Making Sense of Social Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter takes a hybrid interpretation of social sustainability from the domains of policy, economics and sociology. We argue that the concept inherits a certain epistemological outlook that leaves the potential of socially sustainable organizing tied to vision-centric values of Western knowledge. Taking a point of departure in the lack of multi-sensory development in the contemporary discourse of social sustainability, we address the dominance of vision (as purportedly the most accurate sense for gaining knowledge) that has been on the radar of philosophical critique for much of the twentieth Century (Jay M. Downcast eyes: The denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought. University of California Press, 1993). The chapter is theoretically positioned within the so-called ‘sensory turn’ that emerged in history and anthropology from the 1980s (Bull M & Howes D. Senses Soc 11(1):1–2, 2016); we build on the gradual additions of more bodily experiences to what was deemed ‘legitimate’ social science (Luker K. Salsa dancing into the social sciences. Harvard University Press, 2009), and propose three alternative models to mono-sensory thinking. Some central feminist epistemological principles contribute to our understanding of the sensory turn – including a separation from nature, a linear view of time, and emotional dislocation from worldly ‘objects’. This chapter brings these insights to bear on the question of how alternative sensory ways of knowing and acting collectively might give new credence to social sustainability.