The Journal of Sustainability Studies
Inaugural Issue (June 2016)
“What is Sustainability?”
The Journal of Sustainability Studies, an interdisciplinary, international, multi-modal, web-based journal hosted by the University of North Alabama Center for Sustainability, invites submissions for publication. Submissions are reviewed year-round, with publication in June and December.
Sustainability as an intellectual field and area of practice is broadly recognized as a social, environmental, and economic movement that seeks to maximize efficiency in resource use while working to minimize human impact on the environment. Yet this definition can and arguably should be nuanced based on intellectual discipline and geographic region, and will no doubt change with technological and political advances. It is also profoundly concerned with social justice, and thus is centered philosophically on the morality and ethics of fairness and equability. Sustainability is scale independent and encompasses issues affecting the entire planet (climate change and global environmental destruction) to community-scale issues of poverty and inequality. As such, sustainability can mean different things to different people, depending on their perspectives, and thus many people do not know what it means.
Therefore, for this first issue of our journal, we seek to peer through the lenses of professionals in various disciplines and look into the future to answer questions such as, in my field, what does sustainability mean? What are examples of current unsustainable practices? What are the barriers to living more sustainably? What is the best-case scenario for how to attain sustainability? If we fail to live sustainably, what will happen? What will sustainability look like in my field? In the distant future, how will people be living sustainably?
For the inaugural issue of the Journal of Sustainability Studies, we invite manuscripts, multimedia documents, art, and creative works that define and explain sustainability in your professional or civic context. The journal serves a mixed audience of academics and the general public. Please follow the guidelines on the Theme & Submissions page of our website. Please note that the deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.