Decisions for Sustainability
Facts and Values

17th Oct 2024 by UName-1376674

Thomas Dietz’s latest work is an exemplar of interdisciplinary research and a must read for anyone interested in decision-making processes in relation to sustainability. Dr. Dietz motivates his broad-ranging and insightful discussion of this critical topic with a brief personal and family history of growing up in Kent, Ohio along the polluted Cuyahoga River. These experiences--including conducting environmental research on the river as an undergraduate at Kent State and the interruption of that research by the Kent State massacre in 1970--sparked his sociological imagination--driving home the point that questions of sustainability not only involve an inherent tension between science and politics but are also necessarily “’place-based,’ but ‘place’ makes sense only by linking the local to the global.” In chapter 1, he elaborates this local-global dynamic, discusses how the decisions we make in various roles impact the environment and--consistent with the evolutionary perspective that informs the book--emphasizes the importance of the interplay between variation and context for sustainability decisions. Chapter 2 explores how the concept of sustainability itself emerged in the late twentieth century against the backdrop of economic and population growth, the rise of the environmental movement, and the post-cold war expansion of democracy. In Chapter 3, Dietz introduces three major models of decision-making--The Rational Actor Model, the social-psychological literature which emphasize the causal links between values, beliefs and norms, and models that highlight heuristics and biases. Subsequent chapters address the difficulties of separating facts and values in fields, like sustainability science, where the ostensibility and repeatability of findings are low a discussion of seven criteria for making good decisions which builds upon the utilitarian, anarchist/libertarian and deliberative traditions potential sources of conflict in sustainability decisions tensions between reformist versus transformational approaches to sustainability and how we can improve individual and collective decision making with an emphasis in the latter on the potential benefits of deliberative processes. Throughout this discussion, Dietz continually emphasizes the importance of rejecting anthropocentrism (Who speaks for Wolf?) and decolonizing science by incorporating the concerns and insights of groups previously marginalized based on class, gender, and race, including various indigenous peoples, and the differently abled into sustainability decisions. In short, Thomas Dietz’s “Decisions for Sustainability” is an impressive achievement. He successfully integrates insights from ecology, psychology, sociology, economics, political science, and ethics. Despite the complexity of the topics and literatures addressed, his theoretical discussion is entirely accessible and illustrated with numerous empirical examples. This book provides an excellent introduction to the field for advanced undergraduate and graduate classes. Professionals in the field will also benefit not only from the overall integration that Dietz provides but also from the additional insights and suggested lines of inquiry contained in over ninety pages of footnotes as well as the extensive bibliography which is itself an invaluable resource. Perhaps what is most refreshing about this work is Thomas Dietz’s openness to the possibility that some of his conclusions could be wrong. This all too rare stance reflects not only the characteristic humility of the author himself but, more importantly, his life-long commitment to creating more sustainable societies through deliberative processes. Indeed, the book is an extended invitation to join that process. As he unassumingly states, “My hope is simply to encourage further conversation.”

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