the water doesn’t cost more than food, and where work brings salary” (Butler
1993: 170–71). But it does not take long until the first strangers join the group to
escape the hell of Southern California. Lauren is not interested in their ethnicity
or personal background, her only conditions for joining are that they make them-
selves useful, stay loyal to the group, and accept the moral principles of Earthseed.
Their long walk as “part of a broad river of people walking west [and later north]
on the freeway” (1993: 176) is slow, difficult, and involves many sacrifices. Mixed
race relationships of all kinds are highly stigmatized outside of Robledo and so the
ethnically diverse group quickly attracts the attention of all kinds of “predators”
(1993: 177) who want their water, their belongings, or simply their lives. Again
and again, Lauren is engulfed in intolerable pain when group members or even
their enemies get hurt. More than once, she comes close to dying. More than
204 Alexa Weik von Mossner
once, she decides to kill rather than get killed or see someone in her group die.
In order to make the Earthseed community thrive, her ethics has become at once
inclusive and deeply parochial.
Without question, the vision of the future expressed through Parable of the
Sower is very dark. Jerry Phillips has gone so far as to ascertain that in Butler’s
future America “patterns of race and class dominance have hardened to the
point that they have genocidal implications” (2002: 305). And yet, he also
locates utopian impulses in the novel’s defense of “human agency as a neces-
sary existential value” (2002: 299). Despite all its darkness, Parable of the Sower
is marked by what Raffaella Baccolini calls “an opening for utopian elements
in . . . dystopian fiction” (2000: 13), and I would argue that Butler’s defence of
human agency is inextricably linked to notions of community and sustainabil-
ity. As Butler herself has put it in an interview, Lauren “can see that the peo-
ple around her [can] not sustain themselves if they d[o] not find ways to work
together” (Conversations 1993: 340). So, when the community she has grown
up in gets destroyed, she sets out to build another, more sustainable one on a
remote piece of land in Oregon that has its own water and is fit for farming. The
very first journal entry Lauren shares with us tells us about a dream in which
she is attempting to fly without proper instruction or guidance. Human beings
are not equipped with wings and yet at the end of the novel Lauren has fulfilled
the other dream that has driven her up the coast toward Canada: the ecotopian
dream of “doing something purposeful and constructive” (Butler 1993: 275) by
building an intentional community that lives off the land. “Without ecotopian
dreaming”, Eric Otto reminds us, “damaging systems are allowed to flourish at
the expense of sustainable ecological and social possibilities” (2012: 73). In
Parable of the Sower, Butler suggests that ecotopian dreams can – at least tem-
porarily – take off and soar.
Butler had originally planned to write five Parable books. The second novel,
Parable of the Talents (1998), picks up where the first one ended and shows once
again that pocket utopias are unsustainable as Lauren and her people are engaged
in a desperate fight to defend their ecotopian community against an increasingly
fascistic tendency in society, which is occurring within a swiftly disintegrating
environment. Only in its epilogue does the thoroughly dystopian Parable of the
Talents offer another utopian opening as it shows an aged Lauren Olamina wit-
nessing the launch of the first Earthseed ship carrying interstellar colonists off the
planet in accordance with her prophecy that the final “destiny of Earthseed is to
take root among the stars” (1998: 77). However, even that utopian moment of
hope includes its spoilers. As Gary Canavan points out, “the name of the space-
ship gives us pause: against Olamina’s wishes the ship has been named the Chris-
topher Columbus, suggesting that perhaps the Earthseeders aren’t escaping the
nightmare of history at all, but bringing it with them instead” (2014: n.p.). Imag-
ining an interstellar repetition of terrestrial colonial history with all its cruelty,
injustice, and adverse effect on the planetary environment seems have been too
much even for Butler, who never managed to complete the third novel. What we
 The moral dilemma of unsustainability 205
know from her notes and early drafts, however, is that it was meant to be set in
a far-away world that “is gray and dank, and utterly miserable” (Canavan 2014:
n.p.) and, in its lifelessness, not even a close match to the once beautiful and
bountiful planet that was lost.

Conclusion
Because they paint pessimistic images of our future, the imaginary worlds we
experience during the reading of dystopian texts can be unsettling, even disturb-
ing. Critics have argued that this approach is problematic and ineffective since an
overabundance of negative emotions can push readers easily to the point where
they simply close the book and turn to something else. However, the recent
revival of Orwell’s 1984 reminds us that we should not so quickly disparage the
evocation of negative and uncomfortable emotions. As Nussbaum puts it so
pointedly, “for literature to play its function [in society] it must be permitted, and
indeed invited, to disturb us” (1997: 98). That Parable of the Sower has the capac-
ity to disturb becomes clear when we look at readers’ reactions. “I don’t know
about you”, writes Malinda Lo in her review, “but I get extremely involved in the
books I read, and being forced to live in such a horrible environment, mentally, is
not something I usually like to do. I mean, it gives me nightmares” (2010: n.p.).
This highly emotional reaction to the speculative world of a novel is a testimony
to the visceral power of liberated embodied simulation, and it demonstrates that
the enlightening triangulation that Nussbaum, Moylan, and others are hoping
for, can occur because of such affective engagement, even if it is painful. “[P]art
of my ambiguous reaction to Parable of the Sower is defensive”, acknowledges Lo.
“I had to read it at arm’s length, if you know what I mean. . . . Nonetheless, I’m
glad I read the book” (2010: n.p.). This reminds us that pleasure is not the only
emotion that keeps readers engaged – especially not when they are picking up a
dystopia – and that novelists in fact mean to instill negative emotions such as fear
and anxiety when they are voicing warnings because they hope that these emo-
tions will compel others to action.
In a 2004 interview with Joshunda Sanders, Butler stated explicitly that she
was trying to warn her readers with her novels: “One of the kinds of research I did
was to read a lot of stuff about World War II. Not the war itself, but I wanted to
know in particular how a country goes fascist. So, I have this country, in Parable
of the Sower, and especially Parable of the Talents, sliding in that direction. And
I really was not trying to prophesize that somehow we would do that but” (2004:
n.p.). The “but” in Butler’s unfinished sentence hints at political tendencies
she noticed during the Bush administration. One cannot help but wonder what
warnings she would give today in the climate change-denying, post-truth world
of the Trump administration, if she were still among us. It is not 2025 yet, and as
far-fetched and extreme as her speculative scenario of an anarchic, unjust, and
unsustainable world may have seemed at the time of its publication, it becomes
hauntingly premonitory as we approach that date.
206 Alexa Weik von Mossner
Notes
1 My previous publications on the critical eco-dystopia include “Hope in Dark Times”
(2014) and chapter 5 of Affective Ecologies (2017).
2 On Parable of the Sower’s classification as a critical dystopia, see also Miller (1998).
3 For a detailed narratological discussion of the storyworld concept, see Herman (2005).
4 For a discussion of readers’ physical responses during literary reading, see Kuijpers and
Miall (2011).
5 I discuss Robinson’s Pacific Edge in more detail in chapter 6 of Affective Ecologies.
6 Although authors do write first-person narratives in the present tense and often succeed
in creating a sense of immediacy through this technique, narratologists have pointed
out that it is a mode of narration is logically impossible since no one can write down a
story while they are acting and experiencing it (Phelan 2013).
7 Butler has stated that Lauren’s philosophical views closely mirror her own. In the Fry
interview, Butler states that Lauren’s philosophical views come “[f]rom me, really. One
nice thing about writing is that it forces you to look at your own beliefs. My character
got her Books of the Living through a lot of religious books and philosophical writings
and stopping whenever I found myself in agreement or violent disagreement. Figuring
out what I believed helped me figure out what she believed” (Fry 1994: n.p.).

References
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Butler, O. (1993). Parable of the Sower. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Butler, O. (1998). Parable of the Talents. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Canavan, G. (2014). “ ‘There’s Nothing New Under the Sun, but There Are New Suns’:
Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables”. Los Angeles Times Review of Books (9
June 2014). http://lareviewofbooks.org/article/theres-nothing-new-sun-new-suns-
recovering-octavia-e-butlers-lost-parables [Accessed 3 April 2017].
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16 A tale of love and fallout
Lauren Redniss’ graphic narrative
and the ecological imaginary
Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl

Introduction: “Absolutely Dazzling”

“Absolutely dazzling. Radioactive is both vibrant history and a work of art. Like
radium itself, it glows with energy.” (Paul’s Corner, 2015)1 Obviously, Pulitzer Prize-
winner Richard Rhodes could not resist acclaiming the graphic narrative Radio-
active – Marie & Pierre Curie. A Tale of Love and Fallout (2010) by American artist
and cartoonist Lauren Redniss with an adjective that describes the state the recip-
ient finds himself/herself in, when reading this amazing book: S/he is left dazzled,
stunned and overwhelmed. By characterizing his reading experience of Radioactive
thusly, Rhodes attests to the impact of such narratives on readers’ imaginations
and feelings. Describing it is one thing but categorizing this intermedial narrative
is harder: It combines text and images, yet it is not exactly a graphic novel –
the comic strip format with its panels and speech balloons is missing. It seems
more correct to speak of a graphic narrative, as this term, used henceforth, simply
refers to storytelling done not exclusively with words.2
To explore the relationship between fiction/visual works of art and cultural
sustainability, graphic narratives, artist’s books and graphic novels offer them-
selves as excellent cases in point. We argue that they are eminent objects of
investigation because they combine often striking visual artworks with intricate
plots and stories. Moreover, due to their popularity and accessibility, they have
become genres with considerable cultural momentum. Numerous graphic narra-
tives deal with radioactivity and nuclear weapons, thus giving a voice to cultural
anxieties as well as to environmental concern. As cultural products that reach
a large readership, they warrant discussion in an essay collection dedicated to
cultural sustainability. In this context, Lummina Horlings’ term ‘inner dimen-
sion of sustainability’ is helpful since it accounts for the fact that “change toward
sustainability” is accelerated not only by political systems or new laws, but also
by “individual and shared beliefs, values, worldviews and paradigms that influ-
ence attitudes and actions” (Horlings 2015: 163). To substantiate our claim that
graphic narratives have an impact on the inner dimensions of sustainability and
thus serve as examples of its cultural aspects, we will investigate Redniss’ inno-
vative graphic narrative. We will first explore the cultural dimensions and pat-
terns of ecological sustainability and then move on to analyse the ways in which
 A tale of love and fallout 209
Redniss’ images and word-image-configurations feed into the social imaginary
and how they function as narrative ethics.

Cultural dimensions and patterns of ecological sustainability

When discussing cultural patterns of ecological sustainability, it is first of all nec-
essary to distinguish a wider, implicit and a narrower, explicit cultural dimension
(cf. Meireis, Chapter 5). While a wider concept, prominent in academic debates,
takes culture as a comprehensive term which represents the ‘symbolic universe’
(Cassirer 1944) as product of man’s symbolizing faculty, a narrower concept,
explicit and prominent in everyday language, identifies ‘culture’ with a social
field of action, i.e. with the performing and visual arts, with music and literature,
sculpture and design in various media (Williams 1989). As this symbolizing fac-
ulty is applied to different geographic, social, economical and historical scenarios,
different symbolic worlds (‘cultures’) coexist, and – given a personal or medial
exchange – interact and intermingle. While cultural products in the context of
an ‘explicit dimension’ are intentionally devised as contributions to a given soci-
ety’s culture, those in the ‘implicit dimension’ are not even present as such in
common understanding, they are just the ‘things people normally do.’
Lauren Redniss’ graphic narrative Radioactive belongs, of course, to literature
and hence to the explicit cultural dimension, to culture in the narrower sense.
Even though the downsides of science and radioactivity are demonstrated, one
does not find an overt conservationist stance in Radioactive. Instead, questions
of ecological sustainability are raised implicitly, for instance when plant muta-
tion (leading to sterility) is depicted as a consequence of the nuclear meltdown
in Harrisburg’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and harmful effects on
the fauna around the Chernobyl site are shown. Additionally, Redniss neither
omits the toll of radiation sicknesses in Curie’s family as a by-product of nuclear
science, nor does she conceal the effects of nuclear weaponry. However, at no
point is conspicuous moralizing to be found. Redniss also depicts the immense
contribution of X-Rays to medicine and the potential of radon-treatment. She
describes scientists’ aspirations for nuclear starships and the colonization of extra-
terrestrial space, ending on a vision of a lunar crystal city (Redniss 2010: 184–
185) made possible by nuclear energy.

Radioactivity and graphic narratives

The ambivalence of radioactivity – and of modern scientific technology in general –
is an idea widely mirrored in popular culture at large. It plays an important part
in popular music – for instance in songs like Imagine Dragon’s “Radioactive”
(2012) or Kraftwerk’s “Radio-Aktivität/Radio-Activity” (1975). The latter song
is performed bilingually and plays on the word ‘radioactivity’, referring to broad-
casts of music as well as radiation. Kraftwerk presents lyrics such as, “radioactiv-
ity is in the air for you and me”, with a mellow voice and harmonic style. This
style, however, contrasts with the content and must have sounded gloomy even
210 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
before the Harrisburg (1979), Chernobyl (1986) or Fukushima (2011) accidents,
especially for listeners in the 1970s in countries where concern over the safety
of nuclear energy was running high. While the possible consequences of nuclear
experiments, accidents and wars have been explored in popular comic series like
Stan Lee’s The Incredible Hulk (1962) or Spider-Man (1962), they are also dealt
with in award-winning graphic novels such as Raymond Briggs’ When The Wind
Blows (1982) (cf. Hoppeler and Rippl 2014). The exact impact of graphic and
literary images of radioactivity on political decision-making and the formation of
social movements is difficult to measure using the qualitative methods scholars
usually apply. Yet in the case of the no-nukes movement of the 1970s and 1980s,
it is evident that a close relationship between social movement, practical action
and cultural products such as literature and pop songs existed. Gudrun Pause-
wang’s young adult novel Die Wolke (1987, English translation Fall-Out, 1997)
serves as an example. The latter imagines nuclear fallout after a meltdown in a
power plant. We argue that Redniss’ graphic narrative, just as Pausewang’s novel,
are prime examples of an explicitly cultural dimension of ecological sustainabil-
ity, i.e. they demonstrate how ecological questions are represented and reflected
intentionally in cultural production. The contribution of such works may be
understood as comprising three elements: Firstly, they present a set of cultural
patterns (semantic, semiotic, iconic) to express propositions, sentiments or even
judgements on ecological questions. Secondly, they introduce ecological con-
cepts into the ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor 2004) by allowing readers to experience
emotional immersion in a (fictitious) dangerous environment. Lastly, they thus
form a type of narrative ethics, enabling and challenging readers to reflect for
themselves on questions of ecologically and culturally sustainable technologies
and paradigms. Works like Redniss’ Radioactive stage other lives imaginatively,
thus providing “a forum for the enactment of the dialogical interdependence
between self and other” (Zapf 2008a: 173). They always present views on alterity/
the Other (Claviez 2008: 447–451), thus allowing the reader to make their own
ethical/moral judgement, instead of prescribing a specific one. In its irreducibility
of the individual and the particular, this is the common ground they share with
religious documents (Schleiermacher 1967: 489–491).
Graphic narratives with their appealing pictures and powerful word-image con-
figurations lend themselves particularly well to the presentation of fictive worlds
which, due to their immersive power, drag the reader into the story. Pictures (and
depictions of facial expressions and bodily postures in particular) are “fast tracks
to narrative empathy” because “they convey emotional states [. . .] [which] call[]
upon readers’ neural systems for recognition of basic emotions” (Keen 2011, 135
and 137).3 Through visual codes and colour symbolism they are able to augment
and enrich emotions in the recipients and to enhance their participation. They
also have the capacity to express trauma and cultural anxieties in ways that black
letters on white paper cannot (Hoppeler and Rippl 2014).4 Colour, the contrast
of light and dark, drawing style and layout play an important role in engaging
the reader imaginatively. Since graphic narratives such as comic books and
graphic novels often participate in counter-discourses and follow cultural-critical
 A tale of love and fallout 211
impulses, they remind us of past catastrophes and warn us of possible future ones.
Like literature in general, graphic narratives have social implications and are a
means of political participation: They are “a sensorium for the deficits and imbal-
ances of the larger culture” (Zapf 2006: 49); they fathom latent and displaced
individual and collective fears and anxieties and stimulate us to imagine possible
alternative worlds and to identify with others. As Henry John Pratt convincingly
argues, mass-marketed superhero comic books and graphic novels

can provide rich aesthetic and ethical experiences. The narratives presented
[. . .] allow readers to exercise their imaginative capacities, to contemplate
contrasts between good and evil, to think about prejudice and the sociocul-
tural nature of the self (issues nearly all superheroes face), and perhaps, to
an even greater extent than the novel, to engage in emphatic exploration of
the minds of others.
(Pratt 2009: 103)

This also applies to Redniss’ Radioactive.

A tale of love and fallout

Lauren Redniss’ Radioactive – Marie & Pierre Curie. A Tale of Love and Fallout is a
stunning biographical graphic narrative-cum history lesson-cum love story which
recounts the lives of two brilliant and devoted scientists and their contributions
to science and medicine (cf. Hoppeler and Rippl 2014). Redniss explains the
concepts of radioactivity, half-life and nuclear fission and explores the implica-
tions, both positive and negative, of Marie Curie’s ground-breaking discovery of
radium. Her images as well as text-picture configurations are rich and highly com-
plex – as, for example, the technopaignium in prose (cf. Redniss 2010: 124–125)
proves. Instead of being mere illustrations, her amazing pictures are the backbone
of her intermedial storytelling: Images are the hub of Radioactive and appear on
almost every page or serve as background for the text. By mixing a love story
with the scientific history of radioactivity, Redniss documents a ‘tale of love and
fallout’ with archival and published sources, including Eve Curie’s biography of
her mother, Madame Curie (originally published in 1937), and Susan Quinn’s
1995 Marie Curie: A Life and blends historical photographs, facsimiles of original
documents and maps with Redniss’ own text and images, i.e. drawings as well as
rich and colourful illustrations of elements, people and places, which collectively
render the story of Marie and Pierre Curie.
Radioactive is a work of art which combines impressive visual material with
equally great prose writing. On a bedside table, the book will again surprise its
readers because it ‘radiates’ in the dark due to the phosphorescent ink that was
used for the cover. As readers we relish each picture and its accompanying text
which often runs across and over the pages, hence constantly blurring the bound-
aries between word and image. The aesthetic power of the images perhaps adds to
the heightened sense of fear experienced by readers in relation to this particularly
212 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
unsettling topic. Redniss’ graphic narrative intricately interweaves the fascina-
tion of scientific discovery and personal loss with subplots dealing with the conse-
quences of Marie Curie’s discoveries, i.e. nuclear war and ecological catastrophe.
The story is enhanced through the skilful application of those tools available to
graphic narratives (colouring, imagery) and those of the classic book (the haptic
and optical effects of the cover), all of which combines to depict an ambivalent
picture of radioactivity (and love). A sense of promise and fascination is directly
juxtaposed by one of threat and horror. Redniss makes use of tropes and iconic
images associated with radioactivity – the ‘nuclear mushroom’, the iridescent
blue light of visible radiation. She also refers to characters of popular culture like
the comic hero Spiderman, the monster Godzilla or ‘Bert the Turtle’ a character
appearing in US Cold War civil defence films.
Radioactive comprises two parts: part I, consisting of Chapters 1–3, is mainly
biographical; the titles of the chapters refer to characteristics of the material the
Curies worked with, the discovery of radioactivity as well as the mutual emotional
attraction of Marie and Pierre. Part II (Chapters 4–9) illuminates the Curies’ rev-
elations around radium, their rise in scientific circles, the effect radiation had on
their own health and the consequences of their discovery for the world. Redniss
elongates her protagonists’ faces in a way reminiscent of Modigliani’s portraits
(Garner 2010), while also giving them hatched eyelid rims and pale outlines,
which seem to hint at the dangers of radioactivity from the outset. Pierre studies
crystalline structures and offers to share his laboratory space with Marie. They fall
in love, get married and spend their honeymoon in 1895 on a bicycle tour, “rid-
ing along the coast of Brittany and into the French countryside” (Redniss 2010:
34). The warm earthen colours of brown, yellow and dark orange used here not
only symbolize the feelings of the couple, but they are repeated just a few pages
later in a photograph of a nuclear explosion. The author’s intricate use of colour
patterns, as displayed in the first few pages, makes the reader immediately aware
of the ambiguous qualities of radioactivity: the “spontaneous luminosity” (Red-
niss 2010: 51) of the two compounds of radium (chloride and bromide, Redniss
2010: 54–55), which discharges a faint-blue light, is represented by Redniss’ use
of blues, and the radiance and heat emitted by radioactive elements are alluded
to by the bright orange and red colours in other images. This colour scheme is
present throughout the book.
Discoveries and scientific developments at the turn of the twentieth century
resonate in Redniss’ graphic narrative. The Curies’ discovery of two new ele-
ments, radium and polonium, heralded this new scientific age. But while new
discoveries such as X-rays, radium and radioactivity fascinated people at the turn
of the twentieth century, Redniss shows that from the start the scientists were
aware of the ambivalence of their discoveries, i.e. medical advantages for surgery
and cancer, but also of the potentially dangerous effects and the possibilities of
misuse. The tension between life and death is indeed conspicuously present in
the rest of the book, for instance in the passage about World War I during which
Marie Curie developed X-ray field labs so that the doctors no longer were “per-
forming blind exploratory surgeries on already damaged bodies” (Redniss 2010:
 A tale of love and fallout 213
156). The precariousness of human life exposed to radioactivity is showcased in
Marie Curie’s medical records held at the Curie Archives, on which the following
passage is based:

Years of radiation exposure had ravaged Marie’s health. Her fingers were bar-
nacled with fibrous lesions from handling radium. She chronicled her own
deterioration as laboratory data in neat columns on graph paper. Body tem-
perature, color and amount of urine discharged, ‘crises and pus,’ were logged
at multiple intervals throughout each day. In the margins, she tracked the
pain in her body. [. . .] At dawn on July 4, 1934, Marie Curie passed away.
The cause of death was ‘aplastic pernicious anemia’ due to prolonged radia-
tion exposure. She was sixty-six years old.
(Redniss 2010: 168 and 171)

This is one of several sections which cover the effects of long-term radium expo-
sure, from which Marie and Pierre Curie both suffered. In addition, in Chapter 6
(titled “Half-Life”) Redniss presents the story of young women who worked with
radium for the US Radium Corporation in New Jersey in the 1920s and expe-
rienced “long series of crippling symptoms – decomposing jaws, bleeding gums,
severe anaemia, immobilizing weakness” (Redniss 2010: 90).
Initially, Redniss was struck by the fact that today’s weaponry, medicine, energy
and their implications, all link back to the Curies’ romance in nineteenth-century
Paris, and her graphic narrative mentions some more recent consequences of the
Curies’ discovery of radium, such as the cranial radiation treatments that enabled
a 14-year-old Rhode Island boy named Daniel Fass to survive his non-Hodgkins
lymphoma (a massive tumour next to his heart and lungs, Redniss 2010: 70–71).
But again, Redniss also presents the precarious disadvantages of radioactivity,
which range from the partial meltdown of two nuclear reactors at Three Mile
Island near Harrisburg in 1979 (Redniss 2010: 102–103), that produced mutant
plant specimens, to the disaster of Chernobyl in 1986 (Redniss 2010: 114–115).
There are several one- or two-page peripheral stories, such as one on Irving S.
Lowen (Redniss 2010: 77–79), a theoretical physicist who worked on the Man-
hattan project and became paranoid about Germany’s progress in the nuclear
arms war, as is documented in his declassified FBI file (Redniss 2010: 78–79); or
the mini-narratives on atomic tests in the Pacific Ocean and Nevada during the
Cold War period (Redniss 2010: 138–139 and 140–141). In spite of Radioactive’s
strikingly beautiful visual art, two aspects of radioactivity, its power to both save
and utterly destroy life, remain present.

Redniss’ Radioactive, the social imaginary

and ‘Narrative Ethics’
‘Social imaginary’ is a term coined by Charles Taylor. It denotes the everyday
view on the mechanisms of society (rather than a scholarly devised social the-
ory), consisting of narratives, images, etc., shared by many people and enabling
214 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
social practices (Taylor 2004: 23–24). Literature, images and other forms of cul-
tural production shape our social imaginary. Redniss’ narrative can be read as a
contribution to the social imaginary as she, by focussing on iconic characters like
the Curies, skilfully combines and interweaves the lure and the threat of love
and scientific progress. As has been demonstrated, Radioactive expressly reflects
the role of radioactivity in the social imaginary by collecting echoes of radioac-
tivity in popular iconography and culture. From North American comic book
heroes like the Hulk and Spiderman to Japanese movie characters like Godzilla,
who embody the ambivalent promise and threat of radioactivity, and from the
famous (if faulty) concept of the cockroach as last survivor of a nuclear blast
(which puts images of human superiority to the test) to mutant plants and the
notorious US propaganda figure of ‘Bert the Turtle’ who simply ducks and cov-
ers to escape the harmful effects of a nuclear blast, the presence of radioactivity
in the consciousness of the community is encapsulated in the novel. Of course,
this also includes religious imagery – the crystal city on the moon (Redniss 2010:
184–185) strongly evokes – at least in the religiously literary – the luminous
city of God built from gems, the New Jerusalem envisioned in Rev. 21, 10–19.
Moreover, by connecting personal and scientific life, Redniss balances the popu-
lar iconic image of the – socially highly detached – ‘mad scientist’ in order to
demonstrate that it is nothing but a projection: While people who are commonly
recognized as scientific genii become more like average human beings, the collec-
tive fantasies attached to radioactivity’s promises may be understood to be part of
the ‘mad scientist’ in all of us.
‘Narrative ethics’ investigates the ethical content of such cultural products
which – by reflecting on (un)sustainability – are themselves important agents for
the negotiation of values (Hofheinz et al. 2009). Culture in the narrow definition
certainly impacts upon public perceptions of environmental issues. Many con-
temporary narratives in literature and films covering nuclear disaster and climate
change help us to envisage the precarity of both locally and globally significant
scenarios, thus making us understand what it means to be interconnected with far
away regions and people (Zapf 2008b; Heise 2006). They invite us to think about
values such as respect for nature, ecological and cultural sustainability and have
hence the potential to trigger action and engagement in sustainable development
projects. Since works that deal with radioactivity or climate change disaster show
us an increasingly hostile nature that is oblivious to national boundaries, they
help us envisage globalization. What is more, they attract global audiences, and
have thus a worldwide significance and impact on the social imaginaries of many.
Since the 1980s philosophers in particular have argued that “literature, espe-
cially [. . .] literary narrative, as a field of demonstration and testing ground for
responsible and rewarding human behavior” is “superior to the abstract argu-
mentation of the ethical discourse of philosophy” (Grabes 2008: 1). The ethi-
cal turn reached literary studies in the 1980s and was then taken up by cultural
studies in the mid-1990s. It triggered a discussion of the role of literature and
other media for the dissemination of ethical values within a culture and even
beyond. Together with the ecological turn, this ethical turn is at the heart of
 A tale of love and fallout 215
today’s research in the humanities, and debates about human values are hence
no longer exclusively the prerogative of philosophy. Scholars of narrative fic-
tion have focused on anthropocentric ethical issues such as encounters with oth-
erness, the self, values, responsibility, relatedness, community/conviviality and
compassion. The research focus on narrative fiction is usually justified with the
argument that it represents “precisely what ethics is about, namely: a reflection
on human action and character, conflicting drives, desires, and choices evolving
in time, offered for the reader’s appreciation or judgement from different per-
spectives” (Korthals Altes 2008: 142). Philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas,
Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur and Martha Nussbaum understand literature as
having an ethical role in that it offers “the experience in radical strangeness of
the other, the self, and the world, and in the final undecidability of meaning and
values” (Korthals Altes 2008: 143). According to Martha Nussbaum (1995), by
immersing readers into imaginary worlds, narrative fiction has the power to teach
readers empathy and to broaden their horizons by offering emotional experiences
and alternative visions, thus inviting readers to transform their traditional take
on the world and to train their ethical positioning (cf. Locatelli 2008). Since lit-
erature models the emotions, self-conception and attitudes of its readers, it plays
an important role in their moral development: “By engaging us in situations of
value-conflicts, narrative exercises our practical moral sense, allowing for vicari-
ous experiential learning” (Korthals Altes 2008: 143).
To summarize: besides contributing to the social imaginary and influencing
the cultural language of sustainability, works like Radioactive lend themselves
to being interpreted as a certain type of ‘narrative ethics’ characterized by an
open approach. Rather than presenting a fixed set of moral values, they chal-
lenge the reading public to reflect their own by creating a pre-normative ‘ethical
model’ that recalls experiences or creates them through fiction, bundles imagery
(by showing X-ray technology alongside the atomic bomb) without fixing it ter-
minologically and remains open for conflicting interpretations (Mieth 2007:
223–224). The point of this type of narrative ethics – and works like Radioactive –
lies in allowing for a recurring exploration of evaluations concerning actions
and characters. They are “exploration travels into the realm of good and evil”
(Ricoeur 2005: 201). We may admire Marie Curie’s relentless stamina and power
of volition that carries her from a poor family ravaged by disease and an occu-
pied country to the Nobel prize-winning scientist and professor at a time when
women were universally considered to be mentally inferior to men, but we may
also abhor Pierre Curie’s radium experiments on himself, leading to radiation
sickness and deep lesions. We may be fascinated by the combination of mutual
love and utter devotion to science and yet be deterred by the unintended conse-
quences of that research, which, as we are constantly reminded, are progressions
toward the atomic bomb and radioactive pollution. The Curies’ discoveries are
contextualized within a violent and politically divided world, with the narration
of Marie Curie’s biography intermingling with these dystopian images of fear and
destruction. Her life thus may be understood as a human micro-cosmos depicting
mankind’s story with radioactivity: “Radioactivity had made the Curies immortal.
216 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
Now it was killing them” (Redniss 2010: 74). In her emotionally cogent tale,
Redniss raises questions regarding moral principles. However, the reader is nei-
ther forced to answer these questions, nor are answers delivered by an omniscient
narrator. The challenge to the reader, who might be undergoing some emotional
turmoil while following the story of Curie’s biography and her biological and
intellectual offspring, is not to be underestimated. Readers are invited to con-
template central questions like these: Do we have the right to conduct research
without regard to consequences? Should we be enamoured by our work as we
are by another person? Is it acceptable to draw our children into the risks we are
taking, even if such risk constitutes our way of life, and further, should we follow
our dreams regardless of their effects on other people’s lives? If a person belongs
to an oppressed or persecuted group or is discriminated against, may she employ
any means to achieve freedom and recognition? Which risks should society take
in regard to technologies? How do we judge the close relationship of science
and the military? Are the promises of nuclear technology worth its risks? The
seemingly inexhaustible list of questions arising from the narrative refers to the
interior, subjective dimension of sustainability. Indeed, the connection between
sustainability and the role values play in forming individual motivations, beliefs
and actions has not yet been thoroughly dealt with. Philosophy, literary and cul-
tural studies, as well as theology and religious belief systems (cf. Ricoeur 2005:
200–206) discuss human values and play an increasingly crucial role in debates
on how to implement them. Since narrative ethics focuses on questions of com-
munication, relationships, motivation, principles, preferences and emotions in
individuals and communities, it helps to sharpen people’s awareness of their own
actions and feelings of responsibility for their environment.

Conclusion: Radioactive as a contribution to cultural

sustainability
As elaborated earlier, ‘culture’ may be understood in at least two ways: as the
universal ‘symbolic universe’ typical for humankind, always formed in a particular
way depending on geographic, social and historical conditions, and as a social
realm characterized by the intentional production of symbolic imagery. Since
sustainability may be applied to questions outside of ecology, at least three aspects
of the term cultural sustainability may be named:

• First of all, and most important in the context of this volume, ‘cultural sus-
tainability’ may denote the cultural dimension of ecological sustainability
which always implies a degree of normativity. On the basis of the Brundt-
land report’s (1987) influential definition linking sustainability and develop-
ment, cultural sustainability may be understood as concerning the formation
of particular symbolic universes in regard to the natural environment and
its media and resources. That also includes a certain normative language
of talking about the environment and the social imaginary connected to
it. As human behaviour, preferences and lifestyle are closely connected to
 A tale of love and fallout 217
questions of culture in the senses outlined previously (i.e. the language in
which ecological questions are phrased, the social imaginary in which they
are envisioned and the narrations in which they are framed), the normative
analysis and reflection in the cultural field are tantamount to the social con-
sensus underlying any political strategy to ensure ecologically, economically
and socially sustainable development.
• Secondly, ‘sustainable culture’ may refer to the sustainability of explicit cul-
tural activity, i.e. the public esteem of the performing and visual arts, reli-
gion, education and so on.
• Thirdly, ‘cultural sustainability’ may refer to the particular forms of the sym-
bolic universe, and denote material ‘cultures’ that are sustainable, i.e. not
bent towards self-destruction through problematic practices or inflexibility
as, for instance, the culture of the Easter Islands or the Viking colonists on
Greenland as depicted in Jared Diamond’s study Collapse (2005).

Redniss’ graphic narrative helps to exemplify these three aspects of the term cul-
tural sustainability:

• To begin with, the narrative ingrains the ambivalence of radioactivity in the

social imaginary by calling up adverse images, invoking and reflecting social
imaginaries and delivering narrative ethics, thus contributing to the cultural
dimension of ecological sustainability.
• Since Redniss’ Radioactive is a national book award finalist and was nomi-
nated for the Pulitzer Prize while amassing much public acclaim, it, secondly,
demonstrates the possibilities of cultural sustainment: public medial recogni-
tion, public recognition through prizes and acclaim.
• Thirdly, as a work discussing the ambivalences of radioactivity, it contributes
to debates on ecological sustainability and may also strengthen the long-
term chances of the development of a sustainable culture.

Graphic narratives like Radioactive can have an impact on the interior dimen-
sions of sustainability. Combining strong popular appeal with the provision of
imagery for the social imaginary, Radioactive’s ethical stance fosters reflection in
readers, rather than suffocating them with moral judgements.

Notes
1 Richard Rhodes is quoted in a review in Prairie Lights on 8 August 2015. Cf. www.prai
rielights.com/pauls-corner/pauls-corner-radioactive-lauren-redniss.
2 Reviewers have called Radioactive an illustrated biography (Garner 2010), a bande dessinée
and a graphic novel (Nye 2011; Harayda 2011).
3 For a discussion of the creation of empathy in novels, see Keen (2010).
4 It is important to point out that there has not yet been sufficient (empirical) research
into how exactly the combination of text and pictures in comic books and graphic
novels trigger emotions and empathy in recipients, and whether intermedial modes of
storytelling are emotionally enhanced ways of narration which produce more intensive
218 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
responses in their readers than exclusively verbal storytelling (cf. Keen 2011: 152–153).
Due to the fact that pictures are processed in the right hemisphere of the human brain,
which also controls emotions, psychologists and narratologists have claimed that pic-
tures trigger more attention and emotions in recipients (the emotional impact increases
with the iconicity of the pictures) and are more memorable than stories mediated via
black letters on white paper (Nöth 2000: 467–477 and 481). But questions relating
to the interrelationship between pictures and the creation of emotions can only be
answered by further quantitative and qualitative research which, as Arvid Kappas and
Marion G. Müller have recently suggested, requires collaboration between psycholo-
gists of emotion, visual communication researchers and visual culture experts (Kappas
and Müller 2006: 3–23).

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17 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis
and the ethics of literary
description
Gabriele Rippl

Introduction: literature and cultural sustainability

The starting point for this chapter is the insight that literature, much like other
cultural products, has the potential to contribute to a central, if under-theorized
dimension of sustainability, namely the cultural.1 In current academic and politi-
cal debates, the visibility of the important contribution to sustainability made by
the humanities – and their objects of investigation – is diminished. Important
concepts developed in the humanities such as Hubert Zapf’s ‘literary ecology’
have neither been recognized by the agendas of global politics nor by natural
scientists and economists working in the field of sustainability and sustainable
development (WCED 1987). This is highly problematic since societal change
toward more sustainable lifestyles is by no means solely engendered and imple-
mented by political decisions, new laws or scientific discoveries regarding cli-
mate change, but linked directly to people’s world views, beliefs and cultural and
ethical values: the so-called ‘inner dimension of sustainability’ (Horlings 2015).
These world views, beliefs and values, which are shaped by, amongst other things,
cultural products such as literature, impact how we act. Literature must be and
has been understood as an agent of cultural change (Berensmeyer et al. 2016).
In the tradition of Hubert Zapf’s work,2 I claim that cultural products such as
literature have an enormous impact on people’s world views and values and,
thus, potentially also on the sustainability of their lifestyles. They can introduce
ecological concepts into the ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor 2004)3 by allowing rea-
ders to (mentally/emotionally) immerse themselves in a fictitious environment,
depicted as dangerous or wracked with unsustainable practices. This challenges
readers to reflect on questions of ecologically and culturally sustainable technolo-
gies and paradigms. Fiction by definition stages other lives and forms of commu-
nity imaginatively, thus providing “a forum for the enactment of the dialogical
interdependence between self and other” (Zapf 2008c: 173) and for negotiating
societal problems and cultural anxieties. Literature and other cultural products
have the potential to sharpen people’s awareness of their own actions and feelings
of responsibility for their environment. What is more, they enable us to experi-
ment and test alternative scenarios in our imagination; specific literary genres
such as utopian and dystopian novels stimulate us to imagine possible alternative
 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis 221
worlds and to identify with others. Many of these possible worlds are character-
ized by unsustainable, ‘anthropocenic’ human-ecosystems and dystopian socio-
political settings. By inviting us to contemplate values such as empathy, respect
for nature and ecological as well as cultural sustainability, and by inviting us to
conceive of the human-nature relationship in a new and non-anthropocentric
way (Horn 2017), literary texts can trigger action and engagement in sustainable
development projects (cf. Erll et al. 2008).

Sustainability and the ethics of literary description

Literary description is a defining feature in an array of twentieth- and twenty-
first-century utopian and dystopian novels in English, novels which investi-
gate alternative, often post-catastrophic worlds characterized by the negation
of human rights, societal collapse, unsustainable and precarious environments,
ecological disasters resulting from (anthropocenic) climate change and nuclear
fallout (cf. Voigts 2015: 1–3). Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence (1948), Brave
New World (1932) and Island (1962), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and
Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003, 2009, 2013) are such novels.
They are characterized by a tendency to include descriptive passages, creating
intense emotional atmospheres. This in turn increases their ability to address
issues around anthropocenic unsustainability. This chapter focuses on Atwood’s
The Year of the Flood (2009), the second novel in her trilogy. Replete with at times
short and succinct, but more often extended, detailed, graphic and emotionally
charged descriptions of nature after ecological catastrophes and disastrous devel-
opments in the socio-political sphere, the novel also presents some memorable
eco-ekphrases. This focus on textual details of descriptions will help to analyze
not only thematic and content-related matters of environmental literature but
also its (often neglected) aesthetic and formal features. Description, understood
as a conceptual space for presenting the downsides of unsustainable actions, offers
a means of presenting sustainable visions and alternative ways of living. While
ecologically inclined literature often immerses the reader in an impending apoca-
lypse or a post-apocalypse of an ecological catastrophe, and while precarious life
and human suffering after nuclear disaster, challenge representation (Hoppeler
and Rippl 2014), writers of eco-dystopias such as Margaret Atwood have suc-
ceeded in finding adequate literary forms to express what is hard to imagine and
even harder to describe. Critical eco-dystopias such as Atwood’s MaddAddam tril-
ogy are a “vital contribution to the cultural discourse on sustainability” because
“such works make important cultural interventions that must be accounted for
in any discussion of ecological sustainability” (Weik von Mossner 2018: 22,
Chapter 15).

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and sustainability

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy consists of three novels, Oryx and Crake
(2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), all of which deal
222 Gabriele Rippl
with issues central to our posthuman age. She speaks of her eco-feminist trilogy
as “speculative fiction” and not of science fiction, because it deals with “things
that really could happen” (Atwood 2011: 6). The novels are based on multiper-
spectivism and present male and female human as well as posthuman protago-
nists, the vegetarian, non-aggressive Crakers. The setting of the three novels is
an American post-catastrophic, post-pandemic society of the twenty-first cen-
tury characterized by extreme social inequalities, alleged bio-scientific advances,
eugenics and cloning. The story world is characterized by an intensified form of
late capitalism and a corrupt totalitarian regime of technological corporations
that “rule the post-ecocide world, divided into communities of the wealthy and
the ‘pleeblands’ ” (Ferreira 2015: 44) through “their collective security arm, the
CorpSeCorps” (Atwood 2014: xiii). Atwood convincingly describes the temper-
ate northern hemisphere in the grip of brutal weather conditions such as a merci-
less burning sun and daily thunderstorms. At the same time, Atwood negotiates
“the overall ethical question what it means to be human” (Mohr 2015: 285) and
discusses the role of science, religion, storytelling and the visual arts in a post-
pandemic world.

Sustainability – eco-ekphrasis – descriptive ethics

The theoretical backdrop against which I develop my ideas of eco-ekphrasis in
twentieth- and twenty-first-century Anglophone literature is a concept I call
‘descriptive ethics.’ In the late 1980s, literary scholars began to develop the con-
cept of ‘narrative ethics’ as an important new field of research.4 Among other
things, they investigated literature’s role in implementing cultural and ethical
values. When literary critics speak of ‘narrative ethics’ in connection with liter-
ary texts, they do not do so from a normative point of view. Rather, they analyze
how morally demanding situations are presented and negotiated aesthetically in
narrative texts. Presenting alternative worlds and views on alterity, literary texts
remain open to virtually endless interpretations, allowing the reader to make
their own ethical and moral judgement, instead of prescribing a specific one.
Since the ethics imbedded in the narratives focus on questions of communica-
tion, relations, motivations, principles, preferences and emotions in individuals
and communities, it helps to sharpen people’s awareness of their own actions.
This includes their feelings of responsibility for their environment.
What has not been addressed properly in the long debate on narrative ethics
is literature’s ‘descriptive ethics’ (Rippl 2015a). This is an environmental ethics
whose focus lies no longer exclusively on the human and its human other but is
interested also in non-human nature. My use of the term descriptive ethics varies
from its usage in philosophy, where it may also be referred to as comparative eth-
ics and is an empirical study of people’s beliefs about morality. It contrasts with
normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people
ought to act. Due to its principal interest in humans and autonomous subjects,
pragmatic and humanist strands of ethics have been criticized as being out of step
with the “new awareness of nature” (Zapf 2009: 853). This awareness is part and
 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis 223
parcel of the move away from “the universalist, subject-centered, and exclusionary
anthropocentric bias of traditional ethics” (Zapf 2009: 854). Emmanuel Levinas,
Jacques Derrida and Serenella Iovino (2010) have suggested new ways of thinking
and speaking in non-anthropocentric ways, while Thomas Claviez (2006), start-
ing from Levinas’s ethics of radical otherness, has demonstrated how literature’s
aesthetic mode has a special power in representing this new ecologically oriented
ethics that includes the non-human world. What interests me is how literature,
with the help of descriptions of nature and descriptions of ecological works of art,
evokes ecologically threatened environments, thus raising questions akin to what
researchers in ethics call an ecocentric ethics. Since readers’ emotional and ethi-
cal involvement depends very much on descriptive techniques which mediate
environmental issues, the way catastrophes such as nuclear fallout and climate
change induced tsunamis are described is key. Recently, scholars like Alexa Weik
von Mossner (2017) have drawn on research in cognitive narratology, cognitive
cultural studies (Zunshine 2010) and neuroscience to explain how “cultural texts
influence their readers’ perceptions of sustainability”, because these approaches
“give insight into the ways in which eco-dystopian fiction allows readers to expe-
rience not only mentally, but also on the physical level what it is like to live in an
unsustainable future environment” (Weik von Mossner 2018: 195, Chapter 15).
By presenting readers with a dilemma, “cultural texts” engage them affectively
and cognitively. The engagement is particularly strong when a first person narra-
tor relates their experiences from his/her subjective position (Weik von Mossner
2018: 200, Chapter 15).5 Weik von Mossner’s analysis of the protagonist’s style
of narration in Octavia Butler’s eco-dystopian novel Parable of the Sower (1993)
is productive. I, however, will take a different approach and focus on the descrip-
tive features of The Year of the Flood and on the way Atwood employs the showing
mode opposed to the telling mode. By engaging with close readings of literary
descriptions of severely degraded environments, social wastelands and ekphrases
of ecological works of art depicting precarious environments, I hope to shift some
attention to a non-anthropocentric protagonist in Atwood’s novel, namely non-
human nature. Atwood’s novel relies on rhetorical tools such as vivid and emo-
tionally charged description, in order to immerse the readers in the fictive world
it presents, to invite them to imagine what life under a totalitarian regime and in
a post-epidemic, environmentally degraded world is like, and to thus make the
connection back to the unsustainability of present-day life.
What, then, is description? It is the less recognized stepsister of narration and,
as a text type, has not been theorized as extensively. While ‘narratology’ is an
established field of research, ‘descriptology’ does not exist, even though theo-
retical debates on the art of description and its potential to create presence and
evidence have a long tradition, starting in antiquity (Halsall 1992, Rippl 2005).
Rhetoricians of late antiquity studied description using terms such as evidentia or
descriptio in Latin and ekphrasis or hypotyposis in Greek (Webb 2009). Description
was considered a mode of speaking with the capability of bringing absent things,
places and persons before the listener’s inner eye by aiming at enargeia, a tech-
nique that produces evidentia and presence through a lively, precise and detailed
224 Gabriele Rippl
verbal depiction. According to Quintilian (1977, vol. 2, Part I, VI: 2, 32, 434),
such enargetic descriptions are able to rouse the listener’s emotions by making
her/him a quasi-eyewitness to the things described (Rippl 2015b). Enargeia as
a device of detailing and amplifying description enhances evidentia and enables
writers not only to reach their recipients’ minds, i.e. their rational thinking, but
also their emotions. While description was extremely important in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century literature – for instance in realist novels – influential
modern critics such as Gérard Genette have reduced description to the role of a
maid to narration (ancilla narratienis, Genette 1976: 6) and consider the descrip-
tive mode nothing but a marginal ornament. Likewise, classical narratology has
understood description as secondary and derivative, i.e. as a mere pause in narra-
tion, which interrupts the plot. Georg Lukács’s 1936 essay “Narrate or Describe”
(2005), is still a classic with its warning that novels replete with detailed and
extended descriptions turn into static, monotonous still lifes. However, more
recently critics such as Harold F. Mosher (1991)6 and Ruth Ronen (1997) have
suggested that description and narration are not to be conceived as an opposi-
tional pair for the very reason that description often triggers narrative impulses
and narrative elements may serve description. Even more recently, David Her-
man has underlined this overlap between narrative and description: he refers
to category gradience and other prototypical features shared by description and
narrative (2008: 451–452). Thus, when I speak of descriptive ethics, it is not my
intention to pit it against narrative ethics. Rather, I want to highlight the – less
recognized – importance of description in ecological fiction.
The first example of a description of nature is taken from The Year of the Flood:
even after the pandemic and its brutal consequences, descriptions often utilize the
pastoral mode: “All around her is a sweet scent – the tall clover’s in bloom, the Queen
Anne’s lace, the lavender and marjoram and lemon balm, self-seeded. The field
hums with pollinators: bumblebees, shining wasps, iridescent beetles. The sound
is lulling” (Atwood 2010: 327). Even though the air is much clearer, “now that
man-made pollution has ceased” (Atwood 2010: 371) and the “leaves on the
overhanging trees are covered with tiny droplets that shine in the strengthening
pink light. Everything looks so fresh, as if newly created” (Atwood 2010: 383).
It is Toby, one of the novel’s female protagonists, who presents these pastoral
descriptions, which are pitted against those of the man-made wasteland, testify-
ing to violence, destruction and death. This is the case when Toby has to leave
the safe haven of what used to be a spa where she has lived since the pandemic
struck. When she sees shoes lying in the streets, she keeps telling herself to look
away, “[n]ot to think about shoes. Not to think about the mouldering handbag
she’s just glimpsed nearby” (Atwood 2010: 326). Trash clutters the streets, but
“[i]t was the small normal things that bothered me the most. Somebody’s old diary,
with the words melting off the pages. The hats. The shoes – they were worse than
the hats, and it was worse if there were two shoes the same. The kids’ toys. The
strollers minus the babies” (Atwood 2010, 338). Toby and her friends find “bun-
dles of rags and bones. ‘Ex-people,’ said Croze. They were dried out and picked
over, but I didn’t like the eyeholes. And the teeth – mouths look a lot worse
 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis 225
without lips” (Atwood 2010: 339). This gruesome description of the remains of
human beings is topped by other haunting views. When Toby and Ren, another
female protagonist, find their friend Oates hanging from a tree, Ren’s description
reads like an ekphrasis of plate 39 Grande hazaña! Con muertos! (A heroic feat!
With dead men!) of the well-known The Disasters of War series by Francisco Goya.
These prints depict the atrocities of war7 and were taken up by Jake and Dinos
Chapman in their installation Great Deeds against the Dead (1994). For American
readers, Atwood’s description might also evoke iconic lynching photographs of
tortured black bodies dangling from trees:8

We smell the thing before we see it. ‘Don’t scream,’ says Toby.
This is what the crows have been cawing about. ‘Oh no,’ I whisper.
It’s Oates. He’s hanging from a tree, twisting slowly. The rope is passed
under his arms and knotted at the back. He doesn’t have any clothes on
except for his socks and shoes. This makes it worse, because he’s less like a
statue that way. His head is thrown back, too far because his throat has been
cut, crows flap around his head, scrabbling for footholds. His blond hair’s
all matted. There’s a gaping wound in his back, like those on the bodies
they used to dump in vacant lots after the kidney theft. But these kidneys
wouldn’t have been stolen for transplants.
(Atwood 2010: 375–376)

It is precisely this pitting of pastoral and bucolic nature against such utterly dis-
turbing images of horror – birds picking on the maimed and tortured body that
used to be Oates and the reference to cannibalism – that makes Atwood’s descrip-
tions so effective and powerful. While works of art might help the onlooker to
distance her-/himself from the gruesome scene depicted, this is not an option for
Ren and her friends: the illusion that they deal with a statue is destroyed by the
socks and shoes of which Oates’s body has not been stripped. What is more, the
description activates other images of atrocities and even chains of such images
in our cultural memory and has thus the potential to intensify the graphic nature
of the scene.
While the quote above functions very much like an ekphrasis of an existing
Goya print or lynching photograph, there are also additional ekphrases, what I call
‘eco-ekphrases’. These are ekphrases of (fictive or existing) works of art dedicated to
ecological topics. Generally speaking, ekphrasis is a special case of literary descrip-
tion, namely, of a work of art. That is to say, it is a second-degree, often highly
self-reflexive, mode of representation (cf. Heffernan 1993) which also serves as a
space for poetological negotiations. As a textual strategy “for eliciting highlighted
visualization” it serves the management of attention and reinforces “comprehen-
sion, memory and emotional response” (Brosch 2015: 343). Specifically, however,
Atwood’s eco-ekphrases discuss ecological issues and take on important cultural-
critical, ethical and socio-political functions. In contemporary Anglophone lit-
erary texts, ekphrases come in many shapes and are sometimes accompanied by
pictures. In Atwood’s trilogy, however, all ekphrases are pictureless, a feature they
226 Gabriele Rippl
share with the ancient variety. As elaborated earlier, for ancient rhetoricians the
term ekphrasis referred to any description that was ‘enargetic’ (cf. Webb 2009),
and enargetic descriptions – that is, detailed, lively and often extended ones –
are still an important feature of many contemporary texts. However, the reader
often also encounters relatively short, “stenographic” ekphrases which are mere
references and non-representational traces, instead of fully fledged descriptions
of images.9 In Atwood’s trilogy, ekphrasis’ ethical and cultural-critical functions
are pivotal. These functions are intrinsically linked to ekphrasis because, for one,
ever since John Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn”, ekphrasis has been closely linked
to questions of elegy and death (Kennedy 2012: 5–6) and, second, ekphrasis is a
mode of writing which reflects on questions of (re-)representation and showcases
epistemological frameworks and cultural hierarchies (Rippl 2015b). Atwood nego-
tiates these issues and employs ekphrasis as a means to halt the narration in order
to capture and focus the reader’s attention on environmental conditions.
In The Year of the Flood, Amanda Payne, a girl from the rough pleeblands,
becomes an installation artist. Her friend Ren explains that Amanda does “art
involving Creatures or parts of Creatures arranged outdoors on a giant scale”
(Atwood 2010: 299) and produces an extended ekphrasis of one of Amanda’s art
installations with the title ‘The Living Word’:

Then I called Amanda. [. . .] Amanda was in the Wisconsin desert, putting

together one of the Bioart installations she’s been doing now that she’s into
what she calls the art caper. It was cow bones this time. Wisconsin covered
with cow bones, ever since the big drought ten years ago when they’d found
it cheaper to butcher the cows there rather than shipping them out – the
ones that hadn’t died on their own. She had a couple of fuel-cell front-end
loaders and two illegal Tex-Mexican refugees she’d hired, and she was drag-
ging the cow bones into a pattern so big it could only be seen from above:
huge capital letters, spelling out a word. Later she’d cover it in pancake syrup
and wait until the insect life was all over it, and then take videos of it from
the air, to put into galleries. She liked to watch things move and grow and
disappear.
Amanda always got the money to do her art capers. She was kind of famous
in the circles that went in for culture. They weren’t big circles, but they were
rich circles. This time she had a deal with a top CorpSeCorps guy – he’d get
her up in the helicopter, to take the videos. [. . .]
Her Wisconsin thing was part of a series called The Living Word – she said
for a joke that it was inspired by the Gardeners because they’d repressed us
so much about writing things down. She’d begun with one-letter words – I
and A and O – and then done two-letter words like It, and then three letters,
and four, and five. Now she was up to six. They’d been written in all different
materials, including fish guts and toxic-spill killed birds and toilets from the
building demolition sites filled with used cooking oil and set on fire. Her new
work was kaputt. When she’d told me that earlier, she’d said she was sending
a message.
 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis 227
“Who to?” I’d said. “The people who go to galleries? The Mr. Rich and
Bigs?”
“That’s who,” she’d said. “And the Mrs. Rich and Bigs. Them too.”
“You’ll get in trouble, Amanda.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “They won’t understand it.”
The project was going fine, she said: it had rained, the desert flowers were
in bloom, there were a lot of insects, which was good for when she’d pour on
the syrup. She already had the K done, and she was halfway through the A.
But the Tex-Mexicans were getting bored.
(Atwood 2010: 56–57)

What used to be the green pastures of Wisconsin, America’s dairy producing

state, has been turned into a desert strewn with cow bones. Amanda’s “Bioart
installations” (Atwood 2010: 56) link art and nature through a kind of temporary
“cryptographic bio-writing” (Mohr 2015: 295), sending out her environmental
message, “kaputt” (Atwood 2010: 76), which reflects the state the planet is in
and thus functions as a memento-mori. The description of Amanda’s work of art
also refers to illegal refugees, matching with the readers’ life-world. Art historians
differentiate between land/environmental art and bio art, even if the borderline
between the two is not always clear-cut. They tend to reserve the term bio art for
laboratory art practices, such as that of Eduardo Kac, where live tissues, bacteria
and living organisms are used and often modified (cf. Hildebrandt 2011). Carsten
Höller’s SOMA installation is another example of bio art. According to the dif-
ferentiation, Amanda Payne’s monumental sculptures do not count as bio art,
falling rather into the category of installative land/environmental art (reminding
readers perhaps of Robert Smithson’s desert land art works).
Another installation from Amanda’s outdoor landscape series spells “words out
in giant letters, using bioforms to make the words appear and then disappear, just
like the words she used to do with ants and syrup when we were kids. Now she
said, ‘I’m up to the four-letter words.’ And I said, ‘You mean the dirty ones, like
shit?’ And she laughed and said, ‘Worse ones than that.’ And I said, ‘You mean
the c-word and the f-word?’ and she said, ‘No. Like love’ ” (Atwood 2010: 304).
Amanda’s four-letter word installation ‘Love’ is reminiscent of American artist
Robert Indiana’s sculpture LO/VE (1970, displayed at the Indianapolis Museum
of Art), originally done in COR-TEN steel, but since reproduced in a variety
of formats, media (painting, polychrome aluminium) and languages. Amanda’s
‘love’ installation is again brought alive via the remains of dead animals – bones,
fish guts, toxic-spill killed birds – to be eaten up and disappear. The fact that
‘love’ has become a four-letter word comments on the ‘kaputt’ state of human
relations in the social wasteland of the not so ‘brave new world’.
Such ekphrastic passages invite the reader to think about the role Atwood
ascribes to the arts and to storytelling in the face of climate change, unsustain-
able lifestyles and aggressive consumerism. One important function of Amanda’s
monumental land or environmental art installations is to bring nature and cul-
ture into close contact; they are no longer separate entities, but are intimately
228 Gabriele Rippl
connected, thus overcoming one of the central oppositional pairs of Western
philosophy. Amanda’s bio art produces an eco-ethical comment on the state the
planet earth is in – even if this comment is not of a durable nature. There is also a
critical note on the mechanism of the art world, after all Amanda’s video-making
and photograph-taking of her monumental installations is only made possible by
the financial support of a corrupt CorpSeCorps patron who has earned his money
unethically.

Conclusion
Atwood’s descriptions of unsustainable environments and ekphrases of disturb-
ing ecological works of art provide a space for re-imagining what future human
life on a destroyed planet could look like. Her trilogy returns time and again to
ethical questions. According to Gerry Canavan, Atwood’s “postmodern ecologi-
cal jeremiads” call for a radical change to “our social relations and anti-ecolog-
ical lifestyles” (Canavan 2012: 155). At the end of the last novel of the trilogy,
MaddAddam, Atwood sketches a new, sustainable life style and makes imagina-
tive room for peaceful visions of community, including interspecies contracts.
This allows her readers to experience some utopian hope, thus brightening the
bleak apocalyptic setting of her trilogy. By bringing cultural and biogenetic per-
spectives into contact, Atwood demonstrates how important imaginative activi-
ties such as the visual arts, story telling, myth-making, speculative narratives and
religion are, not only for the survival of humanity, but also for the survival of all
other species and indeed the entire biosphere. We can conclude that her novels,
with their numerous descriptions of non-human nature and their eco-ekphrases,
contribute to sustainability in important ways: for one, they present sets of cul-
tural patterns to express sentiments, propositions or judgements on ecological
questions. Second, they introduce ecological concepts into the social imaginary
by allowing the audience to emotionally experience alternative ways of thinking
and living. Third, they thus form a type of narrative and descriptive ethics, ena-
bling and challenging audiences to reflect on questions of ecologically sustainable
technologies and paradigms. The fact that Atwood’s novels have received much
public attention and acclaim demonstrates, fourth, the possibilities of cultural
sustainability: literary prizes and acclaim enhance public (medial) recognition of
the problems to which the novels attend. And, five, while putting on stage many
ethical conflicts, overall Atwood’s trilogy has a didactic impetus: in spite of her
polyphonic storytelling, Atwood in her emotionally cogent tale sends out her
ecological imperative – ‘You must change your lifestyles!’

Notes
1 This text has profited immensely from discussions with colleagues and friends: I would
like to thank Toni Hildebrandt, Torsten Meireis, Hubert Zapf, Johanna Hartmann,
Christopher Schliephake, Peter Schneemann and Edward Wright for their insightful
comments on the first draft of this chapter. My thanks also go to all members of Hubert
 Sustainability, eco-ekphrasis 229
Zapf’s research colloquium at the University of Augsburg and the attendants of the
2017 Kosmos Summer School “Religion, Sustainability, and Politics” at the Humboldt
University Berlin.
2 Hubert Zapf’s concept of literary ecology, which he developed in a range of publications
over the last 15 years (2002, 2006, 2008a, 2008b, 2016), is an indispensible attempt to
demonstrate literature’s importance and central position when it comes to questions of
sustainability. It highlights the significant ways in which literature and literary studies
can contribute to a much-needed transdisciplinary dialogue.
3 ‘Social imaginary’ is a term coined by Charles Taylor. It consists of narratives, images
and ideas which are shared by many people and enable social practices (Taylor 2004:
23–24).
4 Cf. Nussbaum (1995); Joisten (2007); Mieth (2007); Grabes (2008); Claviez (2008);
Zapf (2008a, 2008c).
5 Characters are “of central importance for our understanding of the story-world, and
this is particularly true in the case of first-person narration . . . the readers’ imaginative
world-building entirely depends on this one experiencing agent” (Weik von Mossner
2018: 200, Chapter 15). The readers’ experience of the environment and worsening
environmental conditions are filtered through the protagonist’s consciousness. Unreli-
able narration in Octavia Butler, since first-person narrator is highly emotional, very
personal, even intimate accounts.
6 Mosher introduced the terms “narratized descriptions” and “descriptized narrations” to
demonstrate that pure description and pure narration do not exist (1991: 426).
7 The Disasters of War (Spanish: Los desastres de la guerra) is a series of 82 prints created
between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746–
1828). Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art
historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the wars taking place
during his lifetime.
8 The well-known lynching song “Strange Fruit” has these lyrics: “Southern trees bear
strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black bodies swinging in the
southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” Readers of Toni Morri-
son’s novel Beloved (1987) will remember Sethe recalling the sights of bodies of lynched
black boys hanging from trees.
9 With regard to contemporary literature in English, it makes sense to consider as ekphra-
sis any explicit or covert verbal/literary reference to images, including descriptive-static
ekphrases and those charged with narrative impulses, whether concise and abbreviated
(cf. Yacobi 1995).

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18 Ecogames
Playing to save the planet
Joost Raessens

Introduction
Today, you are not here as Hamburg citizens and theatre visitors, but as delegates
of 196 countries. Every one of you represents a country and its wide range of inter-
ests. It depends on you, if we – at the end of this evening – reach an agreement
that enables us to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius.

These were the opening words of the World Climate Conference (2015, see Fig-
ure 18.1), organized by the German theatre company Rimini Protokoll. Thea-
tre visitors were invited to participate in a LARP – a live action role-playing
game – and play the roles of delegates of different countries that had to negotiate
with each other. The ultimate goal was to have your delegation contribute in
a significant way to finding a solution for climate change. These negotiations
were alternated with sessions with climate change experts in which participants
were given information while they personally experienced the consequences of
climate change – such as rising temperatures (Schipper 2015).
As this example shows, contemporary game and play practices – digital as well
as non-digital – are increasingly used not only to entertain, but also to make a
difference on an individual, community, and/or societal level (Raessens 2014,
2016). These so-called ‘social impact games’ or ‘games for change’ deal with
themes such as war and violence (This War of Mine 2014), poverty (Poverty Is
Not a Game 2010), and refugee issues (A Breathtaking Journey 2015). Increasingly,
games encourage support, sympathy, and action for a variety of ecological issues.
Ecogames not only seek to contribute to ecological thought but also to turn play-
ers into ecological citizens. Global ecological citizenship is defined as “including
the right to a non-polluted environment and the responsibility both to refrain
from harming the environment and to participate in its preservation and reha-
bilitation” (MacGregor 2014: 114).
In this chapter, I argue that ecogames seem to be able to overcome the critique
of researchers like Per Espen Stoknes (2015) that conventional climate commu-
nication does not always work optimally, or, worse still, can even be counter-pro-
ductive. The most important reason for this failure is that the cultural dimensions
of the climate change debate are not taken sufficiently into consideration, a
 Ecogames 233

Figure 18.1 World Climate Conference

Source: Benno Tobler

problem ecogames try to counter. I will first briefly discuss the psychological
climate paradox and how to solve it. Then I will discuss three complementary
strategies to make climate communication more effective, and three important
properties of games for change that enable them to facilitate social change. Next,
I will present a conceptual model of social change that takes into consideration
the micro, meso, and macro levels of social impact that ecogames are aiming for.
The last section contains my conclusions. Throughout the text, I will illustrate
my argument with short examples of ecogames (cf. Raessens 2017).

The psychological climate paradox and how to solve it

If we want to answer the question if, and if so how, ecogames can be used to engage
citizens in the issue of climate change, we first need to improve our understanding
of the reasons why conventional climate communication does not always work
optimally, or, worse still, can even be counter-productive (erecting barriers), as
well as what we should do to overcome these barriers (solutions). Next, we need
to understand what strategies ecogames should use to make communication work
(strategies) and the characteristics of ecogames that would make them suitable to
overcome these barriers (properties); see Table 18.1.
Three barriers might cause conventional climate communications to lead to
a state of denial. The first barrier arises when global warming is framed as being
234 Joost Raessens
Table 18.1 Barriers, solutions, properties, and strategies

Barriers Solutions Strategies and properties

(this section) (this section) (next two sections)

distant in space and time near, human, personal, strategies: moral ideas, global
urgent citizenship, opposing
doom scenario opportunities, hope cultural world views
–––––––––
not compatible with our in line with our values properties: persuasion
values (procedural rhetoric,
narratives), social use, the
frame of play
Source: Joost Raessens

distant in space and time. For the majority of us living in the West, the impact of
global warming is still relatively far away, both in time and space. That is why Rob
Nixon refers to climate change as ‘slow violence’: “A violence that occurs gradu-
ally and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time
and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all”
(2011: 2).1 Research, for example, shows that only a minority of the Dutch popu-
lation believe that fossil fuel has a big impact on the climate; and only a very small
minority see energy transition as an urgent challenge, especially when compared
with issues such as the economy and migration (SCP 2016). The second barrier
arises when global warming is framed as a doom scenario, an apocalypse-movie
mode without any thinkable practical solutions, which generates a depressing wish
to avoid the topic. Energy transition is indeed not ‘top of mind’ for the Dutch (SCP
2016). The third barrier arises when global warming is framed in such a way that it
is not compatible with our values or our sense of identity. Dutch citizens who are
interested in energy transition are so, not so much because of climate change as
because of the idea of energy independency, the stable delivery of energy, and the
economic growth that could result from such a transition (SCP 2016).
To make climate communication productive, we need to turn these three bar-
riers into solutions. First, climate change must be framed as being near, human,
personal, and urgent. Second, climate messages must be framed in a positive,
hopeful way, providing opportunities for consistent and visible action (Popper
1999; Chomsky 2017). Third, climate change must be framed in such a way that
solutions are in line with our values. As I discuss elsewhere, people ‘play’ their
identity: people play their values, they play on the basis of who they are, how they
understand themselves, the values they want to live by, and who and what they
want to become (Raessens 2015).

Strategies to make climate communication work

On the basis of these three barriers with their corresponding solutions, I propose
three complementary strategies to make climate communication more effective.
 Ecogames 235
Climate communication must activate and reinforce progressive and positive
moral ideas, it must stimulate a post-liberal and global form of citizenship, but
it must also – paradoxically – take into account the rhetorical wars over climate
change.

Moral ideas: progressive and optimistic

In order to increase our understanding of how ecogames frame climate change,
it is productive to use Lakoff’s distinction between conservative and progressive
moral systems (cf. Flanagan and Nissenbaum 2014). The two systems represent
contrasting ideas about environmentalism, which is defined by Lakoff as follows:
“The natural world is being destroyed and it is a moral imperative to preserve and
reconstitute as much of it as possible as soon as possible” (2010: 80). Whereas the
conservative system includes a number of ideas that work against environmen-
talism – such as nature being there for human use and exploitation, a let-the-
market-decide ideology, and the idea that making a profit and economic growth
are goals in themselves (Lakoff 2010: 74–75),– the progressive system includes
various ideas that support environmentalism, such as empathy linking us with
other beings and other things, responsibility for taking care of yourself and others,
and the ethic of excellence calling on us to improve the environment (2010: 76).
This is in line with Stoknes’ argument: “We ought to . . . protect and compas-
sionately care for ourselves, current and future generations, and the other beings
we share the planet with” (2015: 118).

Citizenship: post-liberal and global

Stoknes emphasizes that we must act as social citizens, not individuals (2015: 91).
Faced with worldwide problems like global warming, pollution, and energy tran-
sition, environmental change can only be envisioned when four conditions are
met. First, green citizens, post-liberal politics, and environmental social justice
movements need to mutually reinforce each other on a local and global scale.
Second, green citizens need to behave pro-environmentally and participate in
public debate. Third, post-liberal politics need to regulate markets and indus-
tries across borders via more stringent environmental legislation. And fourth,
environmental social justice movements need to carry out ecological change on
a global scale through group action. Changes in personal attitudes and/or behav-
iour (think of green lifestyles and ethical consumption) should strengthen socio-
political solutions, not replace them (Barendregt and Jaffe 2014; Klein 2014;
Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter 2009).

Opposing cultural world views

One important thing we need to realize is that culture shapes the climate change
debate (Hoffman 2015). The reason why so many people avoid or deny the sci-
entific information and consensus on climate change is rooted in our culture and
236 Joost Raessens
psychology. We all use cognitive filters – that reflect our cultural identity – to make
sense of scientific reasoning. We are only able to go from a scientific consensus
to a social consensus on climate change when we, somehow, bridge the cultural
schism between progressives and conservatives, when we present and frame climate
change solutions in ways that are consistent with both world views. We can do
so by appealing to “ethical first principles” that bridge the opposition of left and
right (Hoffman 2015: 64), or by taking into account the value patterns of different
communities by changing messages accordingly, for example, by focusing on how
climate change solutions are influencing people’s immediate vicinity (such as their
neighbourhood), are offering new job opportunities (green economic growth), and
are making life less expensive (savings on energy and costs) and safer (energy inde-
pendency, the stable delivery of energy, safe water) (cf. Motivaction 2013).
As we will see in the rest of this chapter, ecogames try to overcome the barri-
ers of conventional climate communication by focusing on environmental prob-
lems that are near, human, personal, and urgent, offering hopeful opportunities to
solve them, framing climate change – intentionally or unintentionally – in such a
way that they recognize people’s different world views and beliefs systems. These
ecogames make use of certain game-specific properties, three of which I will dis-
cuss in the next section.

Properties of ecogames
In this section I will discuss the persuasive power of games, the social aspects of
gaming (multiplayer, social game play), and the framing of games as a playful
activity.

Persuasion: narratives and procedural rhetoric

To understand how persuasiveness is embedded in ecogames’ design, I will focus
on the narratives they portray – or allow the player to develop – and the rules, or
the formal structure of the game, describing how a game functions.

Narratives
In his study of persuasive games, Ruud Jacobs (2017) refers to the importance
of character-based narrative persuasion. Research done on screen-based media
in general, such as film, television, or games, shows that attitude changes in
users – leading, for example, to civic engagement – are more likely to occur when
they identify with role models or protagonists who go through the same stages of
change (on screen) as these users are supposed to do. Narratives must also fos-
ter creativity: “There must be room for humour, emotion, visualization, point of
view, climax, surprise, plot, drama. Above all, make it personal and personified”
(Stoknes 2015: 148).
Condensed into approximately six hours of playing time, Walden, a Game
(2017, see Figure 18.2) challenges players to experience how Henry Thoreau
 Ecogames 237

Figure 18.2 Walden, a Game

Source: USC Game Innovation Lab

lived in the woods of Walden Pond in the summer of 1845. By using a first-person
point of view, the game embodies Thoreau’s own words: “Could a greater miracle
take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” (2016:
8). The game makes Thoreau’s classical work Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854)
accessible for a generation of gamers and is a tribute to this precursor – born
200 years ago on 12 July 1817 – who is a key source of inspiration for today’s eco-
logical movement. Drawing on Thoreau’s life story, Walden, a Game lets players
reflect upon how it is to live in harmony with nature.

Procedural rhetoric
According to Ian Bogost (2007), persuasive games have the unique capability of
employing what he calls ‘procedural rhetoric’ to address serious topics, such as
global warming. The goal, argument, and meaning of a game – for example sup-
porting environmentalism – can be found in its formal system, more specifically
in the properties of the rules. Players are presumed to surrender to the seduction
of a game by playing it as suggested and being guided by the rules. Ecogames influ-
ence players through the moral and political values expressed in their rule-based
interaction.2
DTV Consultants and the Rotterdam-based multimedia company Organiq
developed From5to4, an online game world for employers and employees. This
game, which was used in 2017 in nine different countries, challenges employees
to reduce congestion levels and make their commuting more sustainable by leav-
ing their car at home for one day in the week. On that day, employees can choose
238 Joost Raessens
to use public transport or their bike, but they can also choose to work from home.
The smarter their travel and work choices, the more points they can earn. To
stimulate employees to participate, a competitive element is built into the rules
of the game: teams, departments, and offices compete against each other.

Social use
Stoknes emphasizes the use of the power of social game play. We should not only
use one-to-many communication models (such as television documentaries),
but also interactive many-to-many communication models (such as meetups,
whether online or offline). This is because group behaviour can be a powerful way
to influence individual people’s behaviour: “Being part of an eco-network is one
of the biggest determinants of pro-environmental behavior” (Stoknes 2015: 105).
As research shows, this social aspect of media use – known as ‘social facilitation,’
either online or offline in a physical setting – can enrich reflection on the topic
and positively affect persuasion or learning (Neys and Jansz 2010).

Welcome to headquarters. From here, the superheroes DT, X2 and GMAN fight
Toxico, a company producing pesticides and only aiming for money and power
at the expense of plants and animals. To stop Toxico, new superheroes are
needed. “Is this maybe something for you? We really need you to help us out.”

This appeal appears at the start of LOI Kidzz ThuisTrainer (‘LOI Kidzz Home-
Trainer’), an online course that has been available since 2014 and was developed
by the Dutch online school LOI Kiddz. By means of minigames, thousands of
11- and 12-year-old children jointly practice the material for their final examina-
tion. This form of ecological education is a form of stealth learning. Children
prepare in a playful manner for their final examination while learning how they
can become fighters to save the planet by carrying out several environmental
missions.

The frame of play

Dutch play theorist Johan Huizinga presents the notion of ‘play’ as just pretend-
ing, as “make-believe” (1955: 25) – and for that reason as inconsequential to
real life. We could call this the ‘as-if-ness’ character of games. Framing a game
as ‘play’ allows an individual to enter specific realms of the imagination; it facili-
tates “role-play in contexts that would not be feasible, appropriate, or desirable in
non-playful action” (Klimmt 2009: 253). This frame of play is characteristic for
almost all ecogames, allowing players to try out different roles and scenarios and
gaining insight into what consequences – negative and/or positive – they might
have in real life.
According to Jane McGonigal (2011), these ecogame worlds are better than
the real world because they entail clear, motivating, and often epic missions that
can be completed in a practical and satisfactory way. Players feel a great sense of
 Ecogames 239
solidarity because they have to collaborate to reach their goals. Making use of
this power of games, McGonigal designs so-called ‘alternate reality games’ (rather
than games in which players escape reality). These are games that improve the
real lives of people and aim at solving real-world issues, such as in the domain
of climate change. One of these games is World Without Oil, an experiment that
took place in the year 2007. Players had to role-play their real lives in an alter-
nate reality in which they had ended up in a world without oil. The participants
and their communities dealt with food and gasoline shortages by growing their
own food, to diminish commuter traffic and to generate their own energy. The
game strengthened the awareness of our oil dependency and stimulated the indi-
viduals and communities to come up with their own solutions for living in a
world without oil.

Ecogames and social change

Impact is a shared goal of every social impact game and can occur at three dif-
ferent levels: a micro level (individual cognition and behaviour), a meso level
(organizations, groups and communities, such as schools, companies, and neigh-
bourhoods), and a macro level (politics, policy agendas, a shift in public dis-
course) (Stokes 2016, cf. Burak and Parker 2017). The problem is that there is
more and more research on how games can facilitate social change on an individ-
ual level (Jacobs 2017), but that meso- and macro-level perspectives are often not
taken into consideration (Klimmt 2009). To be able to understand how games
can impact action on a micro, meso, and macro level, I will present a model for
the encouragement of sustainable action.3 This model makes it possible to under-
stand how these three different levels of social change interact with each other
and what role ecogames could play (see Figure 18.3).
The goal of ecogames is to encourage sustainable action, be it on a micro-indi-
vidual or meso-organizational level. Learning, reflective, and persuasive games
try to inform players, raise their awareness, and reinforce pro-environmental
attitudes and behaviour, at an individual level (Walden, a Game) and/or organi-
zational level, where the organizations can be schools (LOI Kidzz ThuisTrainer),
companies (From5to4), or neighbourhoods (World Without Oil), as we can see in
the following example.
The Dutch water company Vitens approached the game production studio
Grendel Games to develop the Wijk & Water Battle (‘Neighbourhood & Water
Battle’ 2015), a game where the goal is to save energy and costs by getting cus-
tomers to avoid peaks in water consumption by spreading their consumption
more evenly. The objective of the game was to provide participants with an
insight into their water and energy consumption, and ultimately to bring about
behaviour change. Children from two primary schools in different neighbour-
hoods of the Dutch city of Leeuwarden took part in a ‘battle’ for three months. In
the game, whimsical water creatures live in Leeuwarden’s water network. Their
tiny homes flood regularly because of the inhabitants’ intensive and peak water
consumption. The schoolchildren participating in the battle could prevent these
240 Joost Raessens

Sustainable
ac!on

Policy Social
making standards

Public
Poli!cal
agenda
agenda and
and
support
support

Figure 18.3 Model for the encouragement of sustainable action

Source: Joost Raessens

little creatures from drowning and thereby win the game by measuring their water
consumption with a smart metre and an app, and spreading and diminishing their
own water usage during the day – and preferably also the water usage of their fam-
ily members, friends, and neighbours. As they changed their real-world behav-
iour, the creatures in the game were faced with less flooding.
Ecogames can impact social standards as well, and by doing so, influence the
public agenda and support for political measures (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007).
To be able to do this, ecogames spread climate communication messages in col-
laboration with mass media and via large-scale and ambitious campaigns by
non-governmental environmental organizations such as Greenpeace. Collapsus-
Energy Risk Conspiracy (2010) was developed in collaboration with Dutch broad-
caster VPRO. The game was an online production engaging players – 200,000 in
the first few months after the launch of the game – with realistic future scenarios
 Ecogames 241
(2012–2025) about the expected energy crisis and the necessity of energy transi-
tion from fossil fuel to alternative energy sources.4
In their campaign Join the Rebellion and Turn VW Away From the Dark Side
(2011, see Figure 18.4), Greenpeace called on their sympathizers to protect
the planet in a playful way from Volkswagen (VW), a company resisting legal
measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. “Only a rebellion can stop
them – a mass of people from all across the globe – demanding that they change.
We need you to be part of that rebellion.”5 This Greenpeace campaign started
with a remake of a Volkswagen advertisement in which a boy in a Darth Vader
costume tried to start a Volkswagen Passat. The battle for sustainability is being
represented in this remake as the symbolic battle between the rebellion alliance
(representing Good) and Darth Vader and his storm troopers (representing Evil),
as if it is being played out in the Star Wars series. The Greenpeace activists dressed
up as Star Wars characters in an epic role-playing game to expose Volkswagen as
having been seduced by the Dark Side.
Ecogames also have an impact – directly or indirectly – on the political agenda
and support and policy making, for example in the domains of the economy and
technology. On a macro level, they can try to convey and let players experience
the incredible complexities and difficulties that UN climate conferences face
in assessing progress in climate change issues (World Climate Conference). On a
meso level, they can engage local residents and politicians and encourage their
participation in the circular economy (which is the aim of the Games for Cities

Figure 18.4 Join the Rebellion and Turn VW Away from the Dark Side
Source: Greenpeace
242 Joost Raessens

Figure 18.5 A Circular Amsterdam

Source: Games for Cities

project). To fulfil its ambition to become a circular economy, the city of Amster-
dam co-developed a playful environment called A Circular Amsterdam (2016, see
Tan 2017 and Figure 18.5). This city game invites the participants – possibly but
not necessarily real stakeholders in a specific neighbourhood of Amsterdam – to
assume the roles of producers, distributers, and consumers of specific consumer
products. Relationships between players that are established in the game inspired
real-world collaboration between the players involved. The game serves an edu-
cational function for those unfamiliar with the concept of the circular economy
while simultaneously enabling real stakeholders to explore the potential of col-
laborating with other businesses in a space where there are no real or lasting
consequences to their decisions and partnerships.

Conclusion
As a sub-category of games for change – or social impact games – ecogames try
to make a difference in a contested world order, its underlying normative dif-
ferences and conflicts. As we have seen in this chapter, ecogames try to have
micro, meso, and macro impacts in their own, game-specific ways. The exam-
ples I discussed in this chapter engage their players via the specific organization
of their content − using the power of narratives and procedural rhetoric – by
addressing and organizing collaborations between these players via the power
 Ecogames 243
of social game play mechanisms, and by framing their activities as ‘playing,’
making use of the power of make-believe. Together with other cultural products
such as literature (Buell 2005), theatre (Lavery 2016), film (Ingram 2004), and
installations (White 2014)6, ecogames can have a profound impact on peo-
ple’s world views, beliefs, and values. Academic research shows that ecogames,
provided that they are well designed and used, can inform players, can incite
players to cooperation, and can change or reinforce attitudes and behaviour.
The games mentioned in this chapter tell different stories and come up with
different solutions, each one of which can contribute to concrete improvements
in resolving the complex problem of climate change. Via careful considera-
tion or as a battle on a local or global level, ecogames are being played and
used by individual citizens, by social movements, by government agencies, and
by private enterprises. Ideally, changes in personal attitudes and behaviour on
a micro and meso level should reinforce social-political solutions on a macro
level rather than replace them.

Acknowledgments
This research is part of the project Persuasive gaming. From theory-based design
to validation and back, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific
Research (NWO; 2013–2018; project number 314–99–106). See www.persua-
sivegaming.nl.

Notes
1 This is of course not the case for those communities that are directly threatened by
global warming (Klein 2014; Lewis 2015), “particularly (though not exclusively) across
the so-called global South” (Nixon 2011: 4). The most visible impact of global warm-
ing in our everyday lives in the West is in extreme weather conditions, like heatwaves,
hurricanes, drought, wildfires, and floods.
2 The limits of procedural rhetoric are discussed by Sicart (2011, 2014).
3 This model was developed within the field of tobacco control research (Willemsen
2016: 15) and is analogous to a flywheel. Once the wheel is set in motion, the different
parts reinforce each other. The historical analogy of the ongoing shift from a scientific
to a social consensus in the debate on cigarette smoking and cancer has been made
before (cf. Hoffman 2015: 71–74).
4 The theoretical framework of Stoknes and Collapsus as a case study are dealt with more
extensively in Raessens (in press).
5 See www.greenpeace.org.
6 The Columbus Earth Center (Kerkrade, the Netherlands) has an installation that gives
larger audiences an impression of the Overview Effect. The Overview Effect is said
to have transformative power for sustainability thinking and social responsibility, see
columbusearththeater.nl.

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Part IV

Where do we go from here?

19 Conclusion
Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl

Lessons to be learned: the contribution of the humanities

and the social sciences
When looking at discourses on the role of culture in the quest for sustainable
development, the predominance of an instrumental understanding of culture and
cultural sustainability can hardly be overlooked. Instrumentality, however, can
play out in different ways. Culture may be understood as a fourth pillar of the sus-
tainability discourse inasmuch as it plays a basic role in the upholding of ecologi-
cal, social and economic sustainability: “If a society’s culture disintegrates, so will
everything else” (Hawkes 2001: 12). Public cultural policy as well as educational
programmes harness narrow understandings of ‘culture’, which refer mainly to
“art and creative activities” (Dessein et al. 2015: 29), in order to promote sus-
tainable development (Dessein et al. 2015: 30). A second way of understanding
culture instrumentally looks at its mediating function: “In terms of sustainabil-
ity’s three pillars, culture can be the way to balance competing or conflicting
demands and work through communication to give human and social meaning
to sustainable development” (Dessein et al. 2015: 30). A third way to conceive
of culture’s instrumentality for sustainable development is to see it as an imma-
terial basis for a sustainable society, i.e. as a comprehensive bundle of ideas and
attitudes furthering sustainable development: “A truly evolutionary culture, or an
eco-cultural civilisation, involves practicing a new understanding of the human
place in the world, and recognising that humans are an inseparable part of the
more-than-human world” (Dessein et al. 2015: 31). In these instrumental takes
on culture, “in order to promote the operationalization of culture in sustainability
research and policy” (Dessein and Soini 2016, 2) ‘cultural sustainability’ refers
ultimately to the possible function of cultural paradigms, practices and concepts
for promoting sustainable development or transformation.
However, matters are not that simple. As the contributions in this volume
show, culture has a dynamics of its own that is not easily harnessed to presup-
posed goals. Rather, cultural processes have a way of creating and recreating such
goals in ways that cannot be planned by policy makers – especially as such policy
makers are drenched in cultural conflicts themselves, as politician and diplomat
Michael Gerber’s depiction of the fate of the concept of cultural sustainability
250 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
in the international political sustainable development discourse clarifies: it is
exactly the lack of top-down ‘operationability’ that is one of the main obstacles
to the stronger political integration of the concept. Marius Christen, Peter Seele
and Lucas Zapf’s contribution points to that dynamics in presenting an overview
of the change that the sustainability paradigm has undergone concerning the
shape of the problems addressed and the solutions offered. Those dynamics are
not necessarily favourable to an instrumental approach, but need special atten-
tion, as Torsten Meireis contends in his description of culture as an agonal arena,
thus pointing to the contingencies of the interpretation and creation of cultural
traditions and social imaginaries. As Sacha Kagan demonstrates, cultural produc-
tion in the performing and visual arts transcends instrumentality for sustainable
development through the establishment of new approaches and methodologies,
thereby transforming the sustainability discourse as a whole. It is here that a
second meaning of cultural sustainability emerges, that takes these dynamics seri-
ously by addressing the sustainability of culture. This view differs from the fourth
column approach in that culture is not reduced to the arts and creativity sector, is
not understood as respect for heritage, nor seen as purely instrumental for sustain-
able development. Rather, it is understood as a sphere in which the sustainabil-
ity discourse takes place, allowing for different and even opposing sustainability
discourses – as Anton Leist’s contribution illustrates by highlighting a politically
conservative sustainability concept. The challenge then is to address these differ-
ent discourses and to promote debates across the boundaries erected by diverging
world views, by religion, political opinion and social context. Thus, respect for
diversity becomes important not only as an abstract recognition of the difference
of cultures, but also as an effort to actively foster interaction between the diverse
cultures, as Wolfgang Huber cogently demonstrates.
An initial insight provided by this book, then, would be that any reflection on
the function of culture for sustainable development has to take those intrinsic
dynamics of culture into account and to explore them in depth. Taking both
aspects, the instrumentality of culture for sustainability and the sustainability of
cultural dynamics, into account, a perspective emerges in which the dynamics
of culture may be assessed in their significance for sustainable development. In
that regard, especially the so-called interior dimension of sustainability (Hor-
lings 2015) bears closer scrutiny. Aleida Assmann’s approach to cultural sustain-
ability from the perspective of cultural studies’ puts emphasis on time regimes,
encompassing both the future and the past, by linking cultural sustainability to
the concepts of cultural memory and cultural heritage, and thus to questions of
values. Additional meanings of culture are subsequently evoked, which open
the semantic range of the term considerably. In the same vein, Galit P. Well-
ner investigates social happiness as a cultural value, thus adding to the ethical
debate necessary for sustainable development by overtly addressing shared values
for ecosystem assessment which substitute assessment attempts to ‘monetize’ the
impact of human actions.
The sociological distinction of a short-term effective constraining function of
culture embodied in restrictive social norms and a long-term enabling function
 Conclusion 251
present in rituals and practices, as presented by Ulf Liebe, elucidates the way in
which expectations of ‘operationability’ directed at cultural narratives need to
be corrected. Andreas Losch’s exposition of the significance of cultural imagery
for projects of scientific space exploration points to the range of cultural framing.
Gabriele Rippl and Torsten Meireis highlight the fact that cultural sustainability
cannot be conceived of as a simple transfer of ideas, but rather as the initiation
of reflection. They demonstrate this by depicting the way ethics are at work in
popular graphic narratives and how Lauren Redniss’ specific narrative, without
moralizing, challenges readers to contemplate their own ideas, social imaginaries
and stereotypes. In a similar vein, Joost Raessens’ depiction of the way ecogames
engage the player’s imagination shows the initiation of change on a micro-, meso-
and macro-level by enabling experiences, rather than by persuasion.
Other cultural productions such as literary texts and visual works of art also play
an important role in aesthetically, emotionally and cognitively involving recipients
in reflecting upon sustainability issues. Eco-fiction and climate change fiction, for
example, open up fictive worlds and serve as important means for recharging our
social imaginaries and transforming our ways of conceiving nature, human-nature
as well as human-animal relationships. Applying the concept of cultural ecology,
Hubert Zapf elaborates the complex relationship between sustainability and lit-
erature. Literature with its experimental, non-systematic and creative potential
contributes to a particularly complex and ethically responsive form of cultural sus-
tainability. By analyzing the nineteenth-century German media discourse around
the ‘German forest’ as a symbol of cultural identity and by enquiring into the
satirical texts and caricatures this discourse produced, Evi Zemanek challenges the
distinction of environmental and cultural sustainability and showcases their entan-
gled history. Examining non-literary texts alongside the novels of Charles Dickens,
Ursula Kluwick focuses on debates concerning the utilisation of human excrement
as manure in the context of sanitary reform in Victorian Britain in order to show
how the concept of sustainability was disseminated culturally. Alexa Weik von
Mossner discusses eco-dystopian fiction with their pessimistic images of the future
as cultural critiques. By presenting the readers a moral dilemma, novels such as
Octavia’s Butler’s Parable of the Sower give them the opportunity to experience dis-
turbing imaginary worlds, thus making them viscerally aware of the environmental
and social conditions that have caused the dilemma. Gabriele Rippl discusses a
similar function of texts as agents of ecological as well as cultural sustainability.
By making use of the potential of literary description and eco-ekphrasis, specula-
tive fiction such as Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood helps to sharpen readers’
awareness of their own values. By addressing relations, motivations, preferences
and emotions in individuals and communities, the genre is hence concerned with
the underestimated inner, subjective dimension of sustainability.

The way ahead: teaching cultural sustainability

To date, the cultural aspects of sustainability have not been sufficiently researched.
This is bound to change in the future, given our thus far unsuccessful attempts to
252 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
cope with global environmental and humanitarian challenges. As many contri-
butions in this collection convincingly demonstrate, sustainability is very much
related to both narrow and wide notions of culture. With respect to sustainability,
imagination, for instance the way we imagine our relation to nature, as well as
values, beliefs and world views play a crucial role. These dimensions, which we
understand as the cultural dimensions of sustainability, have a huge impact on
human behaviour and the ways we comprehend and treat our environment. To
engender more sustainable lifestyles these cultural dimensions have to be taken
seriously. It is only by recognizing the immense role that ethics, values, beliefs,
ideas and world views play and by engaging in debates that take the dynamics of
culture and the necessity for the recognition of different world views into account
that changes in our ecological behaviour will be reached. Hence the question as
to where and how debates about the inner aspects of sustainability or cultural
sustainability should be carried out in order to raise consciousness of these aspects
is pressing. Tackling such questions would help to enable a reform of our imagi-
nation and a renewal of the pool of cultural resources, i.e. the social imaginary.
Changing our ideas, our world views and behaviour – these are the necessary
steps toward the transformation of our (unsustainable) culture – but they may not
necessarily be described as development.
This insight asks for an intensified engagement with two aspects of sustain-
ability research. First, on a theoretical level, it will be important to further
investigate the role of culture understood in a broad sense, as suggested in this
volume. Subsequently, this entails a close examination of the different discourses
of cultural sustainability and the broad range of meanings of the term. Central is
the question whether cultural sustainability, in addition to ecological, economic
and social sustainability, should be considered as a fourth pillar of sustainabil-
ity or whether culture, and thus cultural sustainability, should rather be the all-
encompassing concept, horizon and agonal arena which determines the way the
other three dimensions can be understood – a notion we put forward. Second,
on a more practical level, teaching cultural sustainability seems to be an equally
important desideratum at this crucial moment in time. Researchers will have to
put more focus on the topic negotiated in this volume, namely, how important
awareness of the ethical, inner dimensions of sustainability is for reaching sus-
tainability goals. Teaching cultural sustainability at both school and university
level seems to be as important as the regulations, taxes and financial incentives
suggested by political agents and implemented through environmental policies.
Thus, the rest of this conclusion will be dedicated to the following question: what
could and should the teaching of cultural sustainability look like? We consider
three steps indispensible for teaching cultural sustainability at university level:
the first is to look closely at the sustainability of culture, i.e. cultural dynamics in
their complexity; second, to take stock of the idea of cultural sustainability and
its instrumental uses; and, three, to gain more insight into the concrete complex
workings of the interior dimensions of sustainability.
In order to take these steps and implement the teaching of cultural sustainabil-
ity at universities, interdisciplinary approaches are necessary. Insights attained
 Conclusion 253
through both theoretical and methodological approaches to this theme have
been emerging in a number of different disciplines – many of which are repre-
sented in this volume. Yet it is only when these insights are taken together, i.e. at
the intersections of disciplines, that systematic knowledge about the role played
by culture in sustainable development and the different aspects of cultural sus-
tainability is gained. It is through interdisciplinary discussions – in particular dis-
cussions of norms, values, beliefs – that one learns to identify cultural aspects of
sustainable development and to relate these to those other, previously recognised
aspects. In order to develop the ability to attribute elements of knowledge to
different normative frameworks and social forms, an understanding of the theme
(which also includes historical aspects) is indispensible.
Stephen Sterling’s ideas on sustainable education as well as more recent con-
cepts such as ‘transformative science’, developed by Uwe Schneidewind and
Mandy Singer-Brodowski, plead for re-visioning learning. More than fifteen
years ago, Sterling published his critique of the twentieth-century’s restricted,
managerial and instrumental view of learning geared towards a utilitarian market
philosophy both of which “sustain[] unsustainability” (Sterling 2001: 14). He pre-
sented ideas on how future education for sustainability should encourage critical
thinking, creativity and ecological awareness; one that “values and sustains peo-
ple and nature, that recognizes their profound interdependence” (Sterling 2001:
14). Such an understanding of sustainable education involves a paradigm shift,
which “is itself a transformative learning process” and embraces “a new participa-
tive epistemology” (Sterling 2001: 19). This paradigm shift requires vision, image,
design and action, which will lead to a continuous process of transformation.
Sterling clearly sees that “in an age of mass communication, the social-cultural
milieu arguably affects people and influences values more than formal education
programmes do” (Sterling 2001: 33). Like the contributors to this volume, Ster-
ling, too, argues for taking culture, values and affects into account (cf. Sterling
2001: 58–59, for tables of the contrasting educational paradigms).
In his wake, Schneidewind and Singer-Brodowski plead for transdisciplinary
sustainability research which goes beyond interdisciplinary research by involving
agents from outside the universities, i.e. policy makers, managers, environmental
activists, etc. (2014: 42). They appeal to scientific and technical research institu-
tions to include more scholars from the humanities and social scientists (2014:
49). Only by taking such steps, new transformative research and novel ways of
knowledge production will be able to boost fresh visions for sustainable develop-
ment (2014: 68–71). Schneidewind and Singer-Brodowski argue for three turns
that are necessary to achieve progress in sustainable development: the ‘normative
turn,’ the ‘experimental turn’ and the ‘institutional turn’ (2014: 72–74). The nor-
mative turn asks for a discussion of the (subjective) values that underlie (alleged
objective) research but are never explicitly addressed and negotiated. The experi-
mental turn ask researchers to distance themselves from the alleged objectivity of
their research and to accept a plurality of truths (2014: 73–74). The institutional
turn, finally, asks for a rethink of the institutional prerequisites such as research
programmes, institutional organization, career tracks and traditional pathways
254 Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl
to qualification to enable “transformative literacy” (Scholz 2011) and to make
transformative science and research across the disciplines possible (cf. also Kläy
et al. 2016).
With respect to education for sustainability, Roman Bartosch, a scholar of
Anglophone literatures and organizer of the conference “Cultivating Sustain-
ability: Education and the Environmental Humanities” (to take place at the Uni-
versity of Cologne in autumn 2018), likewise points out that to understand the
cultural dimensions of environmental change, both disciplinary and transdiscipli-
nary approaches to the global crises are necessary to bring about the direly needed
‘environmental turn’ in education. While “concepts such as ‘transformative liter-
acy’ have begun to shape the field of pedagogy – the role and full potential of edu-
cation in literatures, cultures, history and other, traditionally humanities-based,
fields is less than clear” (Bartosch 2018). Bartosch asks for more engaging explo-
rations of “the potential of global and transcultural learning, inclusive education,
and interdisciplinary takes on transformative education from hermeneutic-
systematic, historical as well as quantitatively and qualitatively empirical vantage
points” (2018). As our own interdisciplinary MA seminars, PhD colloquia and
summer schools have demonstrated, and as the contributors of this volume also
signal, the way ahead for sustainable development is a closer interdisciplinary and
even transdisciplinary engagement with the concept of culture and the multifari-
ous aspects of cultural sustainability. First of all, it is absolutely necessary to look
into the ‘machine room’ of culture, to analyze mechanisms of operationalization,
as well as production and reproduction needs that concern the pool of cultural
elements comprising the social imaginary. Second, it is necessary to put a stronger
focus on the inner or subjective dimensions of sustainability and to scrutinize the
decisive role of values, which underlie any debate on sustainability but are hardly
ever addressed. Each field involved in sustainable development – be it govern-
ance cultures, scientific/scholarly research cultures, educational programmes or
the wide range of lifestyle cultures – should consider a stronger engagement in
debates on values and ethics. A focus on cultural dimensions of sustainability
will make the different academic and non-academic sustainability agents aware
of the fact that religious, literary or filmic narratives, graphic novels, computer
games, visual works of art or any other cultural products play an important role in
the continuous process of transforming the social imaginary of how we humans
relate to nature and to each other in our global world. By inviting their recipients
to participate in and to reflect on meaning making processes and by emotionally
involving them, works of art may help to create new forms of knowledge, new
viewpoints and new imaginative approaches which, in turn, help to envision new
ways of relating to nature and to others, and thus supports bonding (Tilbury and
Wortmann 2004). Like the contributors to our volume, Verena Holz and Ute
Stoltenberg have closely examined “cultural and artistic (learning) contexts and
participatory design processes” and convincingly argue for the necessity of “an
integrative understanding of sustainable development which regards culture as a
fundamental structure of societal action and thus as a dimension of sustainable
development itself” (2010: 15–16). Without such debates on new paradigms of
 Conclusion 255
teaching that engage people in sustainability, and without negotiations over the
impact of the cultural dimensions of sustainability and how values determine our
behaviour, much-needed progress in sustainable development will not be accom-
plished and the transformation of cultures, as proclaimed by the annual report
“State of the World 2010” by the Worldwatch Institute, will remain nothing but
wishful thinking.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate figures and page numbers in bold indicate tables. Notes
are indicated by the page number followed by n.

1979 Moon Agreement 103 arts: community 128; cultural

1984 (Orwell) 193, 205 sustainability and 130 – 136, 143, 217;
1992 Rio UN Summit 127 dystopian fiction and 222, 227 – 228;
2030 Agenda for Sustainable ecological 131; meaning-making and
Development: adoption of 12; cultural 134; sustainability and 127, 142, 250;
sustainability goals and 14, 18 – 19, 22; transformation and 146 – 147; see also
peaceful/inclusive societies in 19 literature
Asian values 43
Abdel-Karim, Maamoun 32 Assmann, A. 250
aesthetics 68, 133 astrobiology 106n6
aesthetics of complexity 133, 136 Atwood, Margaret 56, 193, 221, 223 – 228,
Affective Ecologies (Weik von Mossner) 251
196 – 197 authenticity 33
Agenda 21 for Culture 18 Avatar (2009) 56
Alaimo, S. 142 Awakening, The (Chopin) 145 – 147
al-Asaad, Khaled 32
Alkemade, R. 89 Baccolini, R. 204
alternate reality games 239 Badeni, Kasimir Felix 167
Altner, G. 48 Banse, G. 132
American literature: art as transformation barbarism 34n5
in 146 – 147; wildness and 144 – 147; see Bartelmus, P. 56
also literature Barthes, R. 52
American nature writing 144 Bartosch, R. 254
American poetry: cultural ecology of Bateson, G. 133, 140
148 – 149; Whitman and 148; wildness Bayer, A. 149
and 148 – 149 Bazalgette, John 186 – 187, 192n4
“Anecdote of the Jar” (Stevens) 148 – 149 beauty 68 – 69
Anthropocene: climate change and 109, Beloved (Morrison) 145, 147, 230n8
113; human-nonhuman interaction Benhabib, S. 44
in 144; poetic approaches to 150; Bentham, J. 91 – 92
sustainability paradigms and 109, 119; Better Life Index 91
unsustainability of 119, 120, 221 Bianchini, F. 128
anthropocentrism 104 – 105, 115 Bieling, C. 89, 95n4
anti-Semitic discourse 171, 172, 173 bio-art 227 – 228
Ape and Essence (Huxley) 221 biocentrism 104
Arendt, H. 44 biological genocide 39 – 40
 Index 257
biosphere protection: imaginative “City as Space of Possibility” 135
activities and 228; planetary civic liberalism 65
sustainability and 99, 101, 104, 132; as a Claviez, T. 223
value issue 99 climate change: Anthropocene and 109,
Birkeland, I. 55 – 56, 130 113; conservatism and 66; contingency
Bishop, J. E. 149 management and 119; culture and
Bogost, I. 237 235 – 236; distributive justice and 64;
Bourdieu, P. 83 literary description and 221, 223, 227;
Braat, L. 89 narrative ethics and 214; rhetorical wars
Braidotti, R. 142 over 235; as slow violence 234
Brave New World (Huxley) 221 climate change communication: barriers to
Briggs, R. 210 233 – 234, 234; counter-productiveness
Brock, W. H. 185 of 232 – 233; cultural dimension of
Brown, K. R. 82 232; ecogames and 233, 235 – 236,
Brown, K. W. 96n10 240 – 241, 243; global warming impact
Brundtland Commission 110 in 233 – 234; solutions for 234, 234, 236;
Brundtland Report 4, 6, 16, 47, 63, 127, strategies and properties for 234, 234,
216 235 – 239; values and 234, 236
Butler, Octavia 193 – 194, 197 – 205, climate change fiction 251
207n7, 223, 230n5, 251 Cobb, J. 56
cognitive cultural studies 196, 223
Cameron, James 56 cognitive narratology 223
Canavan, G. 204, 228 Collapse (Diamond) 217
Cantu, S. 79 Collapsus-Energy Risk Conspiracy 240
capability approach 47 Collins, R. 81 – 82
Capital (Marx) 87 Columbus Earth Center 244n6
Capova, K. A. 101 Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer
Capra, F. 56 Space (UNCOPUOS) 101
caricatures: anti-Semitic discourse 171, community: conception of aesthetics
172, 173; cultural function of 155 – 156; by 68; conservatism and 65 – 66;
German forests and 162, 164, 166, conservatives and 65 – 66; cultural life of
169 – 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177; 14, 41; defining 68 – 69; human agency
German oak and 166 – 168; nationalism and 204; intrinsic value of nature in
and 171 96n10; reader imagination and 220,
Carlowitz, H. C. von 4, 63, 72n1, 111, 228; responsibility and 67
115, 118, 121n1, 153 – 154 community arts 128, 131
Cashmore, E. 36 community cultural development 128
Cassirer, E. 50 Connor, A. 193
Celtes, C. 157 conservational sustainability 64 – 65, 73n5
Chadwick, E. 185 – 186, 189, 192n2 conservatism: ambiguous attitude toward
Chapman, D. 225 the state by 65; community and
Chapman, J. 225 65 – 66; cultural concept of nature 65;
character-based narrative persuasion environmentalism and 64 – 71; realist
236 sense and 66 – 67; religion and 71;
Chopin, Kate 145 – 147 skepticism of techno-capitalist solutions
Christen, M. 111, 250 65; social change and 65; sustainability
Christianity: eschatology and 118 – 119; and 63 – 64; traditional practice and
horizon of culture and 56; human 71 – 72; value modules 71
rights and 44; human sacredness 70; conservative moral systems 71, 235
piety and 69; religious discourse of 203; conspicuous consumption 78
stewardship and 54, 56; sustainability consumption: conspicuous 78;
and 116 – 117 defining 77; Fair Trade 75, 82; see
Cialdini, R. B. 80 – 81 also overconsumption; sustainable
Circular Amsterdam, A 242, 242 consumption
258 Index
contingency management: fear of overall globalization and 49; internationalism
system collapse and 117 – 118; individual and 30; Islamic State (IS) assaults on
function of 119; multi-crisis in 116 – 119; 28, 31 – 32; reconstruction and 33 – 34;
product design and responsibility 121; sustainability and 6; transmission of
religion and 117 – 118; social function 28; UNESCO and 15, 27 – 28; UN
of 119; sustainability and 110, 111, resolutions 17 – 18; vandalism and 30;
115 – 119 wartime destruction of 31
Convention on the Prevention and cultural imaginary 191
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide cultural memory: attention to 27 – 29;
39 – 41, 44 survival of cultural heritage in 33
Convention on the Protection and cultural narratives: literature and 141;
Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural operationability and 251; situated
Expressions (UNESCO) 16 knowledge and 48
Convention Relating to the Status of cultural planning 128
Refugees 44 cultural relativism 20
Conway, Kellyanne 193 cultural rights 14 – 15, 19
corporate greenwashing 142 cultural self-reflection 141, 143
COST Action 89, 96n5, 129 cultural separatism 43 – 44
costly signalling theory 80 cultural sustainability: aesthetics of
counter-cultures 52 – 53 complexity and 133, 136; arts-based
Crassus see Krassberger, S. approach to 130 – 136, 143; becoming
creative industries: community and 142 – 143; communitarian
development and 6, 19; cultural discourse of 49; concept of 4 – 6,
diversity and 3; job creation and 21 22 – 23; conservative discourse of 49;
critical dystopia 194 constructivist approach to 98 – 99,
critical eco-dystopia fiction: dilemmas in 105; cultures of reference and 52 – 53;
195, 223; interdisciplinary approach in defining 209, 217; discourse of 53 – 55,
196; liberated embodied simulation 196; 127 – 132, 135 – 136; dynamics of 250;
sustainability and 194, 221; utopian ecocentrism and 104 – 105; graphic
elements in 204 narratives and 208, 210, 215; human
Cultivating Humanity (Nussbaum) 195 rights and 43 – 44, 53; instrumental view
cultural capital 77 of 48 – 49, 55, 249; interdisciplinary
cultural codes 51 – 52 approach in 253; literature and
cultural cues 83 220 – 221; mediating function of
cultural diversity: creativity and 249; moral discourse of 47, 49 – 50;
3; development and 16; moral multilateral practice 12 – 22; nature and
universalism and 44; plurality of 153 – 154; neoliberal discourse of 49;
perspectives and 44 – 45; protection/ non-state advocacy for 18; normativity
promotion of 19; sustainability and 6, in 132, 216 – 217; operationability
19 – 20; UN resolutions 17 – 18; as world and 250 – 251, 254; prioritization and
heritage 16 132; racial discourse and 170; research
cultural ecology: defining 140; literature as on 251 – 254; significance of 3 – 4;
140 – 150, 155, 195, 251 social creativity and 130; speculative
cultural ecosystems 140 fiction and 194, 197; storylines of 49;
cultural education 129, 131 sufficiency and 56; Swiss position on
cultural exceptionalism 43 – 44 18 – 20; teaching of 252 – 255; values
cultural genocide: concept of 36 – 37, 39; in 254 – 255; verbo-visual discourse on
defining 36, 40; human rights and 41; 155, 159, 171; waste management and
indigenous peoples and 42; Islamic 184 – 186, 191
State (IS) and 36 – 37; legal enforcement cultural texts 223
42; physical genocide and 36 – 37 culture: agonal area of distinction and
cultural heritage: acts of purification and 52–53, 56; agonal arena for sustainability
31 – 32; authenticity and 33; concept discourse and 54–55; ascription and
of 29 – 30; destruction and 31 – 33; 51–52; cognitive component of 76,
 Index 259
76; consumption and 75–83; defining Dewey, J. 133
5–6, 13, 15; development theories and Diamond, J. 217
13–16; discourse of 130; dual process Dickens, Charles: sanitary reform and
theory 83; economic development and 186 – 187, 190 – 191, 251; water imagery
21; economy and 76; ecosystem services of 188 – 190
and 88–90; expressive component Die Gartenlaube 155
of 76, 76; in four-pillar model of Dijks, S. 89, 95n4
sustainability 101, 128, 183, 249–250, DiMaggio, P. J. 76 – 77
252; functions of 127; goalability Disasters of War, The (Goya) 225, 230n7
of 20; as a horizon for sustainability Dromi, S. 195, 197
discourse 53–54, 56; human rights dry conservancy sewage removal 183 – 187,
and 14–15, 19–20; instrumental view 192n4
of 55; latent knowledge in 51–53; as DTV Consultants 237
a means to an end 49–50, 53; moral duality 67
discourse of 53; network analysis dual process theory 83
and 83; normative positions of 50; as Durkheim, E. 92
production of symbolic imagery 209, dust heaps 187 – 189, 192n6, 192n7
216; social change and 127, 135; social Dynamic of Destruction (Kramer) 34n5
imaginaries of 6; sociological dimensions dystopian fiction: arts and 222, 227 – 228;
of 51–53; struggle over 37; subcultural cultural sustainability and 222; eco-
52; sustainable development and 16–22; dystopias 194 – 196, 204, 221, 223 – 228;
symbolic structure of 50–53; as symbolic eco-ekphrasis and 222; embodied
universe 209, 216; toolkit perspective of simulation in 197; emotional reaction
76; UNESCO and 15–16; in UN policy to 205; narrative style in 198 – 199,
documents 15–23; valuative component 230n5; pocket utopias and 200; reader
of 76, 76 imagination and 220 – 221, 228, 230n5;
Culture Action Europe 18 sustainability discourse and 193 – 194,
culturecide 36 – 37 198, 203; utopian elements in 204, 228;
culture-of-poverty 77 see also critical eco-dystopia fiction;
cultures of reference 52 – 53 speculative fiction
Curie, E. 211
Curie, Marie 208 – 209, 211 – 213, 215 – 216 Earth Charter 114
Curie, Pierre 208, 211 – 212, 215 Ebersberg, Ottokar Franz 171
Currents of the Universal Being (Slovic, ecocentric ethics 223
Bishop, and Lyndgaard) 149 ecocentrism 104
ecocriticism 131, 142
Daly, H. 56 – 57 ecocultures 129
Day, Doris 26, 34n1 eco-ekphrasis 221 – 222, 225
Decade of Education for Sustainable eco-fiction 251
Development 3 ecogames: citizenship and 232; climate
Declaration of the Principles of International change and 233, 235 – 236; culture
Cultural Cooperation (UNESCO) 15 and 233; frame of play in 238 – 239;
Deep Space Industries 100 imagination and 251; impact of 243;
De Groot, R. 89 narratives in 236 – 237; persuasion in
Deleuze, G. 142 236 – 237; policy-making and 241 – 242;
Derrida, J. 215, 223 procedural rhetoric and 237 – 238;
Der wahre Jacob 155 social change and 233, 239 – 243; social
descriptive ethics: in ecological fiction standards and 240 – 241; social use
224; non-human nature and 222 – 223 238; sustainable action and 239 – 240;
descriptized narrations 230n6 sustainable action model 240
Detjens, F. 160 ecological art 131
development: culture and 13 – 16, 19; ecological imaginary 208 – 216
economic growth and 13; human rights ecologically responsible behaviour (ERB)
and 14; see also sustainable development 96n10
260 Index
ecological sustainability 64, 209 – 210; see and 113; sustainability and 110, 111,
also sustainability 112 – 114
Ecological Sustainability (Northrop and epistemology 106n2
Connor) 193 eschatology 118 – 119
Ecology of Law (Capra and Mattei) 56 ethical turn 214 – 215
economic growth 13 ethnic cleansing 39
economy: contingency management and European Space Agency (ESA) 100
118; culture and 76 Evans, Ray 34n1
ecosystem assessment: ecosystem services
and 87 – 88; policy-making and 87; well- Fair Trade consumption 75, 82
being and 87, 95n3 Fall-Out (Pausewang) 210
ecosystem services (ES): assessment of Finer, S. E. 186
87 – 88; cultural services and 88 – 90, Finke, P. 140, 154, 175
95n2, 95n4; methodology of 88 – 89; Fliegende Blätter 155, 160, 161
provisioning and 88; regulation and Foote, S. 142
88; shared values and 90, 96n11; social forest management: Carlowitz and 4,
issues and 88 – 90 63, 111, 115, 153 – 154; German 110,
ecotopian dreaming 204 153 – 154, 156; Palestine 90; principles
Edelmann, A. 83 for 112, 115
education: cultural 129, 131; Forest Steward Council (FSC) 112, 115
environmental turn in 254; as human Forst, R. 44
right 19; social game play and 238, 242; Frazier, C. 198
sustainable 21, 129, 253 – 254 From5to4 237 – 238
Education for Sustainable Development Fry, J. 207n7
129 future: concepts of 25 – 27; narrative of
Eichendorff, J. von 159 – 160, 162 progress 25; sustainability and 26 – 27;
ekphrasis 225 – 226, 230n9 uncertainty/risk and 26
“Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” “Future We Want, The” (UN General
(Gray) 149 Assembly) 17, 21
“Elegy Written in a Country Coal-Bin”
(Morley) 149 Gaia hypothesis 104
embodied simulation 196 – 197, 201 – 203, Gallagher, C. 192n5
205 Gallese, V. 196, 201
emergent cultures 130 games for change 232 – 233, 242
Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies Gayá, P. 121
(Cashmore) 36 Geertz, C. 50
“Energy: A Villanelle” (Updike) 149 Genette, G. 224
environmental change: group action and genocide: biological 39–40; concept of
235; social citizenship and 235; social 37–39; defining 36–37, 39–40; ethnic
justice and 235; stringent legislation cleansing and 39; human rights and
and 235; transdisciplinary approaches 44; international prosecution of 38–39;
to 254 physical 39–40; see also cultural genocide
environmentalism: beauty and Gerber, M. 4, 249
68 – 69; community and 68 – 69, 72; German forests: anti-Semitic discourse
conservatism and 64 – 71; cultural 171, 172, 173; association with 154;
sustainability and 49; eco-networks caricatures of 155 – 156, 162, 164,
in 238; green 66; moral systems and 166 – 167, 167, 168, 169 – 170, 171, 172,
235; motivations for 69; piety and 173, 174, 176, 177; as cultural symbol
69 – 70; Protestant tradition and 54, 57; 156 – 160, 162 – 164, 166, 168, 175,
sustainable development and 13 180n38, 251; deforestation 157 – 158;
environmental management: destruction of 162, 164, 175, 178n2;
environmental crisis and 112 – 113; early descriptions of 157; as ethical and
environmental reporting 121; intrinsic artistic inspiration 159 – 160; fairytales
value of nature in 113 – 114; protection and 158; as imagined landscape 178n7;
 Index 261
management of 110, 153 – 154, 156, 162; Hamlin, C. 185
political connotations of 158; popular Handmaid’s Tale, The (Atwood) 193
culture and 175; racial discourse and Hanghzou Declaration 4, 16 – 18
171, 173, 174, 175 happiness: defining 92; in disciplines
German Museum Munich 150 96n9; indexes for 91 – 93; personal
German oak: caricatures of 166 – 167, 167, 91 – 94; psychological 91 – 92, 94; Self-
168, 169 – 170; as cultural symbol 156, Determination Theory and 91, 94;
158, 166, 168, 170, 175; destruction of shared values and 88, 91 – 92; short-/
159; early descriptions of 157; national long-term 95; social 88, 91 – 93;
identity and 154, 157, 166, 175 sustainability and 93 – 95; utilitarian
Germany: national identity and 154, principle of 91; well-being and
157, 166, 170171; racial discourse and 88, 93
170 – 171171; war reparations 166, Happy Planet Index 91, 93
179n22; wind farms in 175, 177 Hard Times (Dickens) 187
Gerrig, R. 197 Hauser, R. 132
Ginsberg, Allen 148 Hawkes, J. 128 – 129
global ecological citizenship 232 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 145
Global Indigenous Caucus 42 Hegel, Georg 25
globalization 49, 214 Hein, L. 89
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 121 Heine, Heinrich 166
global warming: in climate change Heine, T. 169
communication 233 – 234; as doom Hennicke, P. 56
scenario 234; environmental change Herman, D. 197, 224
and 235; global South and 244n1; historicism 29
procedural rhetoric and 237; sense history 31 – 32
of identity and 234; visible impact of Hitchcock, Alfred 34n1
233 – 234, 244n1; see also climate change Hoffman, M. 203
Goldstein, N. J. 80 – 81 Hogan, P. 202
Goudzwaard, B. 56 Höller, Carsten 227
Goya, Francisco 225, 230n7 Holz, V. 254
graphic narratives: counter-discourse Hörisch, J. 118
in 210 – 211; as cultural products Horlings, L. 208
208; emotions/empathy in 210, Huber, W. 250
218n4 – 219n4; immersive power of Huizinga, J. 238
210; narrative ethics in 215 – 216; human agency 204
sustainability and 215, 217 Human Development Index (HDI) 13
Gray, Thomas 149 human ecological sustainability 193 – 194
Great Deeds against the Dead (Chapman human rights: Asian values 43; covenant
and Chapman) 225 related to 39; cultural genocide and
green environmentalism 66 41; cultural separatism in 43; cultural
Greenpeace 65, 240 – 241 sustainability and 43 – 44, 53; culture
Grégoire, Henri 30 and 14 – 15, 19 – 20; development
Grendel Games 239 and 17; genocide and 44; plurality of
Grimm, J. 158 perspectives and 45; refugees and 44;
Grimm, W. 158 universality of 43 – 44; Western values
Griskevicius, V. 79 – 81 43
Gross National Happiness Index 91 Hume, D. 96n8
“Group of Friends on Culture and Huxley, Aldous 221
Development” 18
Grunewald Forest 160, 162, 164, 179n21 Illouz, E. 195, 197
Gulbransson, O. 170 Illustrirte Zeitung 155
Imagine Dragons 209
Haidara, Abdel Kader 32 Incredible Hulk, The (Lee) 210
Haidt, J. 71 – 72 Indiana, Robert 227
262 Index
indigenous peoples: cultural genocide and Lakoff, G. 235
42; cultural heritage and 41 – 42; rights Lange, H. de 56
of 42 – 43 Lange-Christopher, K. 174
interaction ritual chains 81 – 83 latent knowledge 51 – 53
intercultural dialogue 105 Leaves of Grass (Whitman) 148
Intergovernmental Conference on Lee, Stan 210
Cultural Policies for Development 3 Leist, A. 250
International Covenant on Economic, Leistikow, Walter 164
Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 41 LeMenager, S. 142
International Federation of Arts Councils Lemkin, Raphael 38 – 40, 44
and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) 18 Lepsius, Johannes 37 – 38
International Federation of Coalitions for Letters on Modern Agriculture (Liebig) 184
Cultural Diversity (IFCCD) 18 Levinas, E. 215, 223
International Institute of Space Law 102 Lewis, D. 195
International Space Station (ISS) 100 liberalism 64 – 65
Iovino, S. 223 liberal realism 71 – 72
Islamic State (IS): assaults on cultural liberal utopianism 71
heritage sites 28, 31 – 32; attacks on liberated embodied simulation 205
universal values by 31; cultural genocide libraries: cultural heritage and 6, 32;
and 36 – 37; physical destruction and destruction of 31; preservation of 32
36 – 37 Liebe, U. 251
Island (Huxley) 221 Liebig, Justus von 184, 186, 192n4
Israel 87, 89 Lindloff, Hans Maria 164
Linz, M. 56
Jackson, T. 56 – 57 literary description: defining 223 – 224;
Jacobs, R. 236 ekphrasis in 225 – 226; reader
James, E. 197 imagination and 221, 223, 251; in
Johannesburg Roundtable on Cultural utopian/dystopian fiction 221 – 228
Diversity and Biodiversity (2002) 3 literary ecology 230n2
Johnson, A. 163, 163, 164 literature: critical eco-dystopia fiction
Johnston, L. F. 115 194 – 196, 204, 221, 223; cultural
Join the Rebellion and Turn VW Away From ecology of 140 – 150, 155, 195; cultural
the Dark Side (Greenpeace) 241, 241 narrative in 141, 208 – 209; cultural
Jonas, H. 67 self-reflection and 141, 143; cultural
Joyce, James 34n2 sustainability and 220 – 221, 251;
Jungkeit, R. 56 culture-nature relationship in 141;
descriptive ethics and 222 – 224;
Kac, Eduardo 227 dystopian fiction 193 – 200, 203 – 205,
Kagan, S. 250 221 – 228; ecocentric ethics in 223;
Kakutani, M. 193 ecocritical 131, 142; embodied
Kappas, A. 219n4 simulation in 196 – 197; emotions/
Kasser, T. 94, 96n10 empathy in 210, 215, 218n4;
Keats, John 226 environmental critique and 160; ethical
Keller, L. 142 turn in 214 – 215; forest symbolism in
Kempner, Robert M. W. 38 158 – 159; graphic narratives 208 – 212;
Kikeriki 171, 172 mind/body dualism in 141; narrative
Kingsley, C. 185 ethics of 210, 214 – 216, 222; narrative
Kladderadatsch 155 style in 207n6; nature writing 144;
Klopstock, F. G. 157 parody and 160, 163 – 164; reader
Kluwick, U. 251 imagination and 6, 215, 221, 223;
Kraftwerk 209 situational empathy in 202; speculative
Kramer, A. 34n5 fiction 193 – 195, 200, 204; sustainability
Krassberger, S. 160, 161 and 141 – 143; as sustainable text 143;
Kuhn, T. 109 – 110, 119 – 121 symbolic regeneration in 144 – 145,
Kurt, H. 48 147 – 148, 150; unsustainability in
 Index 263
194 – 195, 198; utopian/dystopian moral systems 235
fiction 220 – 221; water imagery in 183, moral universalism 43 – 44
186 – 190; wildness and 144; see also Morin, E. 133
American literature; American poetry Morley, Christopher 149
live action role-playing games (LARP) Morrison, T. 230n8
232 Morrison, Toni 145, 147
Livingston, Jay 34n1 Morton, T. 149
living systems 104 Mosher, H. F. 224, 230n6
Lo, M. 205 Moylan, T. 194, 197
Loewenthal, L. 31 Müller, M. G. 219n4
LOI Kidzz ThuisTrainer 238 multi-planetary society 99 – 100
London: sewerage system construction
in 186 – 187; waste management in “Narrate or Describe” (Lukács) 224
185 – 187, 192n4 narrative ethics: defining 214; in literature
Losch, A. 251 214 – 216, 222; social imaginaries and
low Earth orbit (LEO) 101 210, 214 – 215
Lowen, Irving S. 213 narrative of progress 25
Luckin, B. 185 narratives: character-based persuasion in
Lueger, Karl 171, 180n35 236; creativity and 236; ecogames and
Lukács, G. 224 236
Luxembourg 100, 102 narratized descriptions 230n6
Lyndgaard, K. 149 NASA: multi-planetary society and
99 – 100; planetary sustainability and
Madame Curie (Curie, E.) 211 98 – 100
MaddAddam (Atwood) 221, 228 National Ecosystem Assessments (NEA)
MaddAddam Trilogy (Atwood) 193, 221 87, 89, 94
Malezer, Les 42 national heritage 29 – 30; see also cultural
Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1956) 34n1 heritage
Maraña, M. 13 Natural History of the People (Riehl) 154
Marie Curie (Quinn) 211 nature: conquest of 155; cultural concept
Marx, K. 87 of 65; cultural sustainability and
Mattei, U. 56 153 – 154
McCarthy, Cormac 197 – 198, 221 nature writing 144
McGonigal, J. 238 – 239 Neitzel, S. 31
Meireis, T. 250 – 251 neoliberalism 65
Melville, Herman 145 – 146 network analysis 83
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, F. 160 New Economics Foundation (NEF) 93
Mexico Declaration 15 nightsoil 184 – 185, 192n2
Meyer-Abich, K. 48 Nixon, R. 234
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Northrop, R. 193
culture in 13 – 14, 17; sustainable nuclear energy: harmful effects of 209,
development and 17 213; plant meltdowns 209 – 210, 213;
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (WHO) social movements and 210
87 – 91, 95n2, 95n3 nuclear weapons 208 – 209
Milton, John 27 nudging 81
mind/body dualism 141 Nussbaum, M. 195, 205, 215
Mishori, D. 87
Mitchell, Joni 32, 34n7 O’Brien, C. 94
Moby-Dick (Melville) 145 – 146 Occupy Movement 87
modernity 68 “Ode to a Grecian Urn” (Keats) 226
modern morality 71 – 72 Office for Outer Space Affairs
Moraine, S. 194 (UNOOSA) 101
moral discourse: cultural sustainability and Organiq 237
47, 49 – 50; sustainable development and Orwell, George 193, 205
47 – 48 Oryx and Crake (Atwood) 221
264 Index
Oteros-Rozasc, E. 89, 95n4 Pratt, H. J. 211
Otto, E. 197, 204 Princen, T. 56 – 57
Our Creative Diversity (WCCD) 15 Prinz, J. 203
Our Mutual Friend (Dickens): dust heaps procedural rhetoric 237 – 238
in 187 – 189; water imagery in 186 – 190, procedural sustainability 134 – 135
192n8 productive sustainability 64, 66, 73n5
Outer Space Treaty 102 progressive moral systems 235
overconsumption: cultural change and 75; Protestant tradition: equal worth in 56;
strategies for reducing 79, 84 human stewardship in 56; sufficiency
Overview Effect 244n6 and 56 – 57; sustainability and 57
psychological happiness 91 – 92, 94
Pacific Edge (Robinson) 200 purification 31 – 32
Paech, N. 132
Palmyra: discovery of 28; Islamic State Quinn, S. 211
(IS) assaults on 33; occupation of Quintilian 224
32 – 33; preservation of artifacts in 32;
reconstruction of 33 Rachel Carson Institute 149
Parable of the Sower (Butler): dystopia in “Radioactive” (Imagine Dragons) 209
193, 197, 204 – 205; ecotopian dreaming Radioactive (Redniss): ambivalence
204; egoism and bias in 203; human of radioactivity in 213; cultural
agency in 204; hyperempathy in 198, sustainability and 217; ecological
201 – 202; liberated embodied simulation sustainability in 209 – 210; imagery in
in 200 – 203, 205, 251; narrative style in 211 – 213; narrative ethics of 215 – 216;
198 – 200, 202, 223; religious discourse reader imagination and 208, 210 – 212;
in 203; unsustainability in 194 – 195, 198 social imaginaries of 214
Parable of the Talents (Butler) 204 – 205 radioactivity: ambivalence of 209,
paradigm shifts 109 212 – 213, 215 – 216; graphic narratives
Pausewang, G. 210 and 208 – 209, 211 – 212; in popular
persuasive games 236 – 237 culture 209 – 210, 212, 214; social
Phillips, J. 204 imaginaries of 214
Phillips, M. 121 “Radio-Aktivität/Radio-Activity”
physical genocide: cultural genocide and (Kraftwerk) 209
36 – 37; defining 39 – 40 Raessens, J. 251
piety 69 – 70 Rathenau, W. 166, 179n22
planetary protection 104 ratiocentrism 104
Planetary Resources 100 Rawls, J. 73n7
planetary sustainability: biosphere realistic utopia 73n7
protection and 99, 101, 104; defining realist sense 66 – 67
98; regulation and 101 – 103; space ‘Rebuild Palmyra?’ exhibition 33 – 34, 34n8
activities in 99 – 105 reconstruction 33 – 34
play 238 – 239 Redclift, M. 110
Plieninger, T. 89, 95n4 Redniss, Lauren 208 – 217, 251
pocket utopias 200, 204 refugees 44
Podbielski, Victor von 162, 179n20, religion: contingency and 117 – 118; piety
179n21 and 69 – 70; sufficiency and 56 – 57;
Poetry in the Anthropocene (Bayer and Seel) sustainability and 56 – 57, 115 – 116
149 Report on the Sanitary Condition of
policy-making: community arts and 128; the Labouring Population of Britain
cultural planning and 128; ecogames (Chadwick) 185
and 241 – 242; social happiness and resource management: corporate activity
92 – 93 reporting in 121; economic principles
Post-2015 UN Development Agenda 19, 23 of 112; intergenerational principle of
post-truth era 193 justice 112; resource crisis and 111;
practice theory 81 – 83 sustainability and 110 – 111, 111, 112
 Index 265
responsibility 67 situated knowledge 48
Rhodes, R. 208 situational empathy 202
Richter, A. L. 158 Skidelski, E. 56
Ricoeur, P. 215 Skidelski, R. 56
Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich 154 Slovic, S. 142, 149
Rimini Protokoll 232 Smith, A. 96n8
Rio+20 UN Conference 17 Smithson, Robert 227
Rippl, G. 251 Snyder, Gary 148
River Thames: association with crime social change: conservatism and 65;
187 – 188; water-borne sewage removal culture and 127, 135; ecogames and
186 – 187, 189 – 190 233, 239 – 241; environmentalism and
Road, The (McCarthy) 197 – 198, 221 65 – 66
Robinson, J. 134 – 135 social citizens 235
Robinson, Kim Stanley 200 social contract 67
Rogers, D. 195 social creativity 130
Ronen, R. 224 social facilitation 238
Ruffin, K. 203 social happiness: cultural value of 250;
defining 92, 96n8; measurement of 91;
Sachs, W. 56 policy-making and 92 – 93; sustainability
sacredness 68, 70, 73n9, 73n11 and 88
Sanders, J. 205 Social Happiness (Thin) 92
sanitary reform 186 – 187, 190 – 191, 192n5 social imaginaries: defining 213 – 214,
Sargent, L. T. 194 230n3; impact of 6; memories and
Sariel, A. 87 future in 131 – 132; as narrative ethics
satirical magazines: caricatures in 210, 214 – 215; social transformation
155 – 156, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173; and 135; sustainability and 8, 54, 134,
German oak in 166, 167; nature 217, 220, 228
discourse in 155 – 156, 160, 161, 162, social impact games 232, 242
163, 164; verbo-visual discourse in 160, socialism: ecological disasters and 65,
162, 166, 170 73n2; self-directed criticism and 72n2;
Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne) 145 social justice and 73n2; sustainability
Scherhorn, G. 56 and 64; values of 64
Schneidewind, W. 253 social justice 73n2, 235
Scruton, Roger: on beauty 68 – 69; social management: anthropocentrism and
community and 65, 68 – 69; conservative 115; quality of life for all in 114 – 115;
green position of 63 – 66, 71 – 72; social indicators in 121; sustainability
duality and 67; on modernity 68; on and 110, 111, 114 – 115; system crisis
piety 69 – 70; realist sense and 66 – 67; and 114
responsibility and 67; on sacredness 68, social networks 83
70; social change and 66 social standards 240 – 241
Seel, D. 149, 250 social sustainability 77
Seele, P. 111 Soini, K. 55 – 56, 130
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) 91, 94 Spaargaren, G. 81 – 82
Sen, A. 13, 47 S.P.A.C.E. (Spurring Private Aerospace
sentientism 104 Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship)
serendipity 130 act 100
shared values: biosphere protection 99; Space 2030 101 – 102
culture and 89 – 90; happiness and 88, space environment: commercial use of
91 – 92; monetization of 89 – 90; social 100 – 103; exoburials in 103; mining
issues and 89 – 90; well-being and 90 – 91 in 102 – 103; orbital debris in 101;
Shay, J. 44 protected zones 103 – 105; sustainable
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 27 development and 99, 101 – 104; values
Simplicissimus 155, 168, 169, 170 in 104 – 105
Singer-Brodowski, M. 253 space tourism 100, 106n4
266 Index
speculative fiction: cultural sustainability sustainable action model 239, 240, 244n3
and 193 – 194, 197; environmental sustainable becoming 142 – 143
197; liberated embodied simulation in sustainable consumption: activation of
200 – 203, 205; narrative ethics of 222; status and 80; analytically distinct
pocket utopias and 200, 204; post-truth perspective on 78, 78, 79, 79, 80 – 81,
era and 193; unsustainability in 195, 84; cultural cues and 83; culture and
198, 205; see also critical eco-dystopia 75 – 83; impact of 75; interaction ritual
fiction; dystopian fiction chains 81 – 83; marketing for 79 – 80;
Spicer, Sean 193 mutually generative perspective on
Spider-Man (Lee) 210 78, 78, 79, 79, 81 – 82, 84; nudging for
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Bateson) 140 81; practice theory and 81 – 83; social
Sterling, S. 253 networks and 83
Stevens, Wallace 148 – 149 sustainable development: concept of
Stewart, James 34n1 13; cultural diversity and 16; cultural
Stoknes, P. E. 232, 235, 238 services and 88 – 90; culture and 17 – 22,
Stoltenberg, U. 254 48 – 49, 98 – 99, 128 – 129, 252; defining
Stuttmann, K. 175, 176 16, 47; ecology and 87; economics of 87;
subcultural symbolic codes 52 ecosystem assessment and 87 – 88; ethics
subjective well-being (SWB) 96n10 of 47; four-pillar model of 101, 128, 183,
sufficiency: agonal arena of culture and 249 – 250, 252; goals of 132; holistic
56 – 57; cultural element of sustainability approach to 99; moral discourse of
and 57; horizon of culture and 56 47 – 49; social issues and 87 – 90; three-
suicide 91 – 92 pillar model of 3, 12; see also planetary
sustainability: arts-informed approach sustainability
to 127, 132 – 135; concept of 4 – 5, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
63 – 64, 155; conservational 64 – 65, adoption of 12; culture in 4, 14, 20 – 21;
73n5; conservativism and 63; cultural space environment in 101
dimension of 3 – 5, 12 – 14; cultural Sustainable Development Summit 20, 22
patterns of 55; defining 115, 131 – 132; sustainable education 21, 129, 253 – 254
discourse of 135, 142; ecological 64; sustainable happiness 94
future and 6, 26 – 27; happiness and sustainable tourism 21
93 – 95; inner dimensions of 208, sustainable urban development 135
220; liberalism and 64; literature Suvin, D. 197
and 141 – 143, 223, 251; procedural Swiss position 18 – 20
134 – 135; productive 64, 66, 73n5; Sylvicultura Oeconomica (von Carlowitz)
religion and 56 – 57, 115 – 116; research 72n1, 153
on 129 – 135; social happiness and 88; symbolism 50 – 52
social imaginaries and 217, 220, 228;
socialism and 64; subjective dimensions Talaat Pascha 37 – 38
of 254; well-being and 96n10 Taylor, C. 213
sustainability concept epochs 110 techno-capitalist solutions 65
“Sustainability in an Imaginary World” Tehlirjan, Soghomon 37 – 38
135 Thames River see River Thames
sustainability paradigms: Anthropocene Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen) 78
and 109; conceptions of 109 – 111, thick description 50
111, 112 – 120, 120, 121; contingency Thin, N. 92 – 93, 96n8, 96n9
management 110, 111, 115 – 119, 121; Thomas, L. 180n33
environmental management 110, 111, Thoreau, Henry D. 144, 236 – 237
112 – 114, 121; implementation of 121; traditional farming knowledge 21
resource management 110 – 111, 111, traditional morality 71 – 72
112, 121; social management 110, 111, traditional practice 71 – 72
114 – 115, 121 transformative literacy 254
sustainability religion 116 triangle of sustainability 3
 Index 267
Trump, Donald J. 53, 193 Wagner, E. 160
Tybur, J. M. 80 Walden (Thoreau) 237
Walden, a Game 236 – 237, 237
Uexküell, Jakob von 140 wars: barbarism and 34n5; humanitarian
UN Development Assistance Frameworks principles and 30 – 31; intentional
(UNDAF) 23 destruction of cultural heritage in 31
UNESCO see United Nations waste management: cultural sustainability
Educational, Scientific and Cultural and 183 – 186; cyclical exchange in
Organization (UNESCO) 185 – 186; dry conservancy sewage
UNESCO Summit on Culture and removal 183 – 187, 192n4; literary
Sustainable Development 127 symbolism of 187 – 190; nightsoil
UN General Assembly Resolution of 2013 184 – 185; Victorian Britain 183 – 186,
19 190; water-borne sewage removal
United Cities and Local Governments 183 – 187, 189, 192n4
(UCLG) 128 water-borne sewage removal 183 – 187,
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of 189, 192n4
Indigenous Peoples 41 – 42 water imagery: aesthetics of 190; female
United Nations Development Programme transgression and 190; in literature 183,
(UNDP) 13 186 – 190; River Thames and 187 – 190;
United Nations Educational, Scientific spiritual rebirth and 192n7
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): WCED see World Commission on
cultural sustainability and 3, 27 – 28, Environment and Development
127; culture and 15 – 16; planetary (WCED)
sustainability and 98 – 99 Wee, Kim Wee 43
United Nations General Assembly: human Wehrspaun, M. 48
rights and 14; resolutions of 17 – 18, 22 Weigel, S. 53
United Nations Sustainable Development Weik von Mossner, A. 196 – 197, 223
Summit 12 well-being: ecosystem assessment and 87,
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights” 95n3; happiness and 88, 93; shared
14, 16, 39, 41 values and 90 – 91; subjective 96n10;
Universal Declaration on Cultural sustainability and 96n10
Diversity (UNESCO) 16 ‘Wellbeing Manifesto’ 93
UN-Rio Conference 110 Wellner, G. P. 250
unsustainability: Anthropocene and 119, Western civilization: ancient Greece and
120, 221; in speculative fiction 195, 29; assaults on cultural heritage sites 28;
198 cult of antiquities in 31 – 32; high self-
Updike, John 149 esteem in 96n7; human rights and 43;
utopian fiction 220 – 221 modern morality in 71; philosophy and
utopian sense 66 – 67 48; political traditions in 64; symbolic
warfare against 31
Vaisey, S. 83 Westling, L. 141
value modules 71 Wheeler, W. 141
vandalism 30, 32 – 33 When the Wind Blows (Briggs) 210
Van den Bergh, B. 80 Whitman, Walt 148 – 149
Van Vugt, M. 79 Wijk & Water Battle 239 – 240
Veblen, T. 78 wilderness 144, 148
Victorian Britain: self-sustainability wildness: American literature and
in 185 – 186; waste management in 144 – 147; American poetry
183 – 186, 190 and 148 – 149; as ecosemiotic
Vienna Conference on Human Rights 42 communication 144; literature and 144
Vitens 239 Wilke, G. 56
von Winterfeld, U. 56 Willemen, L. 89
VPRO 240 Williams, R. 183
268 Index
Williams, William Carlos 148 world heritage 27
Wirth, J. 166 World Without Oil 239
Wojciehowski, H. 196
Wood, Robert 28 – 29 Year of the Flood, The (Atwood): eco-
Woolcock, M. 195 ekphrases in 221, 225–227; literary
World Climate Conference (2015) 232, 233 description in 223–228, 251; non-
World Commission on Culture and human nature and 223; sufficiency
Development (WCCD) 15 and 56
World Commission on Environment and Yeast (Kingsley) 185
Development (WCED) 3 – 4, 114
World Conference on Cultural Policies 15 Zapf, H. 155, 175, 195, 220, 230n2, 251
World Decade for Cultural Development 15 Zapf, L. 111, 250
World Health Organization (WHO) Žižek, S. 91
87 – 88 Zunshine, L. 196