Advancing culture’s role in sustainable development: social change through cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the potential for cultural policy to shape sustainable development in the context of expectations arising from research and policy work on development. We use, as the basis of a critique, the categorisation of the relationship between culture and sustainable development proposed by a major study funded by the European Union, being emblematical of how researchers and policymakers understand this relationship. The critique highlights a need for multiscalar social change, towards revaluing relations with the natural world, and reforming social relations between producers and consumers. This paper locates cultural policy as an arm of governance, with the capacity to lead social change across several interdependent pathways (revaluing technological change; fostering an aesthetic appreciation and environmental ethical consciousness; and pro-social behaviour) alongside the development of more sophisticated governance frameworks. The paper further proposes that through (re)education, cultural policy can and should play a more active role in shaping social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumption
• culture
• environment
• social change
• sustainable development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Dessein et al. (2015) is the outcome of COST, a comprehensive survey of published works 2011–2015, funded by the European Union. It involved around 100 researchers from 25 EU countries, plus Israel, New Zealand and Australia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lez Rayman-Bacchus

Dr Lez Rayman-Bacchus is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Winchester Business School. He is also Founding Director of the Centre for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development and the International Symposium on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development.

Ciprian N. Radavoi

Ciprian N. Radavoi has been lecturing since 2012 in China and in Australia on matters related to global governance and social justice. Prior, he was a diplomat with assignments in Asia and Africa.