From what little there is on the subject, the majority of research on cultural/social sustainability has been from an urban planning perspective (Enyedi, 2002; Kong, 2009; Le Blanc, 2006) and includes recommendations to city policymakers and government on how to design their municipalities in a way that sustains the cultural roots of the region, usually through the creation of cultural centers that both display and attract the creation of cultural products (such as art, music, theater, etc.), development of places of social discourse for those that create cultural product, so they can interact with each other and with the larger municipality (Kong, 2009).
Translating these concepts from cities to social groups can be tricky. A city is not a cultural group, but it can contain parts of one. A cultural group, in today's world, has no physical location. Yet the measures may still be able to translate over. If the goal is the sustainment of the culture and social aspects unique to any specific group of people, then the city concepts can be looked at in terms of what the city is providing to a culture to help the culture sustain itself.
Prominently is the idea of accessibility that people, both from within a culture and without, have to existing places of cultural production. As identified by Kong (2009), the Shanghai Grand Theater is considered inaccessible to the average person due to cost, and doesn't include much local culture in it's offerings. Because of this, the sustainability of Shanghai's culture is harmed through a lack of interaction with the local culture. This infers a need for cultural sustainability that cultural products are produced, displayed, and used by the general population.
As such, places like art galleries, theaters, cinema, libraries and bookstores, all hold a place in sustaining culture. If their vitality in this process is in maintaining their accessibility to the common person, and in inclusion of local production, then the need of these places can be re-engineered to say that cultural sustainability can be measured (though not exclusively) by how much access that culture has to cultural production, and how much accessibility that cultural production has to the common person.
If another need identified is the social interaction within cultures, and between cultures and the common population, and this is provided by allowing for physical community space for people within the culture and people outside the culture to interact (Kong, 2009), specifically regarding the culture and it's cultural product, then this need can also be re-engineered to reflect what a sustainable culture consists of. Since having a physical location to host these social encounters is vital, as well as the inclusion of individuals from outside the culture, another measure can be related to the abundance of these cultural meeting spaces that are maintained by the culture. This can be a regular area, like a neighborhood community park or meeting hall, or something more transient such as a conference or seminar. Again, since Kong (2009) emphasizes the need for outside groups to interact with the culture, there can't be exclusivity involved in attendance.
However, it should be noted that there's more dimensions to cultural and social sustainability than just what's listed above. The above criteria identify sustainability in regards to how a culture interacts with the outside world. What about how the culture interacts with it's members? For this, I can look to the model used by Kallstrom & Ljung (2005), identifying that individuals within a culture need care, rights and solidarity to be socially sustainable within a culture. Kallstrom & Ljung (2005) were specifically looking at the interaction between farmers and the larger society, however the basic principles can still apply, as the psychological detriments that Kallstrom & Ljung (2005) noted on the individuals are not unique specifically to farmers.
To break down care, rights and solidarity into measurable behaviors in a culture is challenging, at best. Starting with probably the easiest, rights, this can be measured in how much involvement and say do individuals have within their culture? Are individuals allowed to have input in decisions that affect them? This can be measured from both an in-group perspective (how much rights do I have within my own particular group?) and an out-group prospective (how much rights do I have within the larger society?). Without rights, it's easy for an individual to feel like they have on control over their life/environment/circumstances/etc. and to not participate socially, or culturally for that matter.
Next easiest is probably solidarity. This would be the merit-based recognition that our society is, supposedly, so fond of. Probably the easiest measure is: Are individuals getting recognition for their accomplishments? Like with value, it's a matter of social/cultural participation. Solidarity serves more as a carrot though, motivating people to include themselves by recognizing their accomplishments.
The third, care, is the most abstract and inconsistent with modern culture. It's non-merit based, unconditional regard. As Kallstrom & Ljung (2005) describe in the case of farmers, the measure is akin to asking 'Are farmers valued as farmers?' Simply valuing a group as who and what they are. Again, building on participation, an individual needs to feel valued for who they are in society to feel motivated to offer what they can contribute.
One thing that Kallstrom & Ljung (2005) don't cover is combining these social reinforcements with other sustainability measures. For example with solidarity, specifically promoting individuals who's behavior are consistent with sustainability behaviors. This is a potential avenue to not only create social sustainability for/within groups, but also to encourage the individuals within those groups to develop sustainable practices.
Then there are measures of social sustainability that blur with economic and urban sustainability and other traditional measures (Alpopi, Manole & Colesca, 2011), such as:
Life expectancy
Infant mortality rate
Number of social service providers per person (health care providers, for example)
Education drop-out rate
Population density
Population growth rate
Per-person living space
The advantage to using these measures is their ease to measure. These are all statistic-driven measures that can be analyzed quantitatively. Unfortunately the use of these measures then limits their applicability. There is no cultural dimension to these measures, and their social dimension is rather limited being limited to an exploration of social sustainability in regards to population. It *is* a vital area to cover however, as even if a group is sustainable in the more qualitative measures for culture and social sustainability, if they lack in the quantitative-based population sustainability then that group will eventually run into some of the more traditional sustainability issues, such as keeping education levels up, or providing sufficient living space per-person for living.
There's a few different ways to analyze social and cultural sustainability, and all of them have a legitimate use. The challenge is framing the measures in a way that's appropriate for the group being studied. Most of these measures fall in the realm of urban planning and provide some difficulty in translating them to group-level use, but there's still a lot of possibility in using these measures to asses the sustainability of groups among social and cultural axes.
- Jason Cherry
References:
Alpopi, C., Manole, C., &
Enyedi, G. (2002). Social sustainability of large cities. Ekistics, 69(412-414), 142-144. Retrieved from http://www.ekistics.org/EJournal.htm
Kallstrom, H. N. & Ljung, M. (2005). Social sustainability and collaborative learning. Ambio, 34(4/5), 376-382. Retrieved from http://www.springer.com/environment/journal/13280Kong, L. (2009). Making sustainable creative/cultural space in Shanghai and Singapore. Geographical Review, 99(1), 1-22. Retrieved from http://www.amergeog.org/gr/grhome.html
Le Blanc, M. (2006). Two tales of municipal reorganization: Toronto’s and Montreal’s diverging paths towards regional governance and social sustainability. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 39(3), 571. Retrieved from http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=CJP
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