Sustainability in the period of conferences on the environment and development-an insight into ecology and economics

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the scientific production about sustainability in the areas of ecology and economy in the period between Rio92 and Rio+20. It focuses on the tension between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the context of establishing a relation between scientific artifacts and political propositiveness. This study analyzed fifteen from among the twenty-five most cited articles on ecology and economics from the website "Web of Science" between 1990 and 2009, in relation to "sustainability" and "sustainable". The analysis is founded on the theory of reflexive modernization and on social studies of science. The research suggests the existence of a "disciplinary interdisciplinarity" between economics and ecology that facilitates its connections and operations, though it also hampers the introduction of socio-cultural elements to the debate.