ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we noted the indistinct nature of the boundary between the natural environment and society. We should also now formally note a further point that was, in fact, implicit in that discussion: the boundaries of the economic with both the environmental and the social are similarly indistinct. Economic behaviour comprises particular types of social interactions, which, at least in any posthunter-gatherer society, must involve or depend upon either new transformations of the environment or the maintenance of established forms of transformation (see Brody 2002 for a discussion of the issues). The familiar division of sustainable development into environmental, social and economic elements followed in this book is a convenient one precisely because it is VRIDPLOLDU:H¿QGLWUHÀHFWHGLQ the design of our institutions (for example, most governments have separate ministries dealing with environmental, social and economic matters), in the delineaWLRQRI¿HOGVRIDFDGHPLFVWXG\HJVRFLRORJ\HFRQRPLFVHFRORJ\ELRORJ\DQG perhaps most fundamentally, in the language we use to talk and think about our lives. This compartmentalisation serves the useful function of making a massively complex set of issues more manageable, but it is still a habit of mind rather than an inalienable property of the underlying realities. Further, it systematically preempts the use of alternative sets of analytical categories that might just possibly EHXVHIXO LQWKLQNLQJDERXWVXVWDLQDEOHGHYHORSPHQW±RQHQRWHQWLUHO\ÀLSSDQW suggestion might be as follows:
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However, we employ the environment/society/economy framework here because we want to use the language that is considered normal in the discussion of
sustainable development in such a way as to engage with the concerns of ministries, disciplinary specialists and others. Nevertheless, we hold that framework OLJKWO\$Q\RQH VWLOO LQFOLQHG WR WKHYLHZ WKDW WKH¿UPVHSDUDWLRQRIHFRQRPLF social and environmental factors is intrinsic, at the minimum, to modern, highly GHYHORSHG VRFLHWLHV PLJKW FRQVLGHU WKH IROORZLQJ GHVFULSWLRQ RI WZHQW\¿UVW century Montana in the north-western United States:
Today, the Bitterroot Valley looks lush, belying its original natural vegetation of just sagebrush. Ravalli County in which the valley is located is so beautiful and attracts so many immigrants . . . that it is one of our nation’s fastest growing counties, yet 70% of its own high school graduates leave the valley, and most of those leave Montana. . . . Some of the people recently establishing homes in the valley are extremely wealthy . . . but Ravalli County is nevertheless one of the poorest counties in the state of Montana, which in turn is nearly the poorest state in the U.S.
