A conceptual model for sustainability (John Berger).

摘要

The ideas of Berger are used in this thesis to explore humankind's struggle to achieve greater sustainability. In his descriptions of the peasantry and modern high-energy cultures of progress Berger insightfully crystallises and represents graphically the observation made by many authors writing in different contexts and from within various disciplines that there have been two fundamentally different systems of beliefs and values in history. His conception of ' cultures of survival' and 'cultures of progress ' is used in this thesis to develop a conceptual model for sustainability.; The basic idea underlying the conceptual model for sustainability is that cultural systems self-regulate or self-correct as they strive to achieve balance in their relationship to higher systems levels of the biosphere, while improving quality of life. Over large time scales self-regulation takes the form of quite radical transformations in cultural system's key defining beliefs and values. The model holds that the process of self-regulation results in societies moving back and forth along a cultural continuum of beliefs and values, represented at one end by Berger's cultures of survival and at the other by his cultures of progress. This system of self-regulation is fraught with risks arising from factors like the inherently conservative nature of cultural systems, which reduce the fit or alignment between systems of beliefs and values and their context and in doing so generate un-sustainability. The model suggests that over large spans of time movement back and forth along the cultural continuum creates the dynamic balance needed to achieve greater sustainability, at least if irreversible degradation of the biosphere's life-supporting systems and extinction can be avoided. This conceptual model for sustainability demonstrates the validity of the central hypothesis of the thesis, which is that Berger's ideas in the 'Historical Afterword' to 'Pig Earth' are important and have a valuable contribution to make to the discourse on sustainability.