Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability

Rating:
Summary: A hard look at sustainability
Review: Sustainability is a very important idea. It is perhaps the most signifiicant response to our emergent environmental crisis yet. But the term is in danger of becoming so broad in meaning that it stops having any real meaning at all, and this is why this new book is so relevant. Davison reviews the short history of sustainability, and the genesis of the key ideas. He takes a hard look at what is happening to the concept, and in particular how it is being coopted by the same people who brought us the problems in the first place. In doing this he directly confronts the ambiguous role of technology, which he sees as one way in which we create our world. He analyses key ideas, and is so lucid in this endeavour that even Heidegger begins to make sense. But more interestingly, Davison tries to determne what meaningful sustainability is, and how the idea can be translated into a personal experience as well as a cultural concept.
This is intellectually a very challenging and pointed work, but it is also very human and immediate. Davison has attempted in this book the rare thing of reintegrating hard science, philosophy, and day to day life. In my view, he succeeds in his set task.
Oh, and he can write, too.