ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some of the scholarly contributions that have shaped sustainability’s definition. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight several of the major ideas that have added to the sustainability discussion. Environmental professionals, governments, companies, and NGOs develop and adopt approaches, methods, or concepts in the name of being more sustainable. Scholars use these material outcomes to develop research meant to determine whether in fact they have the potential to sustain our world for future generations or whether new ideas are needed to achieve sustainability. It is primarily within the academy that ideas are developed, questioned, and tested. These understandings in turn influence and inform practitioners, creating a give-and-take relationship between the two. The academy has in this fashion influenced the concept of sustainable development and helped define sustainability. Our aim here is to introduce some of the more influential and popular ideas that have taken hold outside of the academy as well as within it. The term sustainability is multidisciplinary in both its use and its interpretation. Different disciplines have offered concepts and models that refine, add to, and/or reshape the basic Brundtland definition of sustainability, but this also contributes to the challenge of extreme breadth that we have mentioned in previous chapters. Perspectives from the fields of the natural sciences (notably biological sciences), economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and anthropology are examined.
