‘Clinging Together Against the Dark’: A Pragmatist Reading of Sustainability Conversations

Abstract

In this paper, we present a typology of managers' interpretations of sustainability as ‘narrative fields’ derived from a qualitative multi-site study and offer a Pragmatist reading of the results. Pragmatism is grounded in an ethic of meliorism, the belief in the possibility of gradually improving the world through human effort and experimentation. Through a Pragmatist lens we see managers talking the way to better futures: continuously negotiating the big idea of sustainability via their myriad interactions with stakeholders and within their evolving constructions and re-constructions of the relationships among ecology, society, and economy. We find that the contestable concept of sustainability is most usefully conceived as a field of narratives delineated by broad dimensions (discrete/integrated, actual/possible), with sustainability conversations—those that push toward integration and new possibility—as the primary means to move toward living better futures. We conclude with implications for research and management practice.