Essay

Michael Opielka, Social Sustainability from a Sociological Perspective (2016)

The term “social sustainability” is not yet on the agenda and in textbooks of sociology, as a general lack of sociological discussion with the problem of ecology and sustainability is striking. It is true that a productive environmental association has developed as a sociopolitical context, and a socio-theoretical sociology of sustainability is still lacking. This article does not remedy this shortcoming, but at least indicates why sociology has so far been difficult to gain an original access to sustainability in a complex and confusing constellation. With the distinction between three conceptions of social sustainability (narrow, internal and wide) and four dimension dimensions (factual, political, organizational and epistemic), the conceptual field is developed and sociological optimism is spread.

The essay was published in the journal “Soziologie”, edited by the German Society for Sociology (DGS).

Citation: Michael Opielka, Social Sustainability from a Sociological Perspective, in: Sociology, Volume 45, Issue 1, 2016, pp. 33-46