ABSTRACT
Cultural sustainability, the embeddedness of sustainability in culture, is a modern concept. Modern unsustainability is a product of consumer-driven market ideology infiltrated in Western myths of progress and growth. It is possible to reach behind the myths and investigate earlier conceptions of the relations between humans and nature. Modern ideas of domination over nature are based on a mechanical world view that replaced an organic one in the seventeenth century. This chapter will investigate various pre-enlightenment conceptions of nature and cultural sustainability that can be compared with current ideas of sustainable development. It suggests a shift towards a world view that acknowledges the limits of human knowledge as well as actions and recognizes diversity and complexity in a dialogic manner and thus responsible relations to nature.
