oikos – nomos eller logos? : Hållbar utveckling och ekonomi i gymnasiets samhällsböcker

This paper contains an analysis that sets out to investigate how sustainable development is portrayed in textbooks used in gymnasium level civics education. The study covers three textbooks, all in current use. The paper sets out to explore the relationship between the books chapters on economics and those about environmental issues. The sum of these two parts is in the context supposed to make up the books big picture of green sustainable development, i.e. the ecological aspect of sustainable development. An analytical model will be used to categorise and compare the three textbooks. The method chosen for this is analysis of ideas by use of ideal types. The approach can be said to be qualitative. To achieve a high degree of inter-subjectivity a fairly extensive review of the ideas behind the construction of these three ideal types has been made. There is a short review of the sustainable development as proposed by the national steering documents, a few notions from the economic debate on sustainable development and a overall orientation on current schools within economics. In the overall picture of the governing documents, we find a good support for green sustainability. The idealtypes constructed out of this brief outline are: Business as usual, Ecological modernisation and Ecological economy. The survey found a surprisingly weak link between textbooks and governing documents concerning sustainable development. Two of the books are found to lie close to the Business as usual ideal type, while the third is an example of the Ecological modernisation viewpoint. In all three books there was a neoclassic fundament in the chapters covering economy