Is Sustainability for Development Anthropologists?
Author(s)
Stone, M. Priscilla
Abstract
In 1987, the Bruntland Report defined the goal of sustainability as “the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations … to meet their own needs.” This definition, while stimulating considerable debate and research, leaves unresolved a number of problems for anthropologists, including dilemmas of measurement, boundaries, and agency. This paper suggests that a more direct engagement with the concept of sustainability could be helpful to anthropological analyses of economic systems and development options and draws on the three papers that follow to illustrate its potential. The paper then discusses three issues central to an anthropological sustainability–persistence, innovation, and responses to stresses and shocks. It concludes with a discussion of common property resources, as discussed in the papers in this collection, as an example of these anthropological issues at work within a sustainability framework.
