The ZIN staff members Benjamin Görgen and Björn Wendt participated at the 39th Congress of the German Sociological Association in Göttingen with an ad-hoc group on “Die Nachhaltige Gesellschaft. Sozial-ökologisches Wissen als neue Herrschaftsideologie oder systemsprengende Utopie?” (English: “The Sustainable Society. Social-ecological knowledge as anew ruling ideology or system-splitting utopia?“)

They discussed the transformative and conservative aspects of the sustainability concept together with Stephan Lessenich (LMU Müchen), Sarah Miriam Pritz (University of Hamburg), Stefanie Graefe (University of Jena), Barbara Muraca (Corvallis, Oregon), Daniela Gottschlich (University of Lüneburg) and Moritz Boddenberg (University of Hamburg).
Whereas, on the one hand, the discussion emphasized the rather small transformative potential of sustainability and its conservative-stabilizing character, it was also stressed that the critical emancipatory potential of sustainability should be perceived, sharpened and defended. This way, the different lectures elucidated the ambivalent character of current sustainability efforts between acceptance and emancipation. In addition to these discourse-internal debates, the group addressed threats to the sustainability discourse as a whole. Especially the current danger of devaluating and discrediting the social-ecological knowledge by right-wing populist actors and movements was discussed.