2004/05/27 by Carlos Castro · 243 citations
Engineering · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Argument (complex analysis) #Democracy #Ecology #Environmental ethics #Epistemology #Mainstream #Philosophy #Political Economy and Marxism #Political science #Politics #Presupposition #Sociology #Sustainability #Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy #Sustainable Industrial Ecology #Sustainable development
paper · doi:10.1177/1086026604264910
published in Organization & Environment 17(2), 195-225 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2004/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Like democracy and globalization, the concept of sustainable development has become one of the most ubiquitous, contested, and indispensable concepts of our time. Although the concept was first introduced in response to environmental concerns, it has been defined primarily by the mainstream tradition of economic analysis, which tends to marginalize the issue of ecological sustainability itself. Recently, however, scholars advancing various critical perspectives challenged the mainstream economic analysis of sustainable development. This essay examines the presuppositions, logic, and major themes of mainstream sustainable development theory, primarily within economics, and explores the critiques of mainstream analysis offered by various poststructuralist cultural theorists and ecological Marxists. Although considered to be superior in their greater emphasis on ecological sustainability, neither of these critical approaches is deemed adequate in itself. The argument here instead leads to the conception that an adequate approach to sustainable development requires combining insights from various critical approaches and perspectives.