ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a theory of sustainable leadership that hinges upon the purposes toward which leadership is applied. Sustainable leadership, comprised of fitting responses to converging socio-ecological crises, is counter-hegemonic, inclusive, place-centered, and learned. Sustainable leadership serves integrative and normative roles in creating/restoring the health of the human/natural world. Cultural systems of hierarchy in Western societies and the projection of a hierarchical worldview upon nature itself surely are among the keystone concepts upholding the house of cards that is the unsustainable, globalized, industrial world. Sustainable leadership welcomes new leaders and creates space for their leadership potential to grow. In a world-system replete with entrenched systems of hierarchy and characterized by competition, sustainable leadership is a contradiction. Sustainable leadership serves as a vehicle for the expression of counter-hegemonic social values. Sustainable leaders strive to create reciprocal, mutually nurturing, sustaining relationships among people and between humans and nature.
