Library

Misc • 2016

Die smarte Diktatur

Info des Verlags: Bestseller-Autor Harald Welzer legt mit ›Die smarte Diktatur. Der Angriff auf unsere Freiheit‹ eine neue und frische Analyse der großen gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhänge in Deutschland vor, eine umfassende Diagnose der Gegenwart für alle politisch Interessierten. Unsere Gesellschaft verändert sich radikal, aber fast unsichtbar. Wir steuern auf einen Totalitarismus zu. Das...

Misc • 2016

Basic Income, sustainable consumption and the ‘DeGrowth’ movement

By: Jason Burke Murphy

From the text: . . . Giorgios Kallis’ keynote presentation steered me towards my provisional answer to these questions. He supports a basic income alongside the promotion of universal access to low-consumption versions of public transportation, education, and health. He sees this as a way of shrinking the destructive aspects of our economy, driven by capital, and increasing other parts of...

Scientific paper • 2016

Frugal Abundance in an Age of Limits: Envisioning a Degrowth Economy

By: Samuel Alexander

Abstract: How would the ordinary middle-class citizen deal with a lifestyle of radical simplicity? Radical simplicity does not mean poverty, which is involuntary and full of suffering and anxiety, and thus universally undesirable. Rather, it means a very low but biophysically sufficient material standard of living. This chapter directly addresses the issue of “two types of austerity”, arguing...

Scientific paper • 2016

Community renewable energy at a crossroads: A think piece on degrowth, technology, and the democratization of the German energy system

By: Jens Rommel, Jörg Radtke, Gerrit von Jorck, Franziska Mey, Özgür Yildiz

Keywords: Cooperatives; Energy transition; Conviviality; Sustainable consumption

Scientific paper • 2016

Sufficiency, degrowth and sustainable consumption

By: Joachim Spangenberg

Keywords: Sustainable consumption, sufficiency, Great Transformation, satisfiers and needs, good life, labour, design, human rights Sustainable Consumption Transitions Series Issue 6, 25

Scientific paper • 2016

Growth and Over-accumulation in Advanced Capitalism: Some Critical Reflections on the Political Economy and Ecological Economics of Degrowth

By: Eric Pineault

Abstract: The paper aims to deepen our understanding of advanced capitalism's drivers of growth by drawing on some theoretical insights from radical political economy and ecological economics. Through an institutional analysis of the structure of advanced capitalism as a monetary production economy, it is possible to propose a theory of accumulation that explains the tight coupling of...

Misc • 2016

The Great Deceleration

By: Alex Jensen

From the text: . . . One incontrovertible conclusion of all this, it seems to me, is that it is precisely the increasing scale of economic activity – of ‘the economy’ – that is the heart of the multiple interlocking crises that beset societies and the earth today. The relentlessly expansionist logic of the system is inimical to life, to the world, even to genuine well-being. If we wish to...

Educational paper • 2016

Guter Kunde, böser Kunde - luxemburg argumente Nr. 13

By: AG Kritischer Konsum

RLS: Wachsende Müllberge, steigender Meeresspiegel, vergiftete Böden, Kriege um Ressourcen, tote ArbeiterInnen in Fabriken und Bergwerken: Produktion, Transport, Bewerbung, Vertrieb und Entsorgung unserer täglich konsumierten Güter und Dienstleistungen haben schwerwiegende Folgen. Gegenwehr scheint aussichtslos. Denn die Welt wirkt unendlich komplex und die Möglichkeit, politisch Einfluss...

Scientific paper • 2016

Alternatives to Enculturation of Children into Consumers

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 years, to accept the lesser evil,...

Scientific paper • 2016

An understanding of materialistic values in post-socialist Europe

By: Saamah Abdallah

Degrowth is a post-materialist movement, which places value on the biosphere, human wellbeing, and justice, above and beyond the possession of material goods (Degrowth Declaration, 2008). And yet surveys suggest that levels of materialism are higher in post-socialist countries than in Western European countries (Kyvelidis, 2001). In the sixth round of the European Social Survey (2012), nine of...

Scientific paper • 2016

Consumerism versus happiness. The case of Alternative Food Networks in Barcelona

By: Helen Zaiser

Overcoming consumerism is one objective of the degrowth movement, to be achieved through a great social transformation by building alternatives. It inherently embraces material needs downscaling, self-sufficiency, voluntary simplicity and getting clear of neoliberal capitalist logics. Food cooperatives have the potential to embody such features, constituting a strategy for new social movements....

Scientific paper • 2016

Exploring the Food Consumption Patterns of the Local Population on the Greek Island of Samothraki

By: Julia Désirée Huber

The Greek island of Samothraki was food self-sufficient up until the mid 1960s. This paper analyses, from a socio-metabolic perspective, how the changes in Mediterranean food production and consumption have influenced the island’s food consumption patterns over the past 50 years. A food consumption survey was conducted to assess the current food consumption patterns of the local population of...

Scientific paper • 2016

From capitalist accumulation to a solidarity economy

By: Barbara Muraca

In her keynote speech, Barbara Muraca will outline the key strategies for degrowth, specifically reflecting on the following topics, which are also the guiding topics of the third day of the conference: -Changing networks of production and consumption and driving political action -Degrowth as a fundamentally social challenge, involving structural changes of social practices, institutions and...

Scientific paper • 2016

Sustainable consumption and social justice in a constrained world

By: Julia Steinberger, Sylvia Lorek, Edina Vadovics, Antonietta Di Giulio, Philip J Vergragt, Marlyne Sahakian

Special session proposal submitted by SCORAI Europe, organized by Sylvia Lorek, Marlyne Sahakian, Edina Vadovics and Philip Vergragt. This session introduces degrowth and transformations from the viewpoint of sustainable consumption, understood as an attractive, equitable and empowering ‘new normal’ that involves a good life for all in a constrained world. Based on a SCORAI workshop hosted...

Scientific paper • 2016

Sustainable smartphone consumption from a rational and value-based perspective

By: Shirin Betzler

Knowledge societies that promote equality and innovation over material wealth and production are unthinkable without modern information and communication technologies (ICT). However, there has been growing awareness about the ecological as well as economic and social challenges related to the growth of ICT, such as environmental pollution through the invasive extraction of natural resources, or...

Scientific paper • 2016

Unpackaged: factors that drive consumers to package-free retail

By: Hana Hrstkova

Sustainable food systems signal a need to return to local, organic and low footprint food provisions, implying also reduction of waste and packaging. Rather than looking at the waste issue from the post-consumption perspective (approaches that have dominated over the recent decades), this paper attempts to shed more light on the prevention of consumer packaging waste through unpackaged...

Scientific paper • 2016

Wellbeing-restoring strategies in situations of coercive consumption reduction: implications for degrowth efforts

By: Dr. Ágnes Zsóka, Dr. Maria Csutora

The concept of degrowth has serious implications on consumption. The challenge lies in the most probable necessity of consumption reduction which is still an unpopular idea today. Situations of coercive consumption reduction indicate various individual reactions and severe impacts on subjective wellbeing. Our previous research aimed to analyse how individuals create resilient adaptation...

Misc • 2016

Inside the Green Economy - Promises and Pitfalls

By: Barbara Unmüßig, Lili Fuhr, Thomas Fatheuer

The economic and ecological bases of a general prosperity are in danger, the gap between rich and poor is widening. The concept of the Green Economy offers a new model, based primarily on large-scale technological solutions. But the Green Economy cares little about politics, barely registers human rights, does not recognize social actors and suggests the possibility of reform without conflict....

Art contribution • 2016

Eco-modernism vs. Degrowth

By: Students of the Summer School on Degrowth, Environmental Justice

A sketch by students of the Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice

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...