Culture : the fourth domain of sustainability : Maltese maritime fortified cities

Abstract

Culture is a fundamental domain of social life. It is called the ‘Fourth Domain’ here, not because it is the fourth most important domain, but rather because for too long it has been ignored and subordinated in a flawed metaphor called the ‘triple bottom line’. That approach problematically presents three domains—economics, environment and the social—and incorporates the domain of culture as an extra consideration inside the social. Economics is treated wrongly as the master domain, and it stands alone against which others are judged. In the radical alternative presented here all social life, including economics, is considered social. Thus we work with four domains: economics, ecology, politics and culture. They are all social domains, and culture is as important as any of the other three domains. It is only the fourth domain in the sense that it is being brought back in.

Some approaches use the term ‘the fourth pillar’ rather than ‘fourth domain’. We are uncomfortable with the building metaphor. Pillars standalone. They are fixed. Three pillars can hold up a building without the fourth. In our metaphor domains, the four domains are integrally inter-related. The culture of economics is as fundamental as the economics of culture, and so on. The culture of economics, ecology or politics is critical to the sustainability and vibrancy of those other domains of social life.