Sustainability research is expected to incorporate concepts, methods, and data from a diverse array of academic disciplines. We investigate the extent to which sustainability research lives up to this ideal of an interdisciplinary field. Using bibliometric data, we orient our study around the ''tripartite model'' of sustainability, which suggests that sustainability research should draw from the three ''pillars'' of the environmental, economic, and social sciences. We ask three questions: (i) is sustainability research truly more interdisciplinary than research generally, (ii) to what extent does research grounded in one pillar draw on research from the other two, and (iii) if certain disciplines or pillars are more interdisciplinary than others, then what explains this variation? Our results indicate that sustainability science, while more interdisciplinary than other scientific fields, falls short of the expectations inherent in the tripartite model. The pillar with the fewest articles published on sustainability-economics-is also the most integrative, while the pillar with the most articles-environmental sciences-draws the least from outside disciplines. But interdisciplinarity comes at a cost: sustainability research in economics and the social sciences is centered around a relatively small number of interdisciplinary journals, which may be becoming less valued over time. These findings suggest that, if sustainability research is to live up to its interdisciplinary ideals, researchers must be provided with greater incentives to draw from fields other than their own.

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Efforts to explain why some people incorporate ethical concerns into everyday shopping for food and household goods, while many do not, have so far left significant variation in "ethical consumption" unexplained. Seeking to move beyond explanations that rely mainly on differences in consumers' social class, gender, and political engagement, I draw on concepts associated with "practice theory" to argue that ethical consumption is closely tied to people's willingness and ability to spend time, while shopping, on distinct activities associated with breaking old routines and establishing new ones. The central insight of practice theory is that most consumption is the product of unconscious routine. And it is precisely because consciously departing from routine is, according to my study, a fundamentally time-consuming process, that lack of time emerges as a crucial obstacle to translating abstract ethical concerns into concrete action as a consumer. . 2 The terms ethical consumption, political consumerism, and conscious consumption have all been used to describe buying products based on ethical or political views (Willis and Schor 2012). I use ethical consumption-as well as ethical consumers and ethical products-because most people interviewed for this study preferred to describe their actions as "ethical" rather than "political." I do not mean to suggest that some consumers are, in an objective sense, behaving ethically, or that certain products are necessarily more ethical than others.

For nearly as long as the topic of sustainable business has been taught and researched in business schools, proponents have warned about barriers to genuine integration in business school practices. This article examines how academic sustainability centres try to overcome barriers to integration by achieving technical, cultural and political fit with their environment (Ansari et al. in Acad Manag Rev 35(1):67-92; Ansari et al., Academy of Management Review 35 (1): 2010). Based on survey and interview data, we theorise that technical, cultural and political fit are intricately related, and that these interrelations involve legitimacy, resources and collaboration effects. Our findings about sustainability centres offer novel insights on integrating sustainable business education given the interrelated nature of different types of fit and misfit. We further contribute to the literature on fit by highlighting that incompatibility between strategies to achieve different types of fit may act as a source of dynamism.

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Do farmers who participate in local food systems attach greater importance to civic engagement than farmers whose livelihood is not tied to the vitality of local markets? The literature on local food as a social movement continues to paint a picture of local food systems as contributing to, and benefiting from, rich networks of civil society groups. Yet to date, few studies have directly addressed the question of whether marketing local food is actually associated with higher levels of civic engagement among farmers. In this paper, I draw on local capitalism theory to identify two different mechanisms—depth of economic reliance on local markets, and breadth of social networks related to local food sales—that might spur farmers who market local food to feel more responsible for their communities. Then, using data from a large‐scale survey of specialty crop growers, I explore whether a relationship exists between farmer involvement with local food markets and attitudes toward civic engagement. Results suggest that while farmers strongly committed to local food markets attach greater importance to civic engagement, participation in multiple categories or kinds of local food supply chains is not necessarily associated with stronger civic values.

According to nearly all studies, ethical consumption is a regular practice mainly of people who are well educated and politically active in conventional ways. Buying local has also recently been portrayed as part of an “eco-habitus” associated with ecological thinking, cultural capital, and the desire for more “authentic” things. In this article, I challenge both these notions. Specifically, drawing on Holt’s model of the relationship between cultural capital and consumption, I make two arguments. First, while relatively few people have access to robust local food systems, buying local by supporting businesses in general, and not just food producers, seen as rooted in regional economic and civic life, may be widespread even among people lacking in cultural capital, economic capital, or interest in conventional politics. Second, buying local among people who do not fit the mold of the “typical” ethical consumer is not consciously connected to concern for environmental problems. Rather, the buying local practiced by this understudied group is motivated by the desire to directly benefit community members and secure public goods such as good jobs, and safe streets. The findings of this article matter first for how social scientists understand who engages in buying local, as a form of ethical consumption. But this article also raises the question of what the real-world impacts of buying local might be, when some practitioners are relatively unguided by signals from social movement organizations and other entities that might establish firm criteria for what counts as “local” and what does not.