Sustainable development—ten arguments against a biologistic ‘slow-down’ philosophy of social and economic development

SUMMARY

This paper is a provocative collection of arguments that came to the author's mind when reading through some of the literature on sustainable development. Similar to rather general sociological theories, these sustainability concepts—which are rooted in biological observations and theories of the non-human biosphere—describe elements of a universal development philosophy. But they fail to take into account some of the most basic characteristics of how human societies and economics function and develop. For instance, they largely ignore the role of conflict, the fundamental diversity of interests and lifestyles, power imbalance in and between human societies and the specific dynamics of pioneer development. Most importantly, they define life-support systems almost exclusively in bio-geophysical terms—ignoring the fact that human development primarily depends on the accumulated scientific and technological knowledge and on the cultural heritage of institutions and arrangements which represent successful solutions of social. economic and political problems.

Key words:

• sustainable development
• ‘back-to-nature’ ideology
• social evolution
• conflict
• social theory