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No Through Road: A Critical Examination of Researcher Assumptions and Approaches to Researching Sustainability

Marketing in and for a Sustainable Society

ISBN: 978-1-78635-282-8, eISBN: 978-1-78635-281-1

Publication date: 27 June 2016

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which academic researchers frame and conduct sustainability research and to ask to what extent we are limited by these frames.

Methodology/approach

Our approach is based on an epistemological critique. We begin with a discussion of the ways in which sustainable consumption has been conceptualised within marketing; we question the influence of positivist social science research traditions and examine how research on sustainability is impacted by the structure of academia.

Findings

Our critical reflection leads us to suggest three ways in which sustainability research might be re-framed: a reconsideration of language, a shift in the locus of responsibility and the adoption of a holistic approach.

Research implications

We propose that in order to make progress in sustainability research, alternative frames, terms, units of analysis, method(ologies) and research ambitions are needed.

Originality/value

By making visible our collective, unexamined assumptions, we can now move forward with new questions and agendas for sustainability research.

Keywords

Citation

McDonald, S., Oates, C.J. and Alevizou, P.J. (2016), "No Through Road: A Critical Examination of Researcher Assumptions and Approaches to Researching Sustainability", Marketing in and for a Sustainable Society (Review of Marketing Research, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 139-168. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1548-643520160000013014

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited