The ISCH explores the interdependence of the development of modern societies and their discourses and politics of sustainability. It approaches issues of sustainability, which elsewhere are often addressed from a natural sciences, economic or technological point of view, from an explicitly social scientific perspective. Social change is not primarily a normative demand for us, but we conceptualise it first and foremost as an ever evolving reality, the causes, implications and effects of which we only partially understand. Accordingly, our key question is how this evolutionary change constantly remoulds the conditions for a successful politics of sustainability, and how it changes the understanding of sustainability itself.