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A Sociological Approach to Sustainable Development  

Jeong, Dai-Yeun (Department of Sociology, Cheju National University)
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Abstract
The term sustainable development is being used widely since WCED suggested it in 1987. This paper aims at catching up its sociological implications. For doing this, the paper examined some major existing researches on sustainable development. It was found that sustainable development has been defined as an economic development with the preservation of nature as an environment of human life. In this sense, the existing concept of sustainable development is an economic perspective. Sustainable development as an economic perspective is faced with some limitations and/or problems. They are summarized as follows. The human-made environment is excluded from the concept of sustainable development. Its ideology is anthroponcentric in that the sustainability of nature is a necessary condition for economic development. The objective reference which can measure whether the current state of nature is sustainable or not is not proposed. Consequently, sustainable development results in merely a survivability of economy, a new form of economic utility and/or a successful economy. In terms of sociological perspective, economy and nature can not be sustainable without other social factors being sustainable, because all social factors including economy and nature exist in a causal mechanism. This means that sustainable development should be approached from a multi-dimensional perspective. The multi-dimensional approach can be a framework of sustainable development in terms of whole society, then can be termed sustainable society which implies not a sustainable development, but a societal development. The factors which should be included in the sustainable society are, at least, nature, economy, population as an aggregate, mode of living existence of people as a cultural actor, technology, and social structure.
Keywords
Sustainable Development; Environmentalism; Consumerism; Sustainable Society; Sustainable Societal Development;
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