In this paper, I suggest that overcoming the glass ceiling of the environmental state, and unleashing a true sustainability transformation, is tantamount to a cultural transformation: a process of ‘meaning-making’ that re-orientates people’s fundamental norms and outlooks. Cultural meanings are not only the building blocks of individuals’ life stories and identities, but collectively also construct (what is perceived to be) the social reality, which in turn shapes how people think and act. As such, it is only when a cultural transformation can be said to have taken place that radical social change is deep-seated rather than superficial, and thus self-driven rather than merely contingently enforced.
This shifts the key question of sustainability governance from ‘What do we need people to do, and how do we get them to do it?’ (which invites the implication: ‘by whatever means necessary’), to ‘What generally drives people’s fundamental habits and outlooks, and change therein?’. I address the latter question by opening up the ‘black box’ of culture, and deriving governance implications from this new starting point. Based on anthropological, psychological, and sociological insights into the processes of individual and collective meaning-making, I find that sustainability cannot be purely elite-driven and technocratic, but must ‘take people along’ through inclusive, diverse dialogue. Hence, the problem with liberal democratic ‘environmental states’ is their systematic bias not just towards environment-unfriendly values and practices as such (such as capitalism), but towards narrow and exclusive cultural engagement. Sustainability demands deeper democratisation focused around a deliberative public sphere – not to facilitate certain particular outcomes, but to safeguard a general openness to the critical interrogations and inclusive dialogue that create a platform for deep public reflection, as the key foundation for a cultural sustainability transformation.
