Social sustainability soiree

For students at Portland State and across the country, social sustainability is an increasingly important part of maintaining a dynamic campus environment—especially at a campus as urban and integrated with its surrounding city as PSU.

As people concerned about social sustainability, we should ask how we can improve the quality of life not only for ourselves but for others as well.

Finding ways to integrate sustainability into the social sphere is an integral part of Social Sustainability: A Multilevel Approach to Social Inclusion, a scholarly anthology recently published by Routledge Press featuring work from numerous PSU students and faculty and edited by three PSU professors: Veronica Dujon, Eileen Brennan and Jesse Dillard.

The book’s publication was made possible with help from the Miller Foundation Award, which granted PSU $25 million in 2008 to raise public awareness of urban development and social sustainability.

This Friday, a launch party at PSU’s Native American Student and Community Center will celebrate Social Sustainability’s release.

“We’re really looking forward to the event because it will give us a chance to thank all those who have supported us along the way,” said Eileen Brennan, director of PSU’s School of Social Work, who edited, produced and wrote parts of the book.

Dujon has been a sociology professor at PSU for nearly two decades and hopes this book will serve as a sort of educational guide for those who are unfamiliar with social sustainability.

“This was an ambitious project from the start, in which we attempted to define social sustainability on a multidimensional level,” Dujon said. “It’s a path-breaking book that was written to fill a gap that is often overlooked in the United States. Not a lot has been done on these issues.”

The publication process has taken two years, but the authors began compiling work and documents for the book back in 2009. It’s being published as the second installment in the Understanding Sustainability series, the first book of which was also co-edited by Dillard and Dujon.

Contributors to the book come from universities across the United States and the world. This outstanding group of scholars is what makes the book so unique.

“This is really an international book with an amazing group of writers located all over the U.S.” Brennan said. “Most come from scholarly backgrounds. We have writers from Columbia University, Cal State and Florida University.”

The anthology covers myriad topics.

“We have chapters that discuss child development programs in Zimbabwe, to the oil Tarzan extraction in Canada,” Brennan said. “One chapter discusses assistant professor of anthropology at PSU Jeremy Spoon, who utilized his knowledge of anthropology to travel to the Himalayas, where he worked on rebuilding their infrastructure.”

Spoon also created a number of tourism guides for foreigners for the anthology.

The Portland State Institute for Sustainable Solutions offers a number of resources for students who wish to become more involved in social sustainability. The Social Sustainability Colloquium is a networking group on campus that has been around for seven years.

“Portland State is known as the center or ‘hub’ of social sustainability,” Brennan said. “These issues we’ve covered in the book are really a European thing, but we hope to make it more known, particularly in the U.S.”

Others involved in the compilation of Social Sustainability include economist Marion King, who helped orchestrate the entire book although she did not contribute to the writing. Dujon described her as an influential and intellectual leader in social sustainability. Marion Sharp is another prominent leader who contrbuted to the book.

Social Sustainability covers various topics such as child development, mental health and our health care system. The book’s multidimensional approach was achieved by using contributors in areas such as sociology, business administration, public administration, psychology, anthropology and social work, according to the project’s website.

“This book moves the idea of social sustainability through encompassing the process of social inclusion,” Dujon said. “In other words, you don’t exclude people from their decisions on the basis of race, geology and gender.”