Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sustainability 'Wars' In A New England Town, Elizabeth L. Krause, Anurag Sharma

Elizabeth L. Krause

A research project into large group decision-making in a New England Town Meeting surprised us with the degree to which sustainability came to be the axis around which political debate revolved. We identified two very different yet overlapping conceptions of sustainability: one emphasized fiscal responsibility; the other asserted the merits of environmental stewardship. Each of the two conceptions had proponents, with strong views about what constituted good versus bad governing practices, each with a strong sense of what was good for the town. In this paper, we sort out those meanings. We seek to understand and expose the contours of …