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The Ulysses Approach to Sustainable Development

Dissertation writing help on The Ulysses Approach to Sustainable Development

Graduate Program: Community and Regional Planning

Custom Dissertation Writing Service:Qualitative: Naturalistic Inquiry

With the proposed dissertation, I want to add to sustainable development by examining how a departure from the prevailing discourse will help to reframe the overall approach and therefore to find successful alternative strategies. The prevailing discourse usually takes place in the spectrum between the modernist anti-modernist and eco-efficiency sufficiency strategies. Thus, the potential of both (and even of a compromise between them) has limited viability due to absolute population and economic growth and lack of voluntary renunciation. Too frequently, we are so involved in this discourse that we forget to question the overall approach, to which the result of the discourse is expected to contribute. We lose sight of the wood for the trees. Yet, there are communities who have departed from these preconceived options between sufficiency and efficiency and who found unconventional but highly successful new approaches. I coin these option approaches "Ulysses Innovations" because they bear resemblance to the innovative solutions proposed by Ulysses in the Trojan War - beyond perseverance and weaponry.

In this study, Analysis this phenomenon by developing a theory of Ulysses Innovations for sustainable development and to investigate two successful cases during a hermeneutic approach in order to better understand how and why these innovations emerged. An ideal outcome would be a set of arguments that increases the visibility of alternative approaches for sustainable solutions in communities. I will also give a description and an analysis of the innovation process and of the environment that made it probable in two cases that may serve as a source of recommendation and inspiration for other communities. The Earth-Summit "Rio +10," to be held in 2002, is probable to show the necessity of such alternative approaches to which this dissertation intends to contribute.