Alternative paradigms for sustainability : decentring the human without becoming posthuman

In the emerging realisation of the precariousness of the human condition an increasing urgency surrounds discussions of sustainability. Much of this urgency centres on attempts to find alternative paradigms for life on this planet. The dominant developmental paradigm currently assumes the centrality of modern, human-centred, market-driven, economic growth as the basis of human flourishing, marginally off-set by ameliorative efforts to take the environment into account. Responses swirl through public discourse and practice. This chapter addresses two such alternative paradigms. The first is posthumanism, coming out of a critical postmodernism mixed with a new materialities discourse. The second is the Triple Bottom Line approach, much more conventional "’ hardly a paradigm break at all. Both these alternatives, it is argued, are flawed.