Special Issue "Political Economy and Sustainability"

Guest Editor
Dr. Robert Krueger
Worcester Community Project Center; and Environmental Studies Program; Office Project Center Building, Second Floor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA
Website: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/IGSD/People/jrk.html
E-Mail:
Phone: +1 508 831 5110
Fax: +1 508 831 5485
Interests: developing and applying political economic theory to questions of urban sustainability and economic development and the environment; examining economic theory from a critical cultural perspective

Dear Colleagues,

It is generally accepted that we, as a world, must learn to live more sustainably. While many recipes for structures of governance and economy exist in the academic and popular literature, one only has to revisit the recent COP-15 meeting to realize that sustainability is not a technological problem. It is a political problem. Sustainability is about overcoming embedded power relations at macro-scales (i.e., nation-state and international governance), and meso-scales (i.e., local and regional development) on down to the micro-scale (e.g., communities and households). Neoliberals and Neo-Keynesians may promise the hidden hand of the market or a third way of market based regulation present the keys to success. However, the sustainability transformation, like any other socio-political change of the past 100 years, is going to be fraught with the unintended-and intended-consequences of corrupt epistemologies, co-opted institutions and the limitations of human knowledge. Many of the world's countries have espoused their sustainability credentials-even George W. Bush-but who is seriously living up to the tripartite concerns of sustainable development: economic prosperity, social equity and ecological integrity?

This special issue is about exploring issues related to the sustainability transition in the context of current economic institutions, dominant forms of knowledge and embedded actors and institutions. We welcome theoretical contributions, case studies and methodological papers on this timely and important topic.

Dr. Robert Krueger,
Guest Editor

• sustainability transition
• critical sustainability studies
• Urban environment
• economy-environment relations
• political ecology