of Harvard College.
▪Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development material is reproduced here with permission from the OECD.
▪SEVENTEEN CONTRADICTIONS AND THE END OF CAPITALISM By David Harvey, London: Profile Books, Copyright © 2017.
▪The Equality Trust website material reproduced here is Creative Commons.
▪The Political Quarterly material is reproduced here with permission from Wiley & Sons.
▪World Health Organization material is reproduced here with permission from the WHO.
▪United Nations material is reproduced and reprinted here with permission from the UN.
While the idea of ‘sustainability’ appears to be a relatively recent addition to the discursive field of social policy, it is also true that the ‘social’ of social policy has long been interested in issues to do with sustainability, relating to core principles of social justice, equality, welfare and wellbeing, for example, and the possibilities of democracy and being able to live in a safe environment with respect for the natural world. Yet we need a lot more work on sustainability in social policy that reflects and engenders the present struggle for sustainability, and exposes the socio-political and moral conflicts as well as the global governance debates and dilemmas facing the whole of humanity in our globalized world. It is now widely accepted that for a society to be considered sustainable, it must address environmental, ecological, economic and social concerns. Work on sustainable welfare is growing and the trend is sure to continue, complementing more longstanding concerns and debates in this field about the nature of ‘warfare states’, ‘welfare states’, ‘patriarchal welfare states’ and ‘workfare states’.
It is also true that the ‘social’ of social policy, as a field of study, has arguably not received the critical attention it deserves – a gap that this timely volume aims to fill as the coronavirus pandemic has plunged the world into a crisis like no other. The global social crisis runs deep, as we shall see. The effects of global warming, the global ‘climate and environmental emergency’, the ‘migration crisis’, global financial crisis and the latest global health and economic crisis still unfolding reveal the extent of our highly interconnected world, and the scale of the post-national political challenges, nationalism and populism and the withdrawals from international commitments. Global institutions are severely challenged and are struggling to cope with the ongoing adverse social consequences of these crises, but there is hope, for global social policy development and for (transnational) solidarity, in grassroots struggle and the growing number of networks and coalitions mobilizing for change. The 2020s needs to usher in a decade of ambitious action to accelerate socially sustainable solutions to all the world’s biggest challenges and deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
In this volume, then, the idea of the social and that of ‘social policy’ is critically examined and reappraised, along with the notion of an increasingly globalising or globalised form of social policy, signified by international agreements, global goals and targets for humankind, all of which is increasingly geared towards the idea of ‘social sustainability’ itself. This reappraisal is not without problems or challenges, as this timely new volume serves to illustrate, because it is forcing us to critically reconsider and rethink age-old ideas, debates and perspectives in order to try and arrive at a better understanding of what the social of social policy may mean in and for the age of social sustainability.
Christopher Deeming
Glasgow
March 2021
The ‘social’ in the age of sustainability
Christopher Deeming
Introduction
COVID-19 is a human tragedy, but it has also created a generational opportunity, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres (2020) has observed. An opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world. New and emerging socially inclusive models and global policy frameworks are being formulated by policy makers to address the pressing global challenges of the 21st century, such as rising social inequality, extreme poverty and the climate emergency, that focus on important aspects of the social of social policy, are the subject of this volume. This introductory chapter provides a critical introduction to the idea of the ‘social’, and considers how notions of the social are now guiding the development of global social policy for the age of sustainability. The chapter also introduces the different contributions to the evolving debate on the social of social policy and the social dimensions of sustainability that this volume brings together for critical examination and reflection.
Social sustainability
The ‘social’ is now becoming more integrated in global social policy debates around sustainability (Koch and Oksana, 2016; Gough, 2017). Often, however, we find conceptions of the ‘social’ are less than well-defined in ascendant discourses of sustainability (Dillard et al, 2008; Vallance et al, 2011). Certainly, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNGA, 2015), and the associated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, Box 1.1) with their 169 targets adopted by member states of the UN in September 2015, underlines a global commitment to ‘achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions, economic, social and environmental in a balanced and integrated manner’ (UNGA, 2015, 2020; UN, 2019a, 2019b). This is a major achievement, global social policy in the making (Gore, 2015; Fukuda-Parr and Muchhala, 2020). The SDGs are global goals, which build on the experience and successes of the international development goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, Box 1.1) agreed at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 (UNGA, 2000), and also the recommendations and targets, eradicate poverty, support full employment, achieve equity, equality and protect human rights, found in the report A Fair Globalization of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization (WCSDG) (ILO, 2004), and the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development adopted at the World Summit for Social Development (WSSD) in 1995. All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, relating to global social problems of extreme poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice as well as the promotion of healthy lives. Here we find the social, the ecological and the economic are understood to be interconnected, in order to address the global challenges that humanity now faces.
Box 1.1: Global goals: from the MDGs to the SDGs
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The 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4.
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