Library

Scientific paper • 2012

Capitalism, Religion and the Idea of the Demonic

Abstract: The paper enters the vast debate on capitalism and religion and offers a discrete interpretation of their relationship. On the one hand, it is questioned to consider capitalism as a secularized social system in which religions do no longer play a dominant public role, although its historical rise may have been influenced by religious movements. On the other hand,...

Scientific paper • 2012

Le Radici Lontane della decrescita

By: Paolo Scroccaro

Contribution to the 3rd International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Venice in 2012. Italian only

Scientific paper • 2012

Ecomusicology: a key to understand human harmony

By: Leonella Grasso Caprioli

From the introduction:The perspective of scientific realism has the tendency to consider environmental problems leaving aside their ethical, historical and political context. On the contrary, the humanities, philosophy, literature, visual arts, music, help to develop a knowledge of the nature alternative to the one proposed by natural sciences, and often overflowing the limits imposed by...

Scientific paper • 2012

Degrowth and Sustainable Human Development: in search of a path toward integration

By: F. Tabellini, P. Ponti

From the introduction: . . . We think that we have to choose and to make explicit a theory of justice because we believe that any theory concerning human action, even those that claim to be purely descriptive, they subtend a specific idea of human being and they have a normative component (besides a prescriptive one). Looking for a possible solution, we try to trace an integration path between...

Scientific paper • 2012

Overcoming accumulation: Is a capitalist steady-state economy possible?

By: Frederik Berend Blauwhof

Keywords: Steady-state economy; Capital accumulation; Capitalism; Ecological economics; Marxian economics; Growth; Crisis; Reform; Policy

Scientific paper • 2012

Bona diagnosis, bona curatio: How property economics clarifies the degrowth debate

By: Pascal van Griethuysen

Keywords: Degrowth; Property economics; Capitalist rationality; Eco-social rationale

Misc • 2012

Weltbeziehungen im Zeitalter der Beschleunigung - Umrisse einer neuen Gesellschaftskritik

By: Hartmut Rosa

Mit der Beschleunigung des sozialen Lebens in der Moderne ändert sich auch die Art und Weise, in der der Mensch »in die Welt gestellt« ist. Hartmut Rosa analysiert aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln die Veränderungen in der Welterfahrung, der Weltbeziehung und der Weltbearbeitung moderner Subjekte. Dabei entsteht umrißhaft das Programm einer kritischen Soziologie, in deren Zentrum die...

Scientific paper • 2012

Agriculture and human ecology: the value of the territory

By: Carlo Modonesi, Monica Oldani, Celestino Panizza

Introduction: The achievements in life sciences of the last 50 years have widely deepened knowledge and the possibility of intervention on the foundations of living nature. However, such undeniable achievements, by focusing primarily on structural aspects of biological organization, have not shed much light on other characteristics of living creatures, such as historical and ecological ones....

Scientific paper • 2012

Interdependencies of Technology and Degrowth – Some Cultural Foundations

By: Oliver Parodi

From the introduction: Work, economy and growth nowadays are fundamentally linked to technology, technological progress and the handling of our world by and through technology. If we are talking about degrowth as a passage of civilization we have to keep in mind that our (modern/Western) civilizations are technological ones: At present, we all are living in a world which is strongly formed and...

Scientific paper • 2012

The Transition of Mindset in Economics - A Model for Non-Growth

By: Michael Schlauch, Gaia Palmisano

Abstract: The search for the roots of the doctrine of unlimited growth leads to the traditional anthropocentric world view where the human has to relate himself only to a given nature. This dualism between a human with unlimited technological power and a static nature is not able to explain such phenomena as stagnating happiness indexes, continuous food and resource insecurity, health problems...

Presentation • 2012

Modelling the Great Transition

By: Emanuele Campiglio, Giovanni Bernardo

Contribution to the 3rd International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Venice in 2012. - only available as presentation slides

Scientific paper • 2012

Development was the problem, not the solution 1 Part I: the critique of global environmental politics

By: Matthias Finger, Jacques Grinevald

From the text: There is, on the one hand, ever more economic growth and development as actively promoted by the projects of engineers (modern engineering), big science (physical and biological sciences), including the social sciences and mainstream economics, the competitive Nation-State system and related intergovernmental organizations, as well as by the firms and others big business actors,...

Scientific paper • 2012

Morin, Beck and Latouche: for an ecology of action in the light of degrowth

By: Fabrizio Li Vigni

Keywords: Edgar Morin, Ulrich Beck, Serge Latouche, ecology of action, wager, strategy, precautionary principle, upstream action, degrowth.

Scientific paper • 2012

Sustainable Development and the Cultural Contradictions of High Modernity: Beyond Brundtland and Limits to Growth

By: Thomas Wallgren

Abstract: The new green movement that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s claimed that because of objective limits economic growth had become a false development goal. The claim is interpreted as a claim about an intrinsic tension between two cultural aspirations fundamental to the project of high modernity, ethical universalism and increasing material prosperity for all. Since the mid 1980s the...

Scientific paper • 2012

Buen Vivir and Beyond: Searching for a New Paradigm of Action

By: Ana Agostino, Franziska Dübgen

From the text: A Language of opposition, once turned into a principle of governance changes its appearance. On the one hand, the social activist necessarily bases her intervention on the vision of a better state of affairs. Hence, her intellectual work is grounded in counter-narratives of what a different, alternative world should look like with the ultimate aim of transforming reality towards...

Scientific paper • 2012

Sustainability and New Visions of Consumers Sovereignty and Utility

By: Roberta Sassatelli

From the text: In his widely known work La société de consommation, the French cultural critic Jean Baudrillard thus summed up contemporary society: ‘Just as medieval society was balanced on God and the Devil, so ours is balanced on consumption and its denunciation’. The notion of the consumer, contested as it has always been, has itself become an important cultural category. Especially from...

Scientific paper • 2011

Environment versus growth — A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth”

By: Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh

Consumption, Environmental policy, Equity, GDP paradox, Grassroots initiatives, Political feasibility, Reducing work-time, Regulating advertisement

Scientific paper • 2011

The Quest for Pleasure and the Death of Life

By: Joseph Morrill Kirby

Schopenhauer; Kant; Hegel; Ecology; Economics; Philosophy

Scientific paper • 2011

Vers une societe d’abondance frugale

By: Serge Latouche

fayard.fr:Les uns ne jurent que par elle quand les autres s’offensent que le mot soit prononcé. Que recouvre l’idée de décroissance, qui ne semble pas être la même pour les uns et les autres ? Surtout, elle charrie son lot de contresens et de controverses. Nombreux sont les opposants à cette idée, qui utilisent des arguments de plus ou moins mauvaise foi. À droite comme à gauche, les critiques...

Scientific paper • 2011

From Bioeconomics to Degrowth

By: Mauro Bonaiuti, Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen

Georgescu-Roegen's 'New Economics' in Eight Essays The publisher: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's (1906-94) most original contribution is his bioeconomic theory. Based on a profound rethinking of the foundations of neoclassical economics, bioeconomics represents a completely new paradigm compared to both the standard and the Marxist approach. Opening economics to natural sciences led...