Page 82 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

5 Sociological Perspectives on Sustainability Communication 65

(energy and water supply, settlement structures, mobility systems, construction
standards etc.), existing market structures as well as cultural expectations and
standards of ‘normality’ (Shove 2003; Southerton et al. 2004).

Summary

This limitation of a lifestyle-related communication approach to the dissemination
of sustainable consumption does not question the importance of public sustainabil-
ity discourses. Without the presence of a controversial discourse on global environ-
mental problems and non-sustainable development paths in the mass media, there
would be no pressure on either institutional or private actors to take action. Even if
this discussion is not led under the heading of ‘sustainable development’ in the
broad public, the public framing of the constitutive problems of this debate limits
the scope in which practical changes can take place. There is another fundamental
insight of modern sociology that can be utilised for an understanding of the prob-
lems of sustainability transition: the insight that the diverse spheres or sub-systems
of social life follow their own internal rationalities. It is not only the broad spectrum
of conflicting interests and diverging worldviews but also these different social
rationalities that account for the translation of the general, widely accepted idea of
‘sustainable development’ into very specific and often contradictory action pro-
grammes (e.g. Luhmann 1989). This selective and contradictory ‘translation process’
happens in a similar way at the level of everyday life. Here it is the variety of life-
styles that translates the general postulate of an ecologically and socially responsi-
ble behaviour into very selective, milieu-specific patterns of problem awareness and
consumption. It is this socio-cultural selectivity that gives the public controversies
on sustainability issues a specific resonance in the life world of people. Both, the
competing frames of sustainability problems in public discourses and their every-
day cultural resonance determine the chances of a more neoliberal or egalitarian, a
more techno- or eco-centrist strategy of sustainable development.

References

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