Efforts to theorise a distinct social pillar of sustainability are influenced by borrowings and conflicts among the three pillars, which are variously seen to be competitive, reinforcing or mutually constitutive. Both the environmental pillar (Dobson 1999; Redclift 2000; McKenzie 2004) and the economic pillar (Harris and Goodwin, 2001; Giddings et al 2002; Allen 2004;
EAC 2004; Dillard et al 2009) have been said to overshadow the social pillar, either
separately or as a ‘dominating dyad’ (Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2012). Social sustainability can only be properly understood in the context of these inter-pillar tensions.
2.9.1 Social-environmental connections
Social-environmental interdependence is the crux of sustainability. Social activity is
embedded in the natural environment, although social scientists are accused of neglecting this relationship (Woodgate 2010). Pretty comments that, ‘For all of our time, we have shaped nature and it has shaped us, and we are an emergent property of this relationship’
(Pretty 2002: 10). Environmental problems are seen to have social causes. For Stibbe, the starting point of ‘sustainability literacy’ is ‘not the environmental problems which are
45 undermining the ability of the Earth to support human life, but instead the social, cultural and economic systems that give rise to those problems’ (Stibbe 2009: 13). Similarly, social problems can have environmental causes. Population displacement, economic activity and patterns of social inequality, for example, have been linked to patterns of ecosystem change (Rathzell and Uzzell 2012; Lockie et al 2014). The recent proposition that we now live in a natural environment so changed by humanity that it constitutes a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, reflects this thinking (Crutzen 2002).
Social-environmental interdependence has linked questions of resource use to questions of resource (and impact) distribution from Brundtland onwards, and continues to preoccupy commentators. Spangenberg, for example, calling for a cap on resource use, acknowledged that it would necessarily entail new distributive patterns ‘to avoid hardship and social unsustainability’ (Spangenberg 2013: 423). (He then illustrated the difficulty of planning for both at once by focusing only on resource use.) Raworth adapted Rockstrom et al’s model of a safe space for humanity (Rockstrom et al 2009) into a ‘doughnut’ designating a ‘safe and just’ space where humanity could exist within ‘social and ecological boundaries’, where the selected ‘boundaries’ included voice, education, gender equity and social equity (Raworth 2012).
The tensions between different conceptions of social-environmental relations are reflected in the distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ environmentalism (Naess 1991). Whereas weak environmentalism is reformative, recognising nature’s utility to society but seeking ‘a cleaner service economy’ and ‘cleaner affluence’, strong environmentalism is
transformative, respecting the intrinsic value of nature, and ‘explicitly seek[ing] to de-centre the human being, to question mechanistic science and its technological consequences’
(Dobson 1995: 11).
A more instrumental connection between environmental and social approaches emerged as environmentalists (and policy-makers) concluded that social science ‘know how’ and social processes were necessary to tackle environmental problems (Weale 1992, 2009; Smith et al 2005; Woodgate 2010). Harris argued that environmental concerns could only be integrated into Development policy ‘with the assistance of the third element of the sustainability triad – the social perspective’ (2000: 22). However, there is a difference between recruiting
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(hypothetical) social-scientific expertise to achieve the ends of environmental policy, and problematising the same terrain from a social perspective.
Commentators also point to a tension that results from differences between the
epistemological approaches of the natural and social sciences (Dobson 1995; Adger and Jordan 2009; Sterling 2009; Redclift 2010). It is clearly mistaken to hold either that the natural sciences are value-free (Dobson 1995; Woodgate 2010) or that the social sciences are purely normative (Sayer 2011), or indeed that normativity is inherently arbitrary or irrational (Sayer 2011). It remains the case, however, that environmental issues are often perceived to be concrete, objective and measurable, and therefore remediable, while social issues are often deemed to be constructed, subjective, culturally variable and therefore intractable.
For some commentators, it has been a mistake for sustainability practitioners or researchers to seek to use the arguments and instruments of natural science – described by Beck as a
‘naturalistic misunderstanding’, in which the ecology movement has tried, inappropriately,
’to fight science with science’ (Beck 1995: 106). Where applied inappropriately, this can have the effect of de-politicising issues, taking them out of democratic arenas and locking them in technocratic decision-making processes. In other words, the procedural social element of sustainability is subverted. Stirling echoes this concern when he argues that decisions about innovation, where views may legitimately vary among social groups, based on different, equally reasonable assumptions and value judgments, are intrinsically matters for democracy, not just for scientific expertise (Stirling 2014).
2.9.2 Social-economic connections
There are also dense connections between the social and economic pillars – to the extent that sometimes no distinction is made between them (a ‘socio-economic’ pillar), with economic means seen as necessary instruments to achieve social ends. This
conceptualisation, in which economic considerations are seen to trump others, is very prevalent in sustainability discourse. But others point out that all economic activity is ultimately dependent on the services and benefits provided by nature (Turner et al 1994;
Juniper 2013), and society must mediate this relationship to safeguard social interests. For
47 Redclift ‘environmental change is a social process, inextricably linked with the expansion and contraction of the world economic system’ (Redclift 1987: 3).
In this context, many authors refer to Polanyi (2001 [1944]), who emphasised that the economic sphere was a product of, and subordinate to, the social sphere (Granovetter 1985;
Ilbery and Maye 2005; James 2006; Sayer 2007). For Dillard et al (2009: 2) ‘economic life should properly be thought of as an element of social sustainability because the economy is clearly a social construction, rather than a natural phenomenon such as the weather’. As well as under-valuing nature, social scientists have been criticised for allowing an ‘under-socialised’ economic analysis (embodied in the rational, utility-maximising homo
economicus) to dominate discussions of social behaviour in the context of economic activity (Granovetter 1985).
Despite (or in reaction to) the dominance of the economistic approach, a common theme in sustainability literature is that a capitalist worldview is incompatible with Sustainable Development (Benton 1999; Fine 1999; Redclift 2000; Magis and Shinn 2009; King 2009;
Prudham 2009). In particular, the ‘ideological ascendancy’ of the neoliberal agenda (Eckersley 2004: 66), with its emphasis on private property, curtailment of the welfarist state and elevation of the autonomous individual, has been seen to militate against the collective social responsibility and ethics of care that are ingredients of sustainability (Dobson 1995; Eckersley 2004; Kneafsey et al 2008; Morgan and Sonnino 2008; Sayer 2011;
Lockie 2010, 2014). Grober notes that neoliberalism emerged at around the same time as
‘Earth politics’ and ‘clashed at all points with the principles and philosophy of sustainability’
(Grober 2012: 169).
The tension again goes back to the roots of Sustainable Development, when economic activity to further social progress was seen to be at odds with environmental protection. In economic analyses, sustainability problems are seen as market failures, correctable by market mechanisms. Complicated valuations of natural and social capital, as well as
‘ecosystem services’, have been developed in support of this approach (e.g. Stern 2006).
Alternative programmes for ‘steady-state’ (Daly 1992) or ‘post-growth’ economics (Jackson 2009) have been developed, which seek to ‘decouple’ economic activity from its negative environmental or social impacts. To adapt Beck’s image, this might be seen as an effort by
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sustainability advocates to fight economics with economics. But in the opposing view, the negative social and environmental externalities of the capitalist economic system are not unintended side-effects that can be corrected, but inevitable, systemic outcomes: ‘not ...
symptoms of the model’s failure but of its success’ (Jacobs 1996: 11).
The term ‘social capital’ (derived from economics) is used by several commentators either as a component of or straight substitute for social sustainability (Wise 2001; Pretty 2002;
Kates et al 2005; EAC 2011). Social capital has been defined as ‘social networks, the reciprocities that arise from them, and the value of these for achieving mutual goals’
(Schuller et al 2000: 1). It adapts the idea that various reservoirs of resources, power or capability are differentially available to individuals and groups, in the form of ‘capitals’. The idea had been used by Bourdieu (1986) to help explain how societies transmitted their status and values through generations and was popularised by Putnam to explain the decline of certain socially binding activities in the US (Putnam 2000). The idea is useful in understanding social sustainability, which is also concerned with how social attributes or conditions are preserved through generations. However, like social sustainability, social capital suffers from definitional ambiguity, lacks an accepted theoretical basis and is subject to definer bias (Portes 1998). Beyond this, the term’s economistic connotations are
alienating to some sustainability commentators. Redclift says it ‘frequently underplays political struggles and has the [in his view undesirable] imprimatur of the World Bank’
(2000: 214). For Fine, the idea that ‘capital’ can be qualified as ‘social’ is a sign of how the social world is being ‘colonised’ by economics: ‘the social can only be added to capital if it has been illegitimately excluded in the first place’ (Fine 1999: 16). This echoes arguments about the ‘pillarisation’ of sustainability.
To de-fuse tensions within sustainability, some writers have turned to the idea of the ‘moral economy’. The historian E.P. Thompson chose the term ‘moral’ to describe an economy based on custom and obligation with inbuilt social protections, especially concerning the marketing of necessities in times of dearth, which was displaced from Tudor times onwards by the modern political economy of the free market (Thompson 1992). This had the effect of de-socialising economic transactions and ‘de-moralising’ markets (Thompson 1992: 201).
Sayer expands the term to include both ‘a kind of study’ (perhaps more understandable as moral economics) as well as an object of study (2015: 291). From this perspective, the
49 economy is seen not merely as a machine that may work well or malfunction, but as ‘a complex set of relationships between people, and between people and nature’ (Sayer 2015:
291). Moral economy calls for evaluative as well as descriptive assessments of economic arrangements, probing the exploitations and failures to treat people ‘as ends in themselves’
that account for inequitable distributions of benefits and harms (Sayer 2015). For Morgan et al, the moral economy could be re-invoked as a sustainable economy, re-integrating nature and society and redressing economic over-utilitarianism towards nature (Morgan et al 2006;
Morgan 2015). For Busch (2011a), the moral economy encapsulates the idea of distributive justice, which has been cited as a central social concern of sustainability.
2.9.3 A social ‘filter’ rather than a pillar?
As noted, both environmental and economic elements within sustainability have been seen to distort or eclipse social concerns. More fundamentally, pillar-thinking and the trade-offs it leads to have been found to be reductive, to sidestep the grand social-environmental fusion that sustainability was meant to achieve. One response was to call for ‘dynamic sustainabilities’ (Leach et al 2010). Others argue for a re-socialisation of the entire framing of sustainability, invoking something like a ‘social filter’, resembling the ‘green filter’
proposed by Bostrom (2012). In this argument, sustainability discourse suffers from
‘desocialised conceptions of both nature and the economy’ (Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2012: 32). What is needed is a ‘socio-material’ turn in the way sustainability is approached.
Sustainability (undivided) attends to economic activity, social relations and practices, cultural meanings and normative judgements, but also recognises that ‘social life is conducted by embodied beings in constant exchange with their physical environment’
(Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2012: 32-33). The pillars are (re-)abolished.