ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections between globalization, inequality, sustainability, and the prospects of transformations to achieve sustainability. The chapter describes a broad appraisal of the relationship between social inequalities, globalization, and environmental risks and harm is given. It examines the concept of sustainability and the primary perspectives and research on pathways to achieve it. The chapter illustrates the characteristics of more sustainable societies. It discusses the prospects for large-scale social change toward greater sustainability. Conflict perspectives in the social sciences provide a frame for a very different understanding of globalization than neoliberalism. Economic inequality is strongly connected to racial and ethnic inequality. Ideas about sustainable societies and development have long and mixed histories. There is a radically different point of view, suggested by neoclassical economists, environmental economists, and some sociologists. Large-scale change outcomes that would result in sustainability are strongly shaped by time horizons from which actors and systems operate.
