ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability is a far-reaching survey of the deep and contemporary history of sustainability. This innovative resource will help to define the history of sustainability as an identifiable field. It provides a unique resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars, and delivers essential context for understanding the current state and future path of the sustainability movement. 

The history of sustainability is an increasingly important domain within the discipline of history, which draws on an interdisciplinary set of fields, ranging from energy studies, transportation, and urbanism to environmental history, economics, and philosophy. Key sections in this handbook cover the historiography of sustainability, resilience and collapse in historical societies, the deep roots of sustainability (seventeenth century to nineteenth century), the recent history of sustainability (twentieth century to present), and core issues and key debates in sustainability.

This handbook is an invaluable research and teaching tool for those interested in the history and development of sustainability and an essential resource for the many sustainability studies programs that now exist in the world's universities.

part I|6 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|4 pages

Introduction

part II|20 pages

Historiography of sustainability

chapter 2|18 pages

Sustainability

A new historiography

part III|42 pages

Sustainability, resilience, and collapse in historical societies

chapter 3|11 pages

What is Sustainable?

Some views from Highlands Papua New Guinea

chapter 4|17 pages

Understanding sustainability through history

Resources and complexity

chapter 5|12 pages

The ancient maya

Sustainability and collapse?

part IV|66 pages

The roots of sustainability

chapter 6|25 pages

Sustaining What?

Scarcity, growth, and the natural order in the discourse on sustainability, 1650–1900

chapter 7|10 pages

Eternal forest, sustainable use

The making of the term “Nachhaltig” in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German forestry

chapter 8|14 pages

The Industrial Revolution

Social costs and social change

chapter 9|15 pages

Islam and Sustainability

The norms and the hindrances

part V|168 pages

The recent history of sustainability

chapter 10|14 pages

The US environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Building frameworks of sustainability

chapter 12|23 pages

The growth paradigm

History, hegemony, and the contested making of economic growthmanship

chapter 15|21 pages

Sustainable transportation

From feet to wheels and machines and back to feet

chapter 16|19 pages

From hydrology to hydrosociality

Historiography of waters in India

chapter 17|23 pages

Sustainable architecture

A short history

part VI|115 pages

Core issues and key debates on sustainability

chapter 20|17 pages

The problem of economic growth

chapter 21|24 pages

From (Strong) sustainability to degrowth

A philosophical and historical reconstruction

chapter 22|12 pages

Sustainability beyond growth

Toward an ethics of flourishing

chapter 24|17 pages

At the crossroads

Sustainability and the twilight of the modern world