‘Culture’, ‘sustainable development’ and cultural policy: a contrarian view

Abstract

This essay offers a critical analysis of the ‘culture and sustainable development’ discourse, notably among cultural activists and in actually existing cultural policy. It interrogates the utility of the narrative, seeks to uncover the semantic manoeuvres it employs and challenges the conventional wisdom it represents. The essay first explores the itinerary of the ductile notion of ‘sustainability’, the ways in which it has been stretched far beyond the original intent of those who coined the term, and identifies the conceptual discontents that this semantic multiplication has entailed. It hypothesizes that precisely because the term ‘sustainable’ and its derivatives are so acceptable and malleable at the same time, they have been easy to yoke to the bandwagon of the many-faceted and totalizing process that is ‘development’, allowing many different actors to project their interests, hopes, and aspirations under this composite banner. The essay then analyses the campaign to make culture ‘the fourth pillar of sustainability’ under the banner of the movement called ‘Agenda 21 for Culture’. It concludes with a plea for a return to the original ecological focus of the term ‘sustainability’ – notably as regards climate change – and outlines some cultural policy responses such a focus can and should generate.     

Culturally sustainable development: theoretical concept or practical policy instrument?

Abstract

This paper outlines the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, and considers the evolution of efforts to integrate culture into sustainable development policy and practice over recent years. The specific concept of culturally sustainable development (CSD), first promulgated more than 20 years ago, is re-assessed in the light of contemporary circumstances as a theoretically plausible proposition and as a basis for application to cultural policy formation. The paper proposes a set of principles by which consistency of a cultural policy or cultural development strategy with CSD can be judged. The application of each of the principles is discussed, drawing illustrations from particular policy areas in both developed and developing countries. The paper argues that CSD is a concept that has both theoretical substance and potential for practical policy application.     

Reconsidering the Geography of Tourism and Contemporary Mobility

Tourism is one of the world's largest legal industries. At the same time that tourism has grown so has its study, to the extent that there is debate as to whether it may constitute a discipline in its own right. Geographers have long contributed to the study of tourism. However, there is substantial concern over the development of the sub‐discipline and how tourism is conceptualised. A framework for understanding tourism in relation to contemporary human mobility over space and time is provided. This framework bears strong relationships to research on time geography as well as to work on diaspora and transnationalism. Some of the implications of incorporating tourism within the framework of mobility are outlined with respect to mobility as a form of capital, the relationships between different forms of mobility, and an improved understanding of tourism's impacts at all stages of the travel process rather than just at the destination.     

The preservationist paradox: modernism, environmentalism and the politics of spatial division

According to Bruno Latour, the imposition of crude classificatory schemes onto complex entities has two main effects: firstly, the classifications lead social actors to sift the world into the schemes' simple categories; secondly, underlying relations subvert the schemes' functioning, resulting in the production of transgressive 'hybrids'. Thus, classification and relation interact and this interaction shapes both the practice of classification and the world that is classified. In this paper, we examine the interaction between a scheme of spatial classification and the spaces that are enrolled within the scheme. We show that a division between urban and rural areas was put in place in post-war England in order to protect a 'vulnerable' rural nature from urban advance. However, as soon as it was imposed, this division was transgressed by complex socio-economic processes. We assess the response to this transgression by considering the activities of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), an environmental group that played some considerable part in constructing the urban–rural divide in the first place. We show that the CPRE has responded to the 'paradox of preservationism' by placing urban–rural divisions in the context of 'ecological' relationships. We illustrate this 'ecologization' of the modernist divide using the example of housing and we argue that the CPRE's ecological approach illustrates how a new alignment between 'urban' and 'rural' may herald a new and more sophisticated form of spatial classification.     

Prospects for the Rural‐Urban Fringe in Australia: Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide

Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural‐urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post‐World War II efforts to plan the rural‐urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy‐makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi‐faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy‐makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.     

中英国家公园旅游可持续性比较研究——以中国九寨沟和英国新森林国家公园为例

中英两国国情迥异,但两国的国家公园均以自然保护、旅游与社区可持续发展为管理目标。本文以中国九寨沟和英国新森林国家公园为例,构建了由12个客观指标和12个主观指标组成的国家公园旅游可持续性评价指标体系,通过专家咨询和均方差法计算指标权值,用加权指标综合评价方法对案例地旅游可持续性进行了评价。评价结果表明,九寨沟旅游发展具有潜在的可持续性;而新森林国家公园则具有潜在的不可持续性。论文最后从两国国家公园管理体制和模式差异对评价结果进行了解释。     

The Firm and Shaky Ground of Education for Sustainable Development

This paper employs academic and parable forms to evaluate critically the strengths and weaknesses, potentials and lacunae of education for sustainable development (ESD) and other sustainability-related educations. The meteoric rise to prominence of ESD is first briefly reviewed, as is the firm ground it now stands upon as an international and national educational priority. The remainder of the paper explores the shaky ground of ESD: the field's reliance on a goal, sustainable development, which, in its by-and-large continued embrace of the growth principle, is a myopic response to the Earth condition; the field's embrace of an instrumentalist conception of nature when such a conception itself feeds unsustainability; the overly skills/training orientation of ESD and its stunted engagement with a range of key aspects of the human-nature relationship; the failure of ESD to realize its original breadth and promise in its marginalization of the voice of peace, social justice, anti-discriminatory, indigenous and futures educators as well as that of sustainability educators in the South; its adoption of an anachronistic ‘steady state’ conception of nature. Finally, it is suggested that sustainability-related education would be enriched and enlivened by fomenting a dynamic complementarity between notions of transience and sustainability     

Planning Sustainability: Intergenerational and Intragenerational Justice in Spatial Planning Strategies

Abstract: Subsequent to the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our Common Future), sustainability has been set up in many countries as a mission statement of cross‐sectoral policies. Sustainable development carries the normative notions of equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development. Thus, it seems to suggest a fundamentally different vision to neoliberal dogma, which is at the same time described as dominating all socio‐political processes. This paper intends to explore the relation between these two discursive framings of contemporary policies through the example of German spatial planning guidelines. More precisely, it addresses social justice as one pillar of sustainability and how it is operationalised in spatial planning policies in Germany. This may exemplify how the seemingly opposing discourses interact in policy practices. The empirical analysis suggests that the ways in which the German spatial planning report focused on social space in territorial terms promotes an economistic and truncated view of social justice, one which fosters the neoliberal idea of regional competition for global capital and reduces socio‐spatial justice to territorially equally distributed economic inclusion.     

The socio-ecological fix by multi-scalar states: The development of ‘Greenways of Paradise’ in Chengdu

This paper examines the recent green turn in China by investigating a large-scale urban greenway project. Using the perspective of the socio-ecological fix, we demonstrate that multi-scalar states strive to upgrade environmental quality. Specifically, the local state seizes the opportunity for ‘ecological civilisation’ envisioned by the central state to carry out green infrastructure development. We reveal complex motivations to incorporate ecological changes into entrepreneurial urban governance instead of encroaching greenspace for economic growth. Our state-centred analysis reveals that such an environmental strategy, the making of Chinese green urbanism, is promoted like a political mission, despite its operation by the development corporation. We argue that, while the socio-ecological fix facilitates capital accumulation, its deployment must be understood through state politics and actors.     

Celebrations,Exaltations and Alpha Lands: Everyday geographies of the far-right

There is a gap in research that considers, and spatializes, the everyday geographies of far-right encounters, socialization, recreation and leisure. While much research considers the end-stages of right-wing radicalisation and focuses on the extreme right (e.g., hate groups, fringe political parties, despotic leaders, specific eruptions and episodes of violence or terror, online rhetoric), the daily processes, moments and spatial configurations in-between the mainstream and extreme are sometimes overlooked. These are crucial to understand, in order to develop a more nuanced and effective language in recognizing, responding to, and combatting right-wing radicalisation.This paper thus addresses the geographical blind spot by spatializing the everyday life of the far-right, through a three-pronged taxonomy. Drawing from ethnographic observations and social media and socio-demographic analyses, the paper argues that three geographies in particular emerge as nodes of far-right formation (attached to specific sites and online/offline): a) spaces of recreation and leisure (“Celebrations”); b) spaces of faith and spirituality (“Exaltations”); and c) spaces of the corporeal (“Alpha Lands”). These spaces intersect, extend across urban, peri-urban and rural terrains, and do not necessarily adhere to established political or territorial borders and boundaries, but rather, can be envisioned as multi-scalar spatial fixes, laden with political possibilities.