The Process of Sustainability

Sustainability is often considered to represent either an end goal or the journey towards it. This book merges these views, interpreting sustainability as an end, as a means, and more. It probes sustainability as process, and it explicates the theoretical and practical relevance of this orientation across sectors and scales.

The Process of Sustainability treats sustainability as process. This process – sustaining – comprises means and methods, as well as ends and objectives, of human organization that are of relevance in solving the existential crisis. Sustainability is not just a common journey to be embarked, but it gives purpose to our endeavours. Dwelling meaningfully requires sustaining; without this effort, life (with humans in it) cannot prevail. Engaging in the process of sustainability is thus argued to hold paramount onto-epistemological value for the experience of internal and external conflicts of being alive. Also, the measure of good and beautiful discloses by asking: can it be sustained?Whilst sustaining processes, existential issues do not surface, but they are solved in practice. Being is directed at contributing to communities and cultures that sustain and learning the skills of sustaining emerges as pivotal for solving the contemporary predicaments in the muster of earthbound locales. When the question is no longer on ''why to sustain'' but on the ''how'', then the advancing of our knowledge and action takes centre stage. The process of sustainability unfolds a translocal pattern of restoration and regeneration through encounters.The book offers a consolidative orientation to the study of process and sustainability with investigations, instruments, and implications across scales and sectors. Sustaining conjoins processes. It is a novel orientation to transdisciplinary knowledge and action that aims at benefitting the whole of cosmos and its fragments and patterns by guiding our efforts to sustaining the natural, worldly, and cultural assortment of the present timespace.