The Futility of Reason: Incommensurable Differences Between Sustainability Narratives in the Aftermath of the 2003 San Diego Cedar Fire

• Published in: Journal of environmental policy & planning Vol. 9; no. 3-4; pp. 227 - 244
• Main Author: Evan Goldstein, Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01-09-2007
• Subjects: disaster; incommensurability; knowledge; narrative; security; Sustainability
• ISSN: 1523-908X; 1522-7200
• DOI: 10.1080/15239080701622766

After the largest wildfire in California over the past century, natural resource agencies described how they could reduce vulnerability to fire hazard by sustainability managing fuel levels. A community coalition challenged this narrative by placing the fire within evolutionary time and describing how sustainability could be achieved through collective action within a dynamic and vulnerable landscape. The agencies rejected the coalition alternative as a dangerous and scientifically dubious distraction from their security responsibilities. In this clash, differing knowledge practices delimited the possibilities of citizenship and governance in which alternative sustainability narratives had meaning and significance. Ambivalence persisted because sustainability narratives were informed and justified by knowledge practices that were both driver and outcome of efforts to achieve different sustainabilities.