Social sustainability: a catchword between political pragmatism and social theory

Abstract

The sustainability concepts of the 'Brundtland-Report' and the 'Rio documents' call for a combination of ecological, economic, social and institutional aspects of social development. This paper describes briefly several models of sustainability and discusses social sustainability as conceptualised in selected sustainability indicators. In an attempt to remedy the lack of sociological theory, the paper proposes a sustainability concept, which is based on the concepts of needs and work, as an activity to fulfil these needs and as the principal exchange process between society and nature. Moreover, this paper argues to recognize social sustainability as both a normative and analytical concept as well.