Culture is indeed a factor to consider when adopting a sustainability agenda. The drawback is, culture is an often nebulous concept where how they are understood varies widely. One way I would suggest how "culture" could be incorporated in a research work is to a) first identify what factors or indicators are directly influenced by "culture"; b) ascertain how these factors influence your sustainability indicators.

In this way, you may hopefully narrow the scope substantially as to make any findings specific and actionable.

It is a difficult issue. Culture as a concept is debatable from conceptual or theoretical viewpoints but when you are carrying out quantitative studies it is not easy to speak about "culture". Perhaps, it would be necessary to see the affectation of some other aspects as a consequence of the culture things on them. 

Of course, you can argue and defend the validity, importance and need of the culture as a topic in the list of categories which create the sustainability concept but a certain degree of quantification (using parameters, indicators, etc.) is needed. If not, you have only ambiguity and speech.

Regards

Dear Omidvar,

This is indeed an interesting question though difficult to conceptualize. In my opinion, culture is embedded in Sustainability. Recall that indigenous knowledge plays a critical role in conserving the environment. Berkes (1993) define indigenous knowledge as “A cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs handed down through generations by cultural transmission about the relationship of living beings, (including humans) with one another and with their environment” 

Indeed, is a fact that indigenous people with a historical continuity of resource use practices possess a broad knowledge base of the behavior of complex ecological systems in the known localities. Their practices for the conservation of biodiversity were grounded in a series of rules of thumb which are apparently arrived at through a trial and error process over a long historical time period. 

Unfortunately, such knowledge is difficult for Western Science to understand. Some of the known people who value indigenous knowledge are the ORANG ASLI OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA. They have three principles that are geared towards environmental conservation such as:

1] Collective ownership of resources within the village; analogous to cak samak meaning “eating together.

2] All natural resources belong to the creator & thus one has to have respect for natural resources, including plants and animals.

3] Land and the biodiversity within it is intrinsic to the Orang Asli’s identity. For this reason, the elders in the community take it upon themselves to ensure that traditional conservation and management practices of the resource base are passed down through the generations.

In fact, empirical evidence shows that the incorporation of culture with the current scientific trends in biodiversity conservation is the key to sustainability. I hope this helps.

Regards,

Dennis Olila.

Sustainability is complex and multi-dimensional and might be divided into different factors and the factors you mention matches Elkington’s (1994) classical triple bottom line (TBL) that includes society, economic performance, and the natural environment. Another way to look at sustainability is the quadruple bottom line (QBL) where sustainability could be seen as human fulfilment, sustainability relates to environmental, social and personal needs. Compared to TBL economic concerns (a human construct rather than a natural condition of being human) mediates the other three. Both are shown by Nyström  and Mustaquim (2014),  as models that can accentuate the multidimensionality and complexity of sustainability and that a holistic view is important.

I agree with Garcia-Gusano, culture is difficult and have many different dimension for example see research on nation culture (Roy and Goll, 2014) and organizational culture (Galpin et. al, 2015) that impacts sustainability. Culture could be seen as not only influencing society but also economic and environmental factors. If culture should be separated or be included in society is difficult to see, perhaps you could think about how it would be possible operationalized and measure for your research. Many research papers do acknowledge culture as important for sustainability (one example from my research field is Hirch and Anderson, 2010). Sorry for this inconclusive answer, although I hope to have helped you in your thought process.

Good luck with your research! /best regards,

Tobias

References:

Elkington, J. (1994). Towards the Sustainable Corporation: Win-Win-Win Business Strategies for Sustainable Development. California Management Review, 36(2), 90- 101.

Hirch, T. and Anderson, K. (2010). Cross currents: water  scarcity and sustainable HCI, In CHI '10 Extended Abstracts  on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '10). ACM, New York, pp. 2843-2852.

Galpin, T., Whittington, J.L., and Bell, G. (2015), Is your sustainability strategy sustainable? Creating a culture of sustainability. Corporate Governance (Bingley), 15 (1), pp. 1-17.

Nyström, T. and Mustaquim, M. (2014). Sustainable Information System Design and the Role of Sustainable HCI. In Proceedings of the 18th International Academic MindTrek Conference (AcademicMindTrek '14). ACM, New York. pp. 66-73.

Roy, A. and Goll, I. (2014), Predictors of various facets of sustainability of nations: The role of cultural and economic factors. International Business Review, 23 (5), pp. 849-861.

Conference Paper Cross currents: water scarcity and sustainable CHI

Article Towards the Sustainable Corporation: Win-Win-Win Business St...

Article Predictors of various facets of sustainability of nations: T...

Chapter Sustainable Information System Design and the Role of Sustainable HCI

Article Is your sustainability strategy sustainable? Creating a cult...

I'm a little heretical, but I would include both 'economy' and 'culture' into the 'social' side of things, and then I could compare 'social' to 'ecological' in a straightforward way.  Culture is critical to the concept of 'community', and 'community' is the scale at which Sustainability must be applied.  Individuals can't be sustainable in isolation from their family, and families can not really be sustainable in isolation from their community.  Communities of a sufficient scale have the capacity to be Sustainable, at some quantifiable level of Quality of Life for a given rate of consumption.

Culture provides the sense of belonging that allows the group to work together for a common good, even to the short-term detriment of individuals.  Culture is VERY important, which is why we fight wars over the differences in culture.  Trying to eradicate a culture from a community has very long term impacts (see Canadian experience with Residential Schools).

Culture is a 'two-edged sword', so that at exactly the same time it provides direction for how the group shall work together, it also provides impediments to adaptability for when conditions change.  As long as the community is small, the culture is flexible, and the changes are slow, there should be no great upheavals.  Oh, right, that's going to be a problem, then. 

But it's a subtle thing.  When you are inside a community, you can't hear your own accent - the culture you have is invisible to you.  It's only the contrast to other cultures that allows you to understand the differences.  Kiwis vs Aussies - the Kiwis can tell you the difference pretty clearly.  As engineers, we are badly placed to understand culture in a meaningful way, so we tend to skip it.  Which means we're generating sub-optimal solutions.

I am no expert on Culture, but I would think the way it would influence Sustainability the most is in the definition of 'community'.  Culture may provide the maximum scale of community that you can use in your analysis. 

Ricardo,

thanks for your feedback. For sure, the concept and factors of culture should be implemented while considering a sustainable act. However, some researchers seems to have different preferences; some consider culture as a separate main factor, while others consider culture impact under "Economy" or "Social" main factors. I was wondering if there is any explanation for it, or it is just the matter of preferences. In fact, what are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches.

Tobias,

thanks for the explanation. Your answer was not inconclusive actually. I was looking for the the differences, as well as pros/cons of the two approaches and you provides  sufficient arguments and materials on that. For me the most challenging part of sustainability is to detect, measure and consider the interactions and hidden effects of sustainability in research. This problem is aggravated when it comes to culture because of its complexity!!