ABSTRACT
In working with the Social Ecology model of sustainability earlier chapters in this book consistently bring big sustainability challenges back to a consideration of things that individual people can do; at home and in the various organisations and communities to which they belong. This culminated in the discussion in Chapter 10 of the ‘personal dimensions’ of sustainability. This chapter changes the direction of that line of argument to consider what individuals can do in wider organisational, social and cultural settings. It starts by focusing on the seemingly simple task of building relationships with other ‘actors’ within organisational or community settings before considering how change proposals might be ‘enshrined’ within adopted policy. However words like ‘actors’, ‘stakeholders’ and even ‘policy’ are used rather loosely in the literature on sustainability and this chapter argues that we need to distinguish very carefully between different modes of engagement and consultation. We need to understand that policies can be seen as ‘issue-attention cycles’ (Portney 1992) – that can never be fully completed. They articulate transitional outcomes of ongoing dialogues and debates. Many concepts and terms that circulate in the literature on sustainability come from the fields of economics and business management and while there is nothing wrong with that in itself we need to understand their origins
and limitations. As noted in Chapters 4 and 9, growth-oriented, free market economic theories and practices have generally failed to address the big global challenges identified in the 1987 Brundtland Report but that should not rule out the judicious use of concepts and tools taken from economics and business management. Chapter 9 noted that the word ‘community’ is particularly open to abuse and misuse and yet community development practice and meaningful community engagement work can build momentum for wider social and cultural change. The chapter looks at the influential work by Douglas Mackenzie Mohr and William Smith on fostering behaviour change within communities but it goes on to suggest that we also need to focus on wider cultural change and here we return to the importance of storytelling that was raised in Chapter 10. Social and cultural change, it will be argued, are never linear and only rarely predictable. However, individuals can consciously hone their ability to act as change agents in contexts ranging from a workplace organisation to the virtual world of social media.
