Science for Change? Sustainability between positive science and normative agenda

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1,0, University of Toronto (Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy), language: English, abstract: In the last three decades, the notion of sustainability became, although it is not a new idea, one of the most used concepts in scientific, political, and societal debates. [...] Today, sustainability is used very diversely and to describe very different things, diluting the concept to a synonym for everything that is good and is used as a quasi-objective alternative to a subjective value judgment about what someone perceives as good or right. The term has been misused and abused, when companies such as ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin or Philip Morris describe their oil, tobacco or weapons business as sustainable and McDonald's Canada advertises sustainable beef (Károly, 2011). Nevertheless, it is used for the most ambitious human development ideas such as the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations. This ambiguity and vagueness is facilitated by the two-fold nature of the term, as a positive scientific concept and a normative vision for the future of humankind.