Impulse für eine Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit

The topic of sustainability is rarely treated in German sociology as an independent topos of research and theory building. Within the framework of environmental sociology, micro-sociological studies on the behaviour of individuals and organizations in the face of a multitude of environmental and sustainability crises are in the foreground of interest; within the framework of economic sociology, new models of a post-growth society or a post-capitalist economic order with the goal of a sustainability orientation are considered predominantly by means of discourse-analysis or as a normative concept for social change. The article provides a brief overview of the status of sustainability in the sociological literature and, from this synopsis, develops its own impulses for a reform of sociological research and teaching in which sustainability and living in the Anthropocene serve as cornerstones of analysis and as target points of an interdisciplinary normative orientation.