Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability
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Argues that sustainability requires more than economic and technological efficiency.
Description
This transdisciplinary inquiry presents a new way of thinking about sustainability and technology that takes us beyond the familiar preoccupation with ecoefficiency, and toward the contested moral question of what most nourishes our ability to care for our world. In contrast to the technocratic aim of controlling a perilous future, the author proposes that we develop the practical craft of sustenance. Beginning with debates in environmental policy, he draws upon recent philosophical interest in ecology, technology, and moral experience to argue that the challenge of sustainability is that of undermining those traditions that present technology as somehow external to our inherent moral ambiguity. This discussion responds to the work of Langdon Winner, Albert Borgmann, Charles Taylor, Martin Heidegger, David Abram, and others.
Aidan Davison is Lecturer in Sustainability Studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia. He has degrees in biochemistry, science and technology policy, and environmental philosophy.
Reviews
"This is one of the best and most sensitive books on sustainability that I have read. In some ways it even redefines the sustainability question. " — Carl Mitcham, author of Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy and coeditor of Visions of STS: Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies
"As a new contribution to the philosophy of technology, this book will be welcomed by those who have been hoping for a vision of technology and moral life that is both intellectually sophisticated and potentially practical. " — Langdon Winner, author of The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology
"Studded with wonderful flashes of insight and delightful passages of fine descriptive and narrative writing, this book offers some persuasive responses to the problems it analyzes. " — Freya Mathews, author of The Ecological Self