ABSTRACT
As we saw in the introduction to this chapter, this shift to disorganised capitalism (Lash and Urry, 1987), or what some have labelled postmodernity (Crook et al., 1992; Jencks, 1996), has intensified problems of environmental degradation and social exclusion and has led to greater advocacy of sustainable development (see Box 10.7). A growing patchwork of international environmental agreements, increased corporate environmentalism, greater public awareness of environmental issues, and the incorporation of sustainable development into more local and national economic policies, all suggest mounting social concern with the nature and balance of production and consumption, and the emergence of sustainable development as a new mode of regulation (Reid, 1995; Gibbs, 1996). As such, it becomes the justification for an ensemble of institutional forms and practices that guide and stabilise the accumulation process and create a temporary resolution of its crisis tendencies. As a means of institutionalising struggles between competing interests (capitalists, workers’ and citizens’ movements and the state), sustainable development takes a variety of forms from the ‘real’ regulations of laws and concrete structures through to more tangible elements such as values and norms of behaviour.
