Library

Presentation • 2016

Ausstieg aus der Megamaschine - Vortrag

Vortrag vom 23.9.2016 bei der Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Systemische Therapie an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/M. Der Vortrag fasst den zweiten Teil des Buches "Das Ende der Megamaschine. Geschichte einer scheiternden Zivilisation" in sieben Punkten zusammen: 1. Das Verhältnis von Markt, Staat und ideologischer Macht im modernen Weltsystem 2. Der Mythos des Westens 3. Dr....

Scientific paper • 2016

De-growth and critical community psychology: Contributions towards individual and social well-being

By: Alfredo Natale, Salvatore Di Martino, Fortuna Procentese, Caterina Arcidiacono

Keywords: Degrowth; Critical community psychology; Well-being; Decolonisation of the imaginary; Reciprocity; Social justice

Presentation • 2016

How Economism Became Our Religion

By: Richard Norgaard

Publisher: Economism pervades our political discourse even while it is obviously false: growing and globalizing the U.S. economy have not helped the poor, lower taxes have led to collapsing bridges and poorer schools, and reducing regulations have hastened environmental destruction. These and other beliefs, or economism, have been perpetrated in the name of economics and gained credence...

Scientific paper • 2016

New narratives for innovation

By: Mario Giampietro, Roger Strand, Andrea Saltelli, Kjetil Rommetveit, Silvio Funtowicz

Keywords: Sociotechnical imaginaries; Post-normal science

Presentation • 2016

TUE_18h // Opening panel of the conference: Degrowth in semi-periphery context

By: Giorgos Kallis, Danijela Dolenec, Alexandra Köves, Zoltan Pogatsa

Panel discussion at the the 6th International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Budapest in 2016. Speakers: Alexandra Köves, Zoltan Pogatsa, Danijela Dolenec, Giorgos Kallis Degrowth 2016 - English youtube channel

Scientific paper • 2016

Environmental selves and alternative meanings of work

By: Kristoffer Wilén

Our article is based on interviews with 20 self-declared environmentally conscious individuals, and by drawing on theories of performativity (Judith Butler), we have studied the ways in which questions of work and working life are negotiated within the formation of green selves (identities). We believe that our findings are relevant for understanding how environmental concerns generate...

Scientific paper • 2016

Forging new/old sociocultural systems driven by motives other than growth

By: Elisabeth Skarðhamar Olsen, Lisa L. Gezon, Lisa L. Gezon, Eeva Berglund

Degrowth calls for decolonizing human identities and relationships from values and visions that exalt the endless expansion of production and consumption. This multi-session explores paths toward such decolonization through initiatives to recuperate, adapt and invent sociocultural systems that change the way we humans produce and consume goods and services, and—more powerfully—the ways in which...

Scientific paper • 2016

How to overcome the loneliness of the long-distance runner?

By: Zsolt Boda

Karl Polanyi argued that a market economy can only function in a market society. Paraphrasing him we may say that a sustainable economy can only function in a sustainable society. An essential feature of such a society is that its social norms and institutions reward future-oriented, responsible decisions and actions while hindering myopic and materialistic choices. The mainstream model of...

Scientific paper • 2016

Is the new 'Different' really different?

By: Judith Kleibs

This presentation deals with the question how to distinguish measures and approaches which fundamentally change the current social logic that is based on an instrumentalistic attitude towards the world from those which maintain this logic and only seem to contribute to a social and ecological just society. For this intent, at first the main characteristics of the instrumentalistic social logic...

Scientific paper • 2016

The possibilities of sufficiency

By: Åsa Callmer

Sufficiency as a mind-set - as in “good enough” rather than voluntary simplicity - is indeed a challenging thought in a society of consumption-driven individuals taught to equate materialistic accomplishments with status as well as with identity. However, to upgrade the value of sufficiency in the affluent society brings about potential for a reorientation towards sustainability. This paper...

Presentation • 2016

Degrowth Conference Budapest, 2016 - Weal. The reorientation of well-being

By: György Folk

Presentation by György Folk Degrowth may appear for the majority in the developed world a sacrifice of the human comfort we live in, a loss of the present standard of life or well-being. Weal proposes a radical reorientation of our understanding about the human good. Biological and social research produced a multitude of partial results that shed light on how humans live well. Equating the...

Presentation • 2016

Degrowth Conference Budapest, 2016 - Alternatives to Enculturation of Children into Consumers

By: Madalina Balau

Presentation by Madalina Balau In Romania all parents want to offer their children a better life and a better future, sometimes with their own sacrifice, yet the years following communist regime have brought unsustainable development, present in environmental degradation and social insecurity. After living in communism and knowing how bad it was, people have been accustoming for the last 26...

Misc • 2015

An ethics of surplus and the right to waste?: Discards and Degrowth

By: Max Liboiron

Short piece about discards in the context of degrowth. The author is asking if there are proposals within the degrowth framework dealing with waste and toxics and also how such proposals look like. He briefly discusses the concept of dépense and introduces the thought of a "right to waste".

Misc • 2015

Schneller und besser die Welt retten?! Mit welchen Mustern reproduzieren wir die Wachstumslogik?

By: Lara Kirch, Melanie Hernandez Sanchez

Dokumentation eines Kurses der Degrowth Sommerschule 2015 "Degrowth konkret: Klimagerechtigkeit" Titel des Kurses: Schneller und besser die Welt retten?! Mit welchen Mustern reproduzieren wir die Wachstumslogik? Kursbeschreibung aus dem Programm: Wir bieten einen Raum, in dem die Teilnehmer*innen ihre eigenen, tief verinnerlichten Wachstumslogiken reflektieren und sich in ihren Bemühungen, eine...

Interview • 2015

"Protest Is Broken": Co-Creator of Occupy Wall Street Calls for New Mental Shift

By: Folha de São Paulo, Micah White

From the text: Attracting millions of people to the streets no longer guarantees the success of a protest, says Micah White, 33, the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy was a perfect example of a social movement that should have worked according to the dominant theories of protest and activism. And yet, it failed,” says Micah in an interview with Folha de São Paulo, the largest daily...

Report • 2015

Good, natural, malignant: five ways people frame economic growth

By: Laurence Matthews, Alison Matthews

The authors make a short analysis of how "growth" is framed in public debate. Frames discussed are: 1. Growth is good news, 2. Growth is natural, 3. Growth is the way forward, 4. A malignant growth, 5. Free from growth. From the text: Growth is good. We need growth for wealth, for jobs, to help the poor – without it society will collapse. Or, at least, that’s the message we’re surrounded by,...

Misc • 2015

How do systems get unstuck?

By: Rex Weyler

From the text: In systems, relationships comprise the change, not individuals. Relationships are what endure in nature, not individuals or components. Our language, as Gregory Bateson observed, is biased toward things, against relationships. We say "the table is hard," conferring "hardness" upon the table, but this "hardness" can only be experienced when the table stops some momentum. Hardness...

Scientific paper • 2015

An Ethics of Surplus and the Right to Waste

By: Max Liboiron

About the article: One of the main reasons to bring degrowth and diverse economies into waste studies is that different regimes of valuation can redefine waste—that which is thrown away, devalued, discarded, and externalized. Max Liboiron uses the concept of dépense—excess and its expenditure– to explore other ways of valuing and even celebrating waste when growth-based practices of...

Misc • 2015

Diversal degrowth. Collectively building visionary stories around degrowth

By: Francois Schneider

Course documentation of a course at the Degrowth Summerschool "Degrowth in Action: Climate Justice". This course involved an initial presentation of degrowth as a diversal, post-hegemonic idea and processes of collective building of visionary narratives of degrowth based on positively using polemics around degrowth. We are confronted by the growth ideology. Facing this strong ideology two...

Misc • 2015

The Church of Economism and Its Discontents

By: Richard Norgaard

Introduction: Two centuries of explosive economic growth have radically altered our material and ideological worlds. With human activity now the major driver of geological change, the industrial era has come to be called the Anthropocene. This inquiry instead adopts the term Econocene, underscoring its ideological foundation: economism. The concept of economism, the reduction of all social...