Technology and the contested meanings of sustainability

By Aidan Davison

Published by State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0-7914-4980-3 (hc. : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-7914-4980-7 (pbk. : alk paper)

The paperback is available for $AUD45 from ISTP.

Mail address:
ISTP, Murdoch University,
South St, Murdoch, 6150, Western Australia

The paperback is available from Amazon for $21.95 USD. The page is here.

The Hardcover is also available from Amazon for $65.5 USD. The page is here.

This transdisciplinary inquiry presents a new way of thinking about sustainability and technology that takes us beyond the familiar preoccupation with ecoefficiency, and towards the contested moral question of what most nourishes our abiliy to care for our world. In contrast to the technocratic aim of controlling a perilous future, the author proposes that we develop the practical craft of sustenance. Beginning with debates in environmental policy, he draws upon recent philosophical interest in ecology, technology and moral experience to argue that the challenge of sustainability is that of undermining those traditions that present technology as somehow external to our inherent moral ambiguity. This discussion responds to the work of langdon Winer, Alver Borgmann, Charles Taylor, Martin Heidegger, David Abram, and others.

This is one of the best and most sensitive books on sustainability that I have read. In some ways it even redefines the sustainability question.

- Carl Mitcham, author of Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy and coeditor of Visions of STS: Counterpoints in Science, Technology and Society Studies

As a new Contribution ot the philosophe of Technology, this book will be welcomed by those who have been hoping for a vision of technology and moral life that is both intellectually sophisticated, and potentially practical.

- Langdon Winnner, author of The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high Technolgy

Studded with wonderful flashes of insight and delightful passages of fine descriptive and narrative writing, this book offers some persuasive responses to the problem it analyzes.

- Freya Mathews, author of The ecological Self

Aidan Davison is a former Lecturer in Sustainability Studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia. He has degrees in biochemistry, science and technology policy and environmental philosophy. He now teaches in the University of Tasmania.