Sustainability is shaped by praxis - not by words

Just came back from some exiting days in Washington attending the yearly AAG (Association of American Geographers) conference - And yes I felt lucky as the flight landed in Copenhagen.

I have been absent from this site for a while, mainly because I have been very busy, but also, I must admit, because it has been a bit difficult writing about sustainability after the overload and disappointment brought on because of the COOP 15.

But as always the AAG conference brought about a variety of interesting presentations and discussions, some about sustainability. Many of them related to mobility and transport which I will write more about in later blogs.

Today I will just briefly tell you that we need to find a new way of handling sustainability. The problem with this concept is often that we try to operationalize sustainability and this causes us a great deal of problems. You see sustainability is not a fuzzy concept it is instead an empty signifier – and that’s helpful. :-)

It is an empty signifiers like society for instance. We do not have one common definition on society, yet we still accept that society exists and that what gives it meaning is the praxis that we analyze society by. The same thing goes for sustainability. It is the praxis inspired by the concept that is important, not the definition.

I will leave it there but promises to come back to the discussion on a later point, and might bring in some examples.