Abstract

In this book about the Economies for Sustainability: Limits and Potentials for Possible Futures we have presented different perspectives for sustainability in the economic transition of economy, politics and society. The focus has been the search for new economic models for a more sustainable future. The background of this is the ecological crisis, growing global inequality and the challenges to political and economic systems. Global crises like the financial crisis, the climate crisis, the poverty crisis of the global south and more recently the epidemic crisis of the spread of the global pandemic of COVID-19 means that it has been necessary to propose new concepts of ethics, economics and economic theory and philosophy to find new principles for organization of society. We have called this proposal of taking back the economy a search for a new kind of economy, sometimes called heterodox economics, meaning that it was necessary to move beyond neoclassical economics towards another kind of economics integrating economics in the other social sciences like political sciences, anthropology and sociology. These proposals for a sustainable economics and visions of new economic systems have moved beyond the traditional concepts and challenged the boundaries of different concepts of economic systems and society in the context of sustainable transitions towards new and more ethical economic systems.