Socially Sustainable and Sustainable Social Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

Social sustainability and sustainable social innovation have never been more important. There are many pressing social problems and challenges throughout the world. We face increasing resource scarcity and damaging environmental impacts following ever more consumption. There are global political instabilities, breakdowns in social cohesion, and increasing levels of inequality across the world.

Sustainable social innovation and social sustainability could provide new approaches to addressing these challenges. However, the dominant paradigm in sustainability still remains a ‘technological’ one in which we seek solutions that are ‘less bad’ and that do not necessarily challenge the underlying socio-economic systems.

Part of the challenge facing scholars in this domain is a lack of clarity regarding the concepts of social sustainability and social innovation. Both concepts are comparatively new and more work is needed to establish these ideas in the mainstream of sustainability thinking.

It is clear that this cannot be achieved without a significant change in direction, which may be dependent upon understanding: how social innovations might help make the world more sustainable; how any innovations and interventions themselves might be more sustainable; and how sustainability might be more effective with a greater emphasis on the social dimension.

Some big issues might include:

• critical perspectives on social sustainability and social innovation;
• citizen-based activism and grassroots, distributed design;
• systems approaches to sustainability transitions;
• participatory design and service design in the future;
• new economic models, degrowth, the circular economy, and new patterns of production and consumption;
• policy approaches and politics of social innovation;
• pluriversal thinking and decolonial perspectives;
• interventions and innovations in the Third Sector and the Global South; and
• the role of designers and design education in addressing social and sustainability challenges.

We hope that this Special Issue will provide a state-of-the-art overview of this critical topic. It is our expectation that it will provide a resource for accessing seminal and current thinking, will provide a platform for future research, and offer new insights into how this field might contribute to solving pressing global challenges.

We welcome empirical and conceptual papers of every variety. We are especially keen to welcome new perspectives and more challenging or provocative works that seek to propose original ways of thinking regarding social sustainability and social innovation. Papers might address global, national, regional, or local topics. Papers may also address more complex socio-technical systems and networks. Empirical work reflecting on case studies or interventions is also welcome.

We would be happy to receive a brief abstract or summary of your proposed paper, if you wish to enquire about the appropriateness of your submission for consideration in this Special Issue.

Dr. James Moultrie
Dr. Lucia Corsini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• social innovation
• social sustainability
• systems thinking
• socio-technical systems
• circular economy
• degrowth
• design for social sustainability
• global challenges