Sustainability, Social Learning and the Democratic Imperative: Lessons from the Australian Landcare Movement

Abstract

Drawing on the experience of community based land conservation in Australia, this chapter examines the deeper structural and institutional causes of the unsustainability of modern industrialised society. Social learning is presented as a potential paradigm for engaging with these broader institutional dilemmas. Such a perspective locates the concept of social learning at the heart of current debates about the tensions between sustainable development, democracy and free market ideology. The chapter introduces the themes of risk society and reflexive modernisation as a perspective that can help explain why modern institutions are structurally biased against the ideals of sustainable development. This provides a brief political economic context for then outlining a perspective on social learning that gives particular attention to questions of how to facilitate the design of institutions more supportive of sustainable development.