The sustainability concepts of the 'Brundtland-Report' and the 'Rio documents' call for a combination of ecological, economic, social and institutional aspects of social development. This paper describes briefly, several models of sustainability and discusses social sustainability as conceptualised in selected sustainability indicators. In an attempt to remedy the lack of sociological theory, the paper proposes a sustainability concept, which is based on the concepts of needs and work, as an activity to fulfil these needs and as the principal exchange process between society and nature. Moreover, this paper argues in favour of recognition of social sustainability as both a normative and analytical concept.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.