To See Further and Deeper in Time and Space: An Exploratory Study of Spiritual and Existential Sustainability
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
As the seemingly well-established definition of environmental, social and economic sustainability is arguably losing its currency in public discourse, there is growing concern for its future in the political arena and corporate world. At the same time, new ideas also emerge on the horizon, seeking to renew and enhance the notion of sustainability by including often underutilized spiritual values and existential perspectives. By analyzing documents from the Church of Sweden and new thoughts on sustainability in Swedish higher education, as well as gathering data through semi-structured qualitative interviews with church officials and academics deeply involved in the development and application of spiritual and existential sustainability, this thesis explores recent attempts to broaden the definition of sustainability. Applying a combined temporality framework of vertical time, horizontal time and resonance in an abductive reasoning, we identify the evolving concept of spiritual and existential sustainability as a temporality narrative that seeks to redesign the timescapes of sustainability as multidimensional. Our research also captures how the expanded temporality of spiritual and existential sustainability leads to resynchronization in both social and human-nature relations.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025.
Keywords [en]
spiritual sustainability, existential sustainability, forest inquiry, holism, temporality, vertical time, horizontal time, linear time, capitalist time, time paradox, timescapes, synchronization, resonance, Church of Sweden, higher education
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-562653OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-562653DiVA, id: diva2:1979271
Educational program
Master Programme in Sustainable Management
2025-06-302025-06-302025-06-30Bibliographically approved