Learning to persist

Richard Bawden

pp. 1-5

in: Frank A. Stowell, Ray Ison, Rosalind Armson, Jacky Holloway, Sue Jackson (eds), Systems for sustainability, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

Sustainability is a concept which is entirely appropriate to the age which has spawned it. Being as ambiguous, complex, mystical and multi-faceted as it is, it represents a wonderful example of the confusion that comes with what has been termed reflexive modernity (Beck, 1992): This epoch where we must now face up to the "hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation" and concern ourselves "not just with making nature useful, or with releasing mankind from traditional constraints, but also essentially with problems resulting from techno-economic development itself".