1st Edition
Cultural Sustainability and the Nature-Culture Interface Livelihoods, Policies, and Methodologies
As contemporary socio-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity preservation have become more important, the three pillars concept has increasingly been used in planning and policy circles as a framework for analysis and action. However, the issue of how culture influences sustainability is still an underexplored theme. Understanding how culture can act as a resource to promote sustainability, rather than a barrier, is the key to the development of cultural sustainability.
This book explores the interfaces between nature and culture through the perspective of cultural sustainability. A cultural perspective on environmental sustainability enables a renewal of sustainability discourse and practices across rural and urban landscapes, natural and cultural systems, stressing heterogeneity and complexity. The book focuses on the nature-culture interface conceptualised as a place where experiences, practices, policies, ideas and knowledge meet, are negotiated, discussed and resolved. Rather than looking for lost unities, or an imaginary view of harmonious relationships between humans and nature based in the past, it explores cases of interfaces that are context-sensitive and which consciously convey the problems of scale and time.
While calling attention to a cultural or ‘culturalised’ view of the sustainability debate, this book questions the radical nature-culture dualism dominating positive modern thinking as well as its underlying view of nature as pre-given and independent from human life.
Series Introduction Katriina Soini and Joost Dessein Introduction to culture, sustainability and the environmental realm Constanza Parra, Inger Birkeland, Rob Burton, Katriina Siivonen PART 1: Livelihoods, cultures and practices 1. Sustainable Everyday Culture From Glocal Archipelago Culture Katriina Siivonen 2. Cultivating Cultural Sustainability in Farming Practices Katriina Soini, Suvi Huttunen 3. What can Culture in and for Sustainable Development Learn from Protected Areas? Constanza Parra 4. Culturally Sensitive Agricultures and Biocultural Diversity Cláudia Brites, Pedro Mendes Moreira 5. A Matter of Context and Balance. Pre-industrial Conceptualizations of Sustainability Viðar Hreinsson 6. Roots and wings. Creativity and the Nature-Culture Interface Annalisa Cicerchia PART 2: Planning and policies for cultural sustainability 7. Landscape Co-Management Practices and Power Structures in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Wachau, Austria Katharina Gugerell, Marianne Penker, Pia Kieninger 8. Adaptation and Cultural Sustainability of the Winter-Seining Community in the Archipelago of Southwestern Finland Kirsi Sonck-Rautio 9. Preserving Cultural Landscapes: A Cultural Sustainability Perspective Rob J.F. Burton 10. Terraced Landscapes: The Significance of a Living Agricultural Heritage Bettina Scharrer, Thomas Hammer, Marion Leng 11. Tourism and Sustainable Development in Rural Communities in the Black Sea Coastline Miroslav Tașcu-Stavre 12. World Heritage and Cultural Sustainability: Farmers and Fishermen at Vega, Northern Norway Karoline Daugstad, Knut Fageraas PART 3: Methodologies for cultural sustainability 13. Narratives, Capabilities and Climate Change: Towards a Sustainable Culture Nathalie Blanc, Lydie Laigle 14. Artistic Actions for Sustainability in Contemporary Art Exhibition Ásthildur Jónsdóttir, Chrystalla Antoniou 15. Media Aesthetic Methodologies: Analyzing Media-Stories of Nature and Wild Life Nina Svane-Mikkelsen
Biography
Inger Birkeland is Professor in Human Geography at the Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies at University College of Southeast Norway, where she researches cultural and learning aspects of sustainability in local and regional development.
Rob Burton is a Research Professor at the Centre for Rural Research in Trondheim, Norway. He focuses on farmer agency and, in particular, the influence of identity and cultural factors on decision-making.
Constanza Parra is Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She researches and writes on social sustainability, nature-culture interactions, governance of socio-ecological systems and sustainable tourism.
Katriina Siivonen is Adjunct Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies and Senior Lecturer and Discipline Coordinator in Futures Studies at University of Turku, Finland. She focusses on cultural sustainability, semiotic theory of culture, traditions, cultural heritage, heritage futures, cultural identities and ethnography as well as qualitative and participatory futures methodology.
"How does sustainability translate into different cultures? Is it a property of all cultures and, if so, how do we come to understand sustainability when culture is the prism through which we understand everything? This volume speaks to these and other questions and draws on the thinking of a clutch of young and original international scholars." — Michael Redclift, King's College, UK
"Three premises underlie this book: that sustainability has a cultural dimension, that nature and culture are intertwined, and that culture is the means by which different forms of sustainability take shape. Exploring these premises from a diversity of perspectives, the authors make a valuable contribution to the emerging field of culture and sustainability studies." — Sharon Jeanotte, University of Ottawa, Canada
"This timely collection of case studies offers original insights into cultural sustainability from multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives, highlighting the importance of holistic approaches. A valuable reference source for researchers across a broad range of disciplines, the book should be required reading for advanced courses concerned with issues of cultural sustainability." — Ullrich Kockel, Heriot-Watt University, UK
"The book is a welcome contribution to the teaching of sustainable development in universities and educational institutions. It illustrates the basic concepts of cultural sustainability, but also addresses the many, sometimes contradictory, aspects of these concepts and interpretations. The theme of cultural transformation is the red thread of the work and highlights the dynamic and future-oriented nature of cultural sustainability." — Sari Puustinen, University of Turku, Finland
"Within a wider genre dominated by reductionist economic or technical approaches to sustainability transitions, this book is centred around the compelling proposition that sustainability is, first and foremost, a matter of culture. Understanding the nexus between sustainability and culture is one of our most compelling challenges in the social sciences." — Hugh Campbell, University of Otago, New Zealand
