Abstract:
This paper urges marketing academics committed to a sustainable future to look outside of the
modern industrial ideologies that characterize western societies. Marketing has addressed
sustainability issues for more than four decades. However, mainstream sustainability theory in
marketing is rooted in industrial ideologies founded on the Enlightenment philosophy. This
philosophy promotes a dichotomous worldview that effectively separates people from Nature. Thus,
industrial civilization is inherently unsustainable because it promotes an instrumental view of Nature
based on the anthropocentricity embedded in the industrial worldview. This paper suggests that
accumulated indigenous wisdom of a pre-industrial civilization provides rich insights for
industrialized societies to address the compelling sustainability issues the world faces today. Focused
on the influence of Daoist philosophy and principles in the everyday lives of ordinary Chinese
people, we used the research method of Memory Work to study human-Nature interactions as lived
by 26 Chinese participants. Data show that pre-industrial Daoism has a significant effect on the
participants’ living habits. As a philosophy centered on human’s relationship to the natural world,
Daoism encourages these Chinese participants to connect closely with Nature in their daily routines,
through sustainable practices that respond actively and respectfully to their natural environment. We
believe such insights from the Daoist guidelines for daily living can make a meaningful contribution
to re-visioning ‘sustainability’ in western post-industrial civilization. In particular, these insights
provide sound support for the development of new alternative business models such as sustainability
marketing.
