Welcome to my page, Sustainability and Social Change! This site is an exploration of the development of sustainability thinking and its impacts on society, and visa versa. Increasingly, all humans are impacted by their environments, and all environments are impacted by humans, therefore, gaining a historical understanding of human-environment relationships is imperative for creating a more sustainable future. This page seeks to unpack sustainability and social change from precolonial times until the present by understanding the complex, multiscalar values, actions, and systems of change that got us here.

These explorations and analyses draw from a variety of perspectives such as Clapp and Dauvergne’s (2011) four worldviews on sustainability, Ned Blackhawk (2006), and Walker and Salt’s (2006) resilience thinking framework (see References for a complete list relevant authors). By employing a diverse spread of perspectives, we’re better able to identify relationships betweens ways of thinking in order to create more holistic, effective, and ethical pathways to a sustainable future. As you navigate through this site, use the above menu to view concept maps, which provide visual representations of these ideas, perspectives, and theories, and read the blurbs to learn more in depth about particular topics and sources!

Scroll down for an explanation of Clapp and Dauvergne’s (2011) four worldviews on sustainability!


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On this page you’ll learn more in depth about the four worldviews on sustainable futures put forth by Clapp and Dauvergne (2011).

This concept map exemplifies the key conflicts and relationships between Clapp and Dauvergne’s (2011) 4 worldviews on sustainability and puts my personal perspective in conversation with these frameworks. The green curves represent connections and overlaps between the values and goals of each worldview, while the red lines represent conflicts or points of difference between them, all of which are explain by the accompanying text. The bubbles surrounding each worldview highlight each’s most central and distinguishable themes, values, or goals. It’s important to keep in mind, both in this map and moving forward, that the four worldviews represent ideal types, meaning that most people would probably identify with more than one. Finally, in the dark green call-out at the bottom of the map I include my personal views on sustainability – and the values and themes that guide my perspective – so that the work that follows on this site can be properly contextualized. As such, despite their flaws or shortcomings, each of these perspectives are still useful tools for exploring and interpreting the literature and history of sustainability.