Critical discourses of sustainability challenge modern rhetoric of economic growth and challenge current modes of social development. Yet sustainability discourses are shaped predominantly by the perspectives and interests of middle-class, tertiary-educated urban policy makers or environmentalists, and have insufficiently engaged people beyond these cohorts, even in the advanced capitalist societies where they have originated. This article shares findings from a study that investigated how people who are not strongly engaged with sustainability discourses understand and engage with many of the underlying concerns that animate these discourses from the context of their situated, everyday experiences. This is important information for sustainability educators, because it challenges dominant ideas of what sustainabilityisand offers new and alternate ways of engaging different groups of people in actions for sustainability. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and capital were used to inform the research design that employed focus groups and interviews with people from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and life stages in Tasmania, Australia. The findings provide insight into the ways in which people who are disengaged from discourses of sustainability may be actively engaged in practices of sustainability that may provide practical guidance for environmentalists and policy makers concerning how current discourses of sustainability reflect specific social contexts and experiences.

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超越中产阶级对可持续发展的解读

可持续发展的批判性话语挑战现代经济增长的言论，挑战当前的社会发展模式。然而，可持续发展话语主要受中产阶级、受过高等教育的城市政策制定者或环保主义者的观点和利益的影响，并且即使在他们起源的发达资本主义社会中，也没有充分参与这些群体之外的人。本文分享了一项研究的结果，该研究调查了那些没有强烈参与可持续发展话语的人如何理解和参与许多从他们所处的日常经历背景中激发这些话语的潜在问题。这对可持续发展教育者来说是重要的信息，因为它挑战了关于可持续发展的主流观点是并提供新的和替代的方式让不同群体参与可持续发展行动。Bourdieu 的惯习、场域和资本概念被用于研究设计，该研究设计采用焦点小组和采访来自澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚州不同社会经济和文化背景以及生活阶段的人们。这些发现提供了对那些脱离可持续发展话语的人们可能积极参与可持续发展实践的方式的洞察，这可能为环保主义者和政策制定者提供关于当前可持续发展话语如何反映特定社会背景和经验的实用指导。