Cultural Dynamics for Sustainability: How Can Humanity Craft Cultures of Sustainability?

Abstract

Humanity faces twin problems of adaptation—natural environmental challenges of climate change and global humanitarian challenges of ensuring well-being for all—that pose a dilemma for sustainable development. One way forward is to develop cultures of sustainability that highlight and reward the ideas and practices that will help us transition to a sustainable lifestyle. Although institutional responses are necessary and multidisciplinary approaches are required, individual citizens can also participate in cultural dynamics—the process of cultural formation, maintenance, and transformation—to craft cultures of sustainability, and psychological science can point to potential mechanisms for effecting this cultural change. Informed by the niche-construction perspective, I suggest that the critical ingredients of cultures of sustainability include (a) conceptions of human–nature connectedness, (b) conceptions of human–artifact relation, (c) interpersonal conversations about sustainability norms within social networks, and (d) visions of an achievable utopia for a sustainable future. Further research and action are called for.

‘Bunkering down’: How one community is tightening social‐ecological network structures in the face of global change

“…Research that focuses on the psychological dimensions underpinning strategies to adapt social and ecological ties in the context of both episodic shocks and more gradual change would likely be particularly useful. Perceptions and cognitions are often strongly linked to adaptive behaviour (Clayton et al, 2015; Grothmann & Patt, 2005), and recent research argues that the interplay between social‐ecological networks and human cognition can help to drive the cultural change needed to initiate large‐scale transformations toward sustainability (Kashima, 2020).…”

Cultural change through niche construction: A multilevel approach to investigate the interplay between cultural change and infectious disease.

“…In fact, climate change might be the biggest problem of our age requiring human-centered niche-construction thinking. Once we take the theory of niche-construction seriously, can we counteract the current environmental crisis by cultivating a culture of sustainability (Kashima, 2020).…”

COVID‐19, societal threats, and social psychology’s self‐imposed constraint

“…People may need to rely more on scientific information about the state of the climate system and adjust their behaviour in preparation for eventualities in the long‐term future. All these require ordinary citizens’ participation in the transformation of culture and society for a better world (Kashima, 2020).…”

“…So much so, that the ongoing human activities are now threatening to irreversibly alter the biophysical processes that have maintained the Holocene Optimum, the planetary climate optimally suitable for human thriving. By now, humanity has become a dominant force in shaping the planetary ecosystem, even to the point where some have proposed that the current geological epoch should be renamed the Anthropocene (for brief discussions, see Kashima, 2020; Kashima, O’Brien et al, 2021).…”