Our week on politics took the rhetoric sustainability as a case study on theories of power. While sustainability is a common phrase that permeates many levels of governing, I tend to be very frustrated while dwelling on sustainability as a goal for ESS or society. I was having trouble extracting lessons about power from the readings that we were assigned. Mostly what I discerned was the emptiness of the word sustainability and the abstract vagueness that shrouds policies about it.
Sustainability is the last thing I think of when I think about power. In fact, it seems that sustainability discourse disempowers everyone. Individuals cannot hope to take on the vague and monumental task of seeking global or even national sustainability. Governments as well, as demonstrated by the Open Group proposal for global sustainability, can’t seem to walk the line between regional, local, and global scale in making attainable goals. In this report, sustainability is everyone, from female education to water safety.
Sustainability seems more tied to the utopian and dystopian futures of our ethics unit. Sustainability is an imagination of the future, the idea that the future will be at least as good as today. While this might seem like a mediocre goal or a unimaginative utopia compared to the fictions we read, it seems like a realistic goal (at least if it weren’t for those contradictions of capitalism).
Sustainability is a powerful term, however, because it is so prolific. Everyone says “that’s not sustainable” these days, while perhaps not spending the time to think about what that actually means. But it is wielded by people and institutions who have the power to make decisions and that forces us to pay attention to its usage.
Looking back from the completion of my final project. I am more interested in the politics of knowledge and how these together codify values and comprise reality. I think sustainability is more of a subset of knowledge, one that is highly institutionalized.