Page 72 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

Chapter 5
Sociological Perspectives on Sustainability

Communication

Karl-Werner Brand

Abstract From a sociological perspective, social communication has a key role in
the stabilisation and change of institutional practices as well as in sustainability
communication. As this promotes the development and dissemination of new insti-
tutional practices oriented towards a vision of sustainability, the analysis of the rela-
tionship between public communication and institutional change is of particular
importance. This chapter attempts to answer four questions: What can be learned
about this relationship from a number of sociological approaches? What special
frames characterise sustainability discourse in Germany? What institutional prac-
tices are thus advantaged? And what role does the social embedding of everyday
actions in lifestyle milieux have for the implementation of widely accepted environ-
mental norms?
Keywords Environmental sociology • Institutional practices • Sustainability
discourse in Germany • Lifestyle • Milieux

“Society is unthinkable without communication, but communication is also unthinkable
without society” (Luhmann 1997: 13). For Luhmann, communication is the basic
operation that produces and reproduces societies. Ecological and sustainability
problems also only exist as a social problem to the extent that there is communica-
tion about it. If communication is given such a constitutive role for the development
and identity of society, this does not automatically mean that we share the premises
of Luhmann’s systems theory, which follows Maturana’s autopoiesis model.
Societies and social sub-systems need not be understood as ‘self-referentially

K.-W. Brand (*)
Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
e-mail: karl-werner.brand@tum.de

J. Godemann and G. Michelsen (eds.), Sustainability Communication: Interdisciplinary 55
Perspectives and Theoretical Foundations, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1697-1_5,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011