Sustainability (as living within the Earth's means) is an issue of ecology - how the world is and works - and of human life - how we can live so that the prospects of us and our children will not be threatened.

There are two major factors of human life that determine sustainability (apart from sheer population numbers):

• Material-technical aspects of how we produce things, "produce" energy, grow our food, ., and
• the aspect of what we want, how we (want to) live, what is an acceptable and a good life,.

Cultural anthropology sees both as (the) two major aspects of culture.

Sometimes the two sides were separated rather strongly, into materialistic and idealistic definitions of culture; commonly, what we think of as "culture" (when talking about differences between one culture and another) is the second, idealistic, view, especially where it concerns social interaction (how to behave because that's just the way "we" did things).

(Culture as that which you find in the newspaper section entitled "Culture"/"Arts" or the like, to an anthropologist, is a natural part of what he/she sees as culture, but a misguiding rather than essential one: There is as much of "culture" in eating a sausage at a street vendor's in Vienna before going to the opera as there is in the event and music of the opera.)

Therefore, culture and sustainability are two natural themes of contemporary ecological anthropology:

• Is sustainability always a cultural issue, and if so, what can we learn from various cultures?
• What is the relationship between culturally supported ideas, wants and needs and actual environmental action?
• What culture change is happening with present interactions, both between cultures and in the struggle of some people for a transformation to sustainability? (Cp. my "Cultures of Sustainability")