Social Sustainability and Its Indicators through a Disability Studies and an Ability Studies Lens

نویسنده

  • Gregor Wolbring
چکیده

The present journal recently stated in the call for a special issue on social sustainability, ―[t]hough sustainable development is said to rest on ̳three pillars‘, one of these—social sustainability—has received significantly less attention than its bio-physical environmental and economic counterparts‖. The current issue promises to engage the concepts of ―development sustainability‖, ―bridge sustainability‖ and ―maintenance sustainability‖ and the tensions between these different aspects of social sustainability. The aim of the present study is to identify the visibility of disabled people in the academic social sustainability literature, to ascertain the impact and promises of social sustainability indicators put forward in the same literature and to engage especially with the concepts of ―development sustainability‖, ―bridge sustainability‖ and ―maintenance sustainability‖ through disability studies and ability studies lenses. We report that disabled people are barely covered in the academic social sustainability literature; of the 5165 academic articles investigated only 26 had content related to disabled people and social sustainability. We also conclude that social sustainability indicators evident in the 1909 academic articles with the phrase ―social sustainability‖ in the abstract mostly focused on products and did not reflect yet the goals outlined in the ―development sustainability‖ aspect of social sustainability proposed by Vallance such as basic needs, building social capital, justice and so on. We posit that if the focus within the social sustainability discourse shifts more toward the social that an active presence of disabled people in this OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2013, 5 4890 discourse is essential to disabled people. We showcase the utility of an ability studies lens to further the development and application of the ―development sustainability‖, ―bridge sustainability‖ and ―maintenance sustainability‖ concepts. We outline how different ability expectations intrinsic to certain schools of thought of how to deal with human-nature relationships (for example anthropocentric versus bio/ecocentric) impact this relationship and ―bridge sustainability‖. As to ―maintenance development‖, we posit that no engagement has happened yet with the ability expectation conflicts between able-bodied and disabled people, or for that matter with the ability expectation differences between different able-bodied groups within social sustainability discourses; an analysis essential for the maintenance of development. In general, we argue that there is a need to generate ability expectation conflict maps and ability expectations conflict resolution mechanisms for all sustainable development discourses individually and for ability conflicts between sustainable development discourses.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

A Meta Synthesis of disability studies and the pattern governing the social life of people with disabilities

Introduction: Despite the progress of medical science, disability has not decreased significantly, so that today, social thinkers have raised disability as a global issue. The normal / healthy lifestyle of people with disabilities is one of the most complex and multidimensional issues in the field of disability studies that has attracted the attention of researchers and has faced an explosion o...

متن کامل

A Meta Synthesis of disability studies and the pattern governing the social life of people with disabilities

Introduction: Despite the progress of medical science, disability has not decreased significantly, so that today, social thinkers have raised disability as a global issue. The normal / healthy lifestyle of people with disabilities is one of the most complex and multidimensional issues in the field of disability studies that has attracted the attention of researchers and has faced an explosion o...

متن کامل

Evaluation and Comparison of Sustainability levels of Rice Production in Sari County

Introduction It is difficult to measure sustainable agriculture as a multidimensional concept. While it is relatively easy to express philosophical definitions of agriculture sustainability, providing an operational and methodology definition for evaluating the level of sustainability is difficult. Different methodological approaches have been formulated and developed to assess the sustainab...

متن کامل

Sustainable Criteria Evaluation of Neighbourhoods Through Residents’ Perceived Needs

Following the changes in the paradigm of urban studies in recent years, sustainability has become an increasingly important issue in the neighborhood’s planning and designing. However, this concept has originally been developed for American and European neighborhoods’ planning, it could also be customized for other neighborhoods’. Additionally, in the neighborhood scale, the quality parameter f...

متن کامل

Measure and comparison of economic, social and ecological sustainability of farming systems in the Marvdasht plain

Agricultural sustainability refers to the ability of a cropping system to produce, without causing irreversible damage tothe ecosystem. There is an increasing need to view cropping systems and identify management practices in a holisticindicator-based impact assessment. The main objective of this study was to compare and rank the cropping systems of theMarvdasht plain in Fars Province; in order...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2013