Library

Misc • 2020

An Open Letter to the Degrowth Movement

The degrowth movement should shift trajectories, dramatically, as soon as possible. In what direction? Political science research, and direct organizing. I’m an undergraduate political science student in the US. In the last year, I’ve consumed a huge chunk of literature on degrowth. I have deep respect and admiration for the work done by the folks

Misc • 2020

Pausing the game of growth

By: Timothée Parrique

I feel personally guilty for the pandemic. At the beginning of March, I published my PhD dissertation “The Political Economy of Degrowth”, whose introduction ended with the following words: “Let me invite you into a wild thought experiment. Imagine that in one year, it will all stop. In precisely 365 days, the economy will come

Scientific paper • 2020

Untangling the radical imaginaries of the Indignados’ movement: commons, autonomy and ecologism

By: Viviana Asara

Abstract: Under regimes of austerity, social movements´ transformative eco-politics may appear endangered. What kinds of environmentalism and radical imaginaries can unfold in social movements in crisis-ridden societies? I focus on the ‘movement of the squares’ during its post-encampment phase, with a case study of three urban projects of the Indignados movement in Barcelona. Observation of...

Misc • 2020

From Taming to Dismantling: Degrowth and Anti-capitalist Strategy

By: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

A degrowth strategy for societal transformation needs to combine several approaches, reflecting the plurality of degrowth as a movement. To support the myriad of bottom-up alternatives that are already out there, degrowth should put a special emphasis on strategies which build power outside of the capitalist system, be very cautious of those which merely seek

Scientific paper • 2020

Degrowth business framework: Implications for sustainable development

By: Iana Nesterova

Abstract: Recent years have seen a revival in growth scepticism, yet degrowth in relation to the macroeconomic level has received almost exclusive attention. This resulted in a lack of literature on how post-growth and specifically degrowth visions of economy could be implemented, including from the perspective of firms and other organisations. This paper focuses on degrowth literature and...

Misc • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Advancing a Degrowth Agenda in the Corona Crisis

By: Matthias Schmelzer, Iris Frey, Andro Rilović, Stefania Barca, Eeva Houtbeckers

Panel debate The aim of this panel is to evaluate and discuss degrowth and it’s strategies in direct relation to the current corona crisis. We want to understand how the degrowth community responded so far to the crisis and how degrowth was and is present in recent discussions. The goal is then to identify potential pathways, but also barriers, for bringing forward the degrowth agenda in this...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - A legal approach to beyond GDP indicators: possibilities and limits

By: Norman Vander Putten

Presentation [part of the standard session "Institutional Change 1"] How can law contribute to the use of indicators that measure progress in an alternative manner? What are the limits thereof? This session will explore legal definitions and operationalizations of “beyond Gross Domestic Product” metrics by examining concrete existing legislation. Presenters: Norman Vander Putten (Université...

Misc • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Communicating Degrowth

By: Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso, Tom Smith , Lucía Muñoz Sueiro, Justus Baumann, Vegard Beyer

Standard session (discussion following 4 presentations) The Psychology of Degrowth Adoption: Insights from the Perspectives of the Utopian Impulse and the Regulatory Focus Theory - video We investigated how to influence people’s support for degrowth, and whether such influence may be subject to individual differences regarding transformative social change. To do so, we adopted the regulatory...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - The Psychology of Degrowth Adoption: Insights from the Perspectives of the Utopian Impulse and the Regulatory Focus Theory

By: Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso

Presentation [part of the standard session "Communicating Degrowth"] We investigated how to influence people’s support for degrowth, and whether such influence may be subject to individual differences regarding transformative social change. To do so, we adopted the regulatory focus theory—one of the most widely used theoretical frameworks in social psychology—and used it to frame how degrowth...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Transformations Beyond Growth: A Diverse Practices Approach

By: Tom Smith

Presentation [part of the standard session "Communicating Degrowth"] This talk stages a conversation between diverse economies and practice theory literatures, outlining the distinct paths these two areas of scholarship have taken to explore current patterns of growth. It argues that their simultaneous consideration would benefit radical and critical scholarship, especially in understanding...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - An anthropological contribution to degrowth

By: Lucía Muñoz Sueiro

Presentation [part of the standard session "Communicating Degrowth"] Social Anthropology has great potential to contribute to degrowth debates and proposals, hardly explored until now. I propose three ways to do so, further exploring one of them, inspired by the question: what can be recovered from the near past, still accessible in the present, for the future? The degrowth project needs new...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - How to communicate & organize the Degrowth movement better

By: Justus Baumann, Vegard Beyer

Presentation [part of the standard session "Communicating Degrowth"] We argue that strategic, motivation-oriented communications and scalable, mission-centric organising are crucial bottlenecks for the degrowth movement’s success. We have three key recommendations for the movement to master the challenges that climate change communication has struggled with. Presenters: Justus Baumann (Future...

Misc • 2020

How ‘Degrowth’ Pushes Climate and Well-Being Over GDP

By: Akshat Rathi

"In recent years, a group of economists, ecologists, and anthropologists has gained attention for trying to overturn a core tenet of economic policy — that growth is good for everyone. Known as the “degrowth” movement, these scholars suggest a reframing of humanity’s goals along ecological lines to address the climate crisis, along with a reconsideration of using gross domestic product as a...

Scientific paper • 2020

The limits of transport decarbonization under the current growth paradigm

By: Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Margarita Mediavilla, Ignacio de Blas, Carmen Duce

Achieving ambitious reductions in greenhouse gases (GHG) is particularly challenging for transportation due to the technical limitations of replacing oil-based fuels. We apply the integrated assessment model MEDEAS-World to study four global transportation decarbonization strategies for 2050. The results show that a massive replacement of oil-fueled individual vehicles to electric ones alone...

Scientific paper • 2020

Emergence of New Economics Energy Transition Models: A Review

By: Sarah Hafner, Aled Jones, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Irene Monasterolo

Well-known academic and non-academic institutions call for a new approach in economics able to capture features of modern economies including, but not limited to, complexity, non-equilibrium and uncertainty. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of ecological macroeconomic models that are suitable for the investigation of low-carbon energy transitions and assess them based on the...

Misc • 2020

Degrowth and the emerging mosaic of alternatives

By: Nina Treu, Matthias Schmelzer, Corinna Burkhart

After decades on the defensive, the left has once again started to embrace positive visions of the future.

Interview • 2020

Podcast: Joanna Pope zu Degrowth & Akzelerationismus

By: Joanna Pope

Kann es so etwas geben wie nachhaltiges Wachstum? Oder sollten wir uns nicht vielmehr vom Prinzip des Wachstums an sich trennen und stattdessen andere Vorstellungen des guten Lebens entwickeln?

Study • 2020

The role of work in a sustainable society

By: Laura Lanzoni

"A societal change towards sustainability, can not succeed without a transformation of work and society based around work, so becomes extremely important and fundamental reconsider the current social – economic system, in order to create a path that can lead to a sustainable society, where people and nature can collaborate to find their own spaces, their own times and to listen to their needs,...

Misc • 2020

Rethinking Our Relationship to Land: Degrowth, Abolition, and the United States

By: Erica Jung

In the United States, the police-, prison-, and military-industrial complexes serve as the engine that fuels racial capitalism. The expansion of these various but interconnected forms of oppression rests on the subjugation of incarcerated and colonized peoples and on the exploitation of land stolen from Indigenous nations. The abolition of such is necessary in achieving

Misc • 2020

Degrowth resonates: a reflection on DegrowthFest 2020

By: Sam Bliss

On August 14th, an uprising of art installations and happenings emerged in the Old North End neighborhood of Burlington, Vermont. Two days later, they all disappeared. Through these art pieces, community members and local organizations explored today’s tensions and possible paths toward desirable futures. Burlington residents navigated the neighborhood on self-guided tours, following a map