Just Sustainability and Sustainable Justice-Conceptual Developments and Tensions in the Relation Between Social Justice and Sustainability

Abstract Social sustainability is frequently perceived as a condition for achieving social justice; however, social justice is a contested term, prompting debates about the politicisation and depoliticisation of discussions on future imaginaries in the face of impending crises with social consequences. This scoping review examines how social justice is conceptualised in relation to social sustainability and maps current discussions to determine how social justice is conceptualised in relation to social sustainability from a transdisciplinary perspective. The review entails a bibliographic search of seven databases JSTOR; ProQuest: Arts and Humanities; ProQuest: Politics Collection; ProQuest: Social Science database; Scopus; Web of Science and ProQuest: Worldwide Political Science Abstracts. and a subsequent screening, resulting in the inclusion of 25 works published between 2018 and 2023. Four themes are identified—namely, situated justice, aspect of (social) sustainability, political aspects of social justice and relation to equity. The results indicate mainstreaming of social justice as a transdisciplinary concept mobilised in applied areas such as education, tourism and urban planning, with the distributive dimension being predominant. The review also shows that social justice has gained traction within the technical and life sciences, particularly the interlinkages between social and environmental sustainability from a social justice perspective. Three areas are identified with potential for theory building and public discourse on incorporating social justice ideas and principles into sustainability work: expanding and deepening the mobilisation of social justice in applied fields, paying attention to collective and communitarian aspects of social justice, and considering the material conditions in contexts where social justice and social sustainability actions emerge.