ABSTRACT
Cultural sustainability will ensure the continuity of human cultures as self-organizing social structures; the future viability of human generations within groups associated by settlements, arts, religion, and cosmological beliefs; and the continuity of knowledge practices. Both culture and sustainability are contested terms across disciplines, to the point of rejection in some discourses. From a systemic design perspective, these definitional challenges are necessary and implicit in any problem framing. In the framework that follows, the object of sustainability is to achieve flourishing, a value pursued via individual and social processes within a societal ecology that policies and education can define and measure. Social ecology crosses multiple units of analysis and mediates between individual-, community- and culture-level relationships. The framework for flourishing cultures is proposed to develop models from social science criteria to aid in formulating policy, facilitating civil society dialogues, co-designing community ecosystems, and organizing governance for inclusive participation in the creation of desirable social futures.
