Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Sustainable Development

 

Special Issue on: "In the Name of Sustainability"

Guest Editors:
Paula Curvelo and Ângela Guimarães, European Commission - Joint Research Centre, Italy

Over the past decades an enormous number of projects, enterprises and initiatives invoking sustainability objectives have multiplied in the most diverse domains: human health, agriculture, energy, climate engineering, information and communication technologies, aerospace, landscape, computer modelling, technological innovation, etc.

As many of these projects tend to become highly public and intensely politicised, it comes as no surprise that the recurring “technical progress” and “sustainable development” claims are often contested and criticised. Indeed, these technological initiatives, whether seen as effective vehicles for accelerating human development or for addressing local/global problems, draw attention to two different kinds of contemporary dilemma: the paradoxes of technology and the paradoxes (or contradictions) of sustainability, both of which demand a great deal of reflexivity.

By looking at projects that are rooted in sustainability objectives there is an opportunity to trace the ways in which sustainability narratives have been instrumental in justifying those projects. But more fundamentally, they also mandate that we rethink the very concept of sustainability.

By focusing attention on enterprises, initiatives or projects “in the name of sustainability”, this special issue seeks to promote a critical discussion around the contemporary and unsolved paradoxes of the technology-development-sustainability nexus.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Human power and the changed nature of human action: new challenges in new human experiences of (for) living in the world
• Managing "sustainability" projects in an age of ignorance: seeking the truth behind techno-scientific promises
• Visions of the future: between emotions, experience, expertise and utopia
• Authority, responsibility and accountability in the context of unintended consequences of well-intentioned projects
• The social processes in which decision making of "sustainability" projects is embedded
• The complex moral dilemmas of large-scale enterprises
• Sustainable enterprises and the principle of safeguarding and promoting the needs of present and future generations
• Sustainable enterprises and the precautionary principle
• Sustainable enterprises and the principle of common but differentiated responsibility
• Sustainable enterprises and the principle of equitable access to scientific and technological developments

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.

Important Dates

Deadline for paper submission: 30 January, 2013

Notification of review results: 30 April, 2013

Submission of revised manuscripts: 30 June, 2013