Library

Scientific paper • 2016

Community based energy use – two examples of individual innovations in the daily energy practice

Energy as the basis for daily activities on an individual level and for economic activities on a societal level gives fundamental importance. The paper wants to draw the attention on individual innovations in the daily energy practice to reduce energy consumption. Two examples of the field are further explored from a Degrowth perspective: one deals with energy demand related to space by...

Scientific paper • 2016

Community Building According to Hannah Arendt

By: Pierre Tosi

«Are contemporary homo sapiens necessarily a homo faber as well? Can inspiration for a new narrative be found in the cultural past?» Interesting suggestions about this were given by Hannah Arendt, above all in her "The Human Condition" (1958). The Jewish philosopher thought that the contemporary commingling of "homo faber" (maker of handworks and instruments) and "homo laborans" (producer of...

Scientific paper • 2016

Community Economies and Companion Species in Food Production

By: Pieta Hyvärinen

Food production is at the core of the current ecological and economic crises. To produce food is to be connected with more-than-human nature with the purpose of providing ourselves with our basic needs. As most of the food in the world is produced in exploitative economic and ecological relationships, it is crucial to focus on the various initiatives that look for alternative ways of producing...

Scientific paper • 2016

Comparing Modernities

By: Danijela Dolenec, Agnes Gagyi, Mislav Žitko, Karin Doolan

This panel explores ways in which socialist and post-socialist legacies impact the receptivity and expectations from degrowth concepts and strategies. More specifically, this panel attempts to compare modernization projects in the East and West of Europe, with the objective of questioning the Orientalist assumption according to which ideas important for a reorientation towards degrowth come...

Scientific paper • 2016

Conservation in conflict

By: Michael Curran

Conservation biology is an evolving paradigm that has shifted in recent decades from an exclusionary "fences and fines" approach, espousing people-free wild nature, to an anthropocentric economic approach promoting “natural capital” and “ecosystem services”. Market-based instruments are more popular than even in conservation circles (e.g. markets for ecosystem services, cost-benefit analysis,...

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

Contemplative practices to support Degrowth and stem the tide of de-Indigenization

By: Derek Rasmussen

My presentation seeks to weave my 20 years of work with Nunavut Inuit with my meditation teaching among non-Indigenous Euro-Canadians. ‘The Great Transformation’ of market relations compelled a great transformation of learning: disembedding and extracting it from communities and converting it into a scarce new substance called Education. Education is hydroponic cultural transmission for...

Scientific paper • 2016

Critics of dépense

By: Francois Schneider

In their degrowth vocabulary publication, Giacomo et al. (2015) propose “dépense” as important concept to define degrowth. In French dépense means “expenditure”, but following Georges Bataille they give it the meaning of ritualised destruction of community surpluses. Their proposal points out the importance of parties and nonrationality (degrowth is not just about consuming less). The...

Scientific paper • 2016

Culture of Peace and Degrowth

By: Giorgos

Peace is a commonly used word. However, defining peace is more complicated,. Negative peace is defined as absence of direct or physical violence while positive peace focuses on presence of conditions of well-being and just relationships. In the positive definition, the focus is on the resolution of structural (e.g. poverty, hunger, gender inequality), socio-cultural (e.g. racism, sexism,...

Scientific paper • 2016

Debating work in a degrowth society.

By: Jana Gebauer, Wolfgang Fellner, Stefanie Gerold, Gerrit von Jorck, Heidi Leonhardt, Ernest Aigner, Ernest Aigner, Lucía Baratech, Matthias Nocker

How can work be conceptualised and organised in a Degrowth society? This is a crucial question, given the importance of labour and work for our daily lives as well as for any social economic system. This special session covers the question in an interactive way, facilitated by an interdisciplinary group of researchers from all over Europe. We begin with a participatory introduction, revolving...

Scientific paper • 2016

Decolonising participation? Community forestry and the more-than-human commons

By: Naomi

The concept of the more-than-human commons attempts to articulate a relationship between limits and possibility, relationality and agency, human and non-human that moves beyond humanist, or dualist, ways of thinking and doing politics. This was the premise of a series of panels organised for the Undisciplined Environments political ecology conference in Stockholm, March 2016. Disrupting the...

Scientific paper • 2016

Deep decarbonisation and social justice – an overview of policy proposals

By: Klara Hajdu

Transition to a sustainable economy requires a fundamental change in how we use natural resources in a quantitative and qualitative way. Not only a substantial reduction of resource use is needed in a range of 3 to 5, but also a deep decarbonisation needs to take place, which results in zero GHG emissions by mid century. At the same time the growing national and international inequalities pose...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth alternatives to the retail market monopolization

By: Leida Rijnhout, Nick Meynen, Orsolya Lazanyi, Istvan Farkas, Tamás Cselószki

Through their strong buying power, and dual role as both buyer and provider to end consumers, supermarkets exert a major influence over the global food supply chain. Although most supermarkets continue to source third party brands, due to private or “white” label production, the role of supermarkets is changing. Increasingly, retailers do not act as mere traders, but become brands in their own...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth: A “missile word” that backfires?

By: Miklós Antal

Language use and cognition are generally underappreciated topics in alternative economics, even if effective communication is essential for social and political impact. To challenge the economic growth paradigm, the concept and term degrowth has recently been embraced by various activists and scholars. Drawing on a body of evidence from cognitive science, psychology and related fields, we argue...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth and Capitalism

By: Dennis Eversberg, Barbara Muraca, Eric Pineault

Modern western societies stabilize themselves through economic growth. As long as growth is maintained, stability is continuously, yet dynamically restored. It is getting increasingly obvious that this dynamisation logic is reaching its limits, triggering negative effects for the socio-economic, political and cultural reproduction of capitalism. In industrialized countries, further growth seems...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth and Fracking

By: Brian Davey

The presentation will be about hydraulic fracturing and unconventional oil and gas – developed so far mainly in the USA and Australia but also a possible threat in the UK, Poland, the Ukraine and Latin America. This industry is dependent on high prices as well as easy and cheap credit. Its likely failure will have tremendous implications for the stability of the finance sector. This is...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth and social security

By: Denis Bayon, Fabrice Flipo

In the current economic debacle, we inherit a treasure from the past class struggles of treasure : the institutions of social security (health, pension, unemployment, family). In France, we celebrate seventy years of the 4 October 1945 order for the creation of a coordinated network of funds and the Act of 22 May 1946 establishing the principle of the extension of social security to all of the...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth and Sustainable, Just Food Supply

By: Sini Forssell, Balint_ESSRG, Balint_ESSRG, Petr Jehlička

The program of degrowth has from the start regarded alternative food provisioning as a starting point for the implementation of degrowth (Latouche 2011) that could easily extend to more fundamental economic and financial self-sufficiency. The proliferation of seed swapping, food self-provisioning, food cooperatives, ethical food (justice) initiatives has been witnessed worldwide. These food...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth – an Indian take from Bengaluru, South India

By: chitrav89@gmail.com

Chitra K Vishwanath and S.Vishwanath. At the heart of de-growth is the concept of reduction to the bare minimum for survival. Our presentation talks about bringing about change in a subtle manner without being radical/revolutionary and bring the change through lifestyle decisions which make the person responsible. In India the current rallying cry is of development. Development which involves...

Scientific paper • 2016

Degrowth, anthropology, and activist research.

By: Ulrich Demmer

Degrowth, anthropology, and activist research. Towards a tool-kit of engaged research for the empowerment of degrowth movements and alter communities. How can the social sciences and in particular anthropology best contribute to empower and foster degrowth projects, alter communities and the socio-ecological movement? And what strategies of in particular activist anthropological research can...