From maintaining to sustaining: Moving beyond binaries toward a framework for cultural sustainability in higher education

The concept of cultural sustainability is about fi nding a sustainable balance between cultural maintenance and cultural evolution, between keeping what is perceived to be good and developing the ability of adapting to new circumstances. In this chapter we mostly use culture in Raymond Williams’s (1981) conceptualization of the term, as referring to the meanings and practices of everyday life, rather than a more limited sense of culture as artifacts, unless otherwise indicated. As a logical extension, we defi ne cultural sustainability as the ways in which those practices and meanings can be strengthened into the future.