‘Clinging Together Against the Dark’: A Pragmatist Reading of Sustainability Conversations

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a typology of managers' interpretations of sustainability as ‘narrative fields’ derived from a qualitative multi‐site study and offer a Pragmatist reading of the results. Pragmatism is grounded in an ethic of meliorism, the belief in the possibility of gradually improving the world through human effort and experimentation. Through a Pragmatist lens we see managers talking the way to better futures: continuously negotiating the big idea of sustainability via their myriad interactions with stakeholders and within their evolving constructions and re‐constructions of the relationships among ecology, society, and economy. We find that the contestable concept of sustainability is most usefully conceived as a field of narratives delineated by broad dimensions (discrete/integrated, actual/possible), with sustainability conversations —those that push toward integration and new possibility—as the primary means to move toward living better futures. We conclude with implications for research and management practice.