The In(de)finition of Sustainability: Strategic Communication for Sustainability as Conversational Contestation

Sustainability communication is an increasingly institutionalized field of research and has developed into a vivid and impactful part of corporate communications. Strategic sustainability communication aims at informing relevant audiences (communication of sustainability), creating a common understanding and sense of a “good life” (communication about sustainability), and seeks to coordinate, create, and maintain relationships that enable transformation (communication for sustainability). However, despite these efforts, sustainability has not (yet) been cultivated as a universal value in our society. Still, sustainability is used (and abused) as a language token and has been established as a synonym for technological innovation and solution-based approaches—simply: sustainability is the happy face that individuals but mostly corporates put on covering the ugly face of the climate crisis. This is part of sustainability reporting and sustainability storytelling, mostly strategically planned and implemented to support a company in fulfilling their mission in regard to what is called “sustainable development” or the “great transformation.” This introduction takes a critical look at strategic sustainability communication and challenges that sustainable development and the related 17 political-economic goals (SDGs) have been simply accepted and adopted as goals particularly for corporate sustainability communication. Based on the critique, the chapter conceptualizes strategic sustainability communication as sustainable itself if the genuine purpose of strategic sustainability communication is to spark conversations about sustainability and, thus, stimulate and facilitate the re-negotiation and conversational contestation of sustainability. The following contributions of the volume are briefly introduced.