Library

Misc • 2015

Building momentum for sustainability transition in Greece

Report about transition and degrowth initiatives in Greece. From the text: . . . Within that framework we operate as ILIOSPOROI NETWORK since 2004, when we were formed as an affinity group of researchers, trainers, activists and practitioners. The aims of iliosporoi (Greek: sunseeds) network are to provide a bridge of communication, networking and cooperation among the various aspects of the...

Misc • 2015

From Growth Economics to Home Economics: Towards a Peasant Socialism

By: Chris Smaje

From the text: Decades later, I’m a mostly self-employed farmer working a small piece of land, growing a fair slice of my own food, with few opportunities to ‘get away’, but absorbed in the daily wildness of creating sustenance from the earth. I still believe in equality, and I still believe in science, progress and rationality, although in a more conflicted way than before. And when I now...

Misc • 2015

Agents of Alternatives – Re-designing Our Realities

By: Christopher Laumanns, Michel Bauwens, Frigga Haug, David Bollier, Alastair Fuad-Luke, Anja-Lisa Hirscher, Amber Hickey, Ana Malalan, Andreas Unteidig, Andrew Gryf Paterson, Anna Richter, Ben Pohl, Ben Becker, Antonia Schui, Bernd Kniess, Bianca Herlo, Cecilia Palmer, Christina Nägele, Cindy Kohtala, Claudia Garduño, Daphne Büllesbach, Cordula Andrä, Diana Krabbendam, Elisa Garrote-Gasch, Eric Schuldenfrei, Marisa Yiu, Florian Sametinger, Francesca Weber- Newth, Isolde Nagel, Frauke Hehl, Harald Gruendl, Gesche Joost, Gabi Sobliye, Jennifer Schubert, Joel Rosenberg, John A. Harris, Katharina Moebus, Luisa Maria Schweizer, Lisa Gutermuth, Malin Bäckman, Marco Kellhammer, Marcin Jakubowski, Malte Bergmann, Martin Parker, Maya Indira Ganesh, Otto von Busch, Sam Muirhead, Stefanie Gernert, The Public School Berlin, Thinkfarm, Tiina-Kaisa Laakso-Liukkonen, Trade School New York, Valerie A. Brown, Wendy Brawer, Samantha Riccio, Zoe Romano

An independently published open book exploring the visions, actions, tools and impacts of change agents, thinkers and ‘happeners’ (those who make things happen!). It shows the creative processes and tools for designing positive societal transitions. These transitions are revealed by showing the new hybrid relationships being forged between alternative approaches to learning, living, making,...

Misc • 2015

Solidarische Ökonomie und Transformation

By: Barbara Muraca, Clarita Müller-Plantenberg, Josette Combes, Gabriele Wendorf, Paul Mason, Ursula Sladek, Christoph Bautz

Videoaufzeichnung des Eröffnungspodiums "Solidarische Ökonomie und Transformation" vom Solikon-Kongress für Solidarische Ökonomie und Transformation 2015 in Berlin. Aus dem Programm: Nach einstimmenden Begrüßungen durch die Veranstalter*innen und einem Statement von Paul Mason unter dem Titel „Capitalism is dying – What next?”, erwartet uns eine Podiumsdebatte zur Rolle und strategischen...

Report • 2015

Wir sind so frei - Elf Unternehmen lösen sich vom Wachstumspfad

By: Jana Gebauer, Christian Dietsche, Heike Mewes

In der Broschüre werden 11 Kleine und Mittlere Unternehmen vorgestellt, die für Postwachstum stehen. Aus dem Vorwort (Heinrich Bottermann): . . . Die Ansätze zeigen, wie sich Unternehmen zukunftsfähig aufstellen können und zugleich Innovationen für ein Wirtschaften zeigen, das wesentliche Beiträge zur Umweltentlastung und für hohe Lebensqualität leistet. Es geht darum, unternehmerische...

Presentation • 2015

Emily McKenzie ESEE 2015 Plenary: Lessons learned from using ecosystem service approaches to inform real world decisions

By: Emily McKenzie

Plenary speech by Emily McKenzie Plenary speech at the 2015 European Society for Ecological Economics Conference at the University of Leeds in July 2015. Q&A session with Emily McKenzie and Arlid Vatn

Scientific paper • 2015

'Saving' the city: collective low-budget organizing and urban practice

By: Heike Derwanz, Paula Bialski, Birke Otto, Hans Vollmer (eds.)

This special issue of ephemera maps social practices of collective organizing on a low budget in cities today. ‘"Saving" the city’ expresses the imperative to economize while at the same time harbouring the desire to ‘rescue’ – recollecting an urban civil society via mobilising the public, helping neighbourhoods, creating public spaces, and heterogeneous possibilities of living to cope with...

Scientific paper • 2015

‘Saving’ the city: Collective low‐budget organizing and urban practice

By: Heike Derwanz, Paula Bialski, Birke Otto, Hans Vollmer

This special issue of ephemera is focused on recent research that aims to map, describe, and track the social practices of collective organising on a low budget in cities today.

Scientific paper • 2014

Is there still no alternative? Self-management under a degrowth perspective: a comparative approach between two case studies in France (Fralib) and Greece (VioMe)

By: Catherine Apostolidi

alternatives, capitalism, citizen initiatives, degrowth, self-management, solidarity economy, transition

Scientific paper • 2014

The Indignados movement: between prefiguration and creation of alternatives

By: Giorgos Kallis, Viviana Asara

Abstract: In this article I intend to investigate the prefigurative politics of the “indignados” movement in Barcelona, born in May 2011 in Spain to protest against austerity policies, the “dictatorship of markets” and claiming for a “real” democracy. For many indignados the occupations in the squares were conducive to experimenting, acting and living an alternative utopian community, the main...

Scientific paper • 2014

Sharing is the new owning – subjectivities of the maker culture

By: Karin Bradley

Abstract: In recent years what is termed “the sharing economy” has grown, i.e. sharing and swapping of tools, clothes, spaces and services. Sharing practices are indeed not new but have been reinvented in contemporary contexts characterized by economic decline and/or environmental concerns, often facilitated through the use of digital technologies. This paper deals with the rationales of...

Scientific paper • 2014

Defamiliarizing experiences in a center for degrowth

By: Corinna Burkhart

norms, normality, practical defamiliarization, cross-normality experience, change

Scientific paper • 2014

Eco-communities: implementing degrowth from the grassroots

By: Claudio Cattaneo

Abstract: Eco-communities are specifically planned and set up for people to come and live together with the goal of living and working according to ecological principles by promoting a degree of sharing (see also work-sharing) and pursuing well-being through more sustainable life-styles, direct democracy and a degree of autonomy. Participative DIY non-monetary practices are applied for...

Scientific paper • 2014

From commodity to commons: analysis of experimentation of collective appropriation of agricultural lands

By: Elsa Costanzo

Abstract: We propose an institutional analysis, based on a field research, of an emergent French initiative called Terre de Liens (TdL) that intends to take out agricultural lands from the speculative market, contributes to their de-commodification and governs them as a commons. We will wonder to what extent TdL may turn agricultural lands into a commons, following Elinor Ostrom’s definition....

Scientific paper • 2014

Education for well-being

By: Jochen Dallmer

Abstract: Well-being is an important concept for revisiting ideas of a what a good life is and finding pathways towards a less materialistic and hence less production/consumption oriented society. But how and where do we learn about well-being? In education the concept of well-being is almost completely absent. Singular educational concepts work on happiness and well-being and give some...

Scientific paper • 2014

State- prescribed (re)productivity? The Philippine Legislation on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Crisis

By: Janina Dannenberg

Abstract: (Re) productivity transports a concept of sustainable society where boundaries between different forms of work and productivity are subject to annulment. In the Philippines, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act recognizes the right to collective ownership of land and considers a broad variety of economic, social and cultural land uses. Even if not titled the same, the concept of...

Scientific paper • 2014

Money and Freedom in the view of Polanyis Great Transformation: Decommodification by constituting alternative monetary systems

By: Josué Manuel Quintana Diaz

Monetary system, monetary constitution, growth imperative, Transitions Initiatives, decommodification

Scientific paper • 2014

Food sharing: A potential strategy against the food waste problem and a local contribution to local climate change mitigation?

By: Dominic Egger

Non-market food provision - Transitory strategy - Food waste - Degrowth practice - Municipal strategy of climate change mitigation

Scientific paper • 2014

Discussion of the new Portuguese sustainability experiences

By: Lúcia Fernandes

Abstract: The work aims to present the general aspects of a recently started postdoctoral research project at the Research Centre in Sociological and Organizational Sociology (SOCIUS) and the Centre for Social Studies (CES), Portugal. Some empirical data is from the research project Communication and Political Engagement with Environmental Issues - COMPOLIS (I am part of the project research...

Scientific paper • 2014

Between Daily Practices and Political Action

By: Markus Flück

Abstract: My starting point is that the “green revolution” and free trade policies haven’t been successful towards solving hunger problems and might even endanger the nutrition system of the whole human society. On the consumption side, especially in the north, but also in the wealthy social classes in the south, feeding habits need more and more energy and produce too much rubbish. A hopeful...