Abstract

The opening chapter discusses ‘social sustainability’ as practice and concept in light of the diverse and transdisciplinary conceptualizations it has undergone since it was famously coined in the Brundtland report in 1990. There is wide agreement that the social dimension of sustainability is the least theorized and prioritized of the three sustainability dimensions (ecological, economic and social) and that there is some conceptual fuzziness surrounding the social dimension. The chapter elaborates the meaning of social sustainability in the initial pursuit of nuanced understandings anchored in research on care, reciprocity, new epistemologies of human-nature relations, and social change. Through the lens of social sustainability, this chapter critically displays and discusses how to understand ecology and economy from a more holistic sustainability perspective, namely by challenging and criticizing economy and particular forms of economic reason and imperatives of growth and efficiency.