Hybridizing sustainability: towards a new praxis for the present human predicament

Abstract

Sustainability science has emerged within an essentially modern framework. We start from discussing the inherent contradictions and paradoxes of this framing model and then move to a new pragmatic defining space, articulated through a plurality of epistemologies, languages, styles of research, experiences, and actions, all coming from a global civil society and defining a variety of epistemic and normative stances and methods. We then propose and explore a scenario in which sustainability is fruitfully hybridized with artistic research and practice, with local agricultural practice and indigenous culture, and, finally, with animal culture for “nonhuman” knowledge and rights. These hybrids can work as encouragements to abandon modern divides and pitfalls and engage in a new kind of collective diagnose and praxis for our present.