Library

Report • 2016

Plurale Ökonomik

By: Jonathan Barth, Christoph Gran, Tanja von Egan-Krieger

Dies ist ein Beitrag zum Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en), in dem es um die Plurale Ökonomik geht. Info zum Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en): Degrowth ist nicht nur ein neues Label für eine Diskussion über Alternativen oder eine akademische Debatte, sondern auch eine im Entstehen begriffene soziale Bewegung. Trotz vieler Überschneidungen mit anderen sozialen Bewegungen gibt es sowohl bei...

Report • 2016

Solidarische Ökonomie

By: Dagmar Embshoff, Clarita Müller-Plantenberg, Giuliana Giorgi

Dies ist ein Beitrag zum Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en), in dem es um die Solidarische Ökonomie geht. Info zum Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en): Degrowth ist nicht nur ein neues Label für eine Diskussion über Alternativen oder eine akademische Debatte, sondern auch eine im Entstehen begriffene soziale Bewegung. Trotz vieler Überschneidungen mit anderen sozialen Bewegungen gibt es sowohl bei...

Scientific paper • 2016

Are we there yet?

By: Jana Gebauer

The SOLIKON 2015 was a Berlin-based international congress on solidarity economy and social-ecological transformation. From Sept 5 to Sept 13, it gathered 1.400 people under the slogan “We know other ways!” Activists, practitioners, multipliers and individual participants discussed a variety of approaches, visions, examples and possible lines of convergence of an alternative economy for...

Scientific paper • 2016

Back to the future: a debate among socialists at the dawn of industrialism

By: Hatice Çıvgın

The beginning of the 19th century is considered as the dawn of industrialism, economics and socialism. When J. B. Say proposed the concept of industrialism, Charles Fourier, the father of socialism, immediately challenged the term. Similarly, Simond de Sismondi was another thinker who contested the concept. Later, however, in this era, industrialism became the mainstream ideology of both the...

Scientific paper • 2016

Between the enlarged scope of neoliberalism and the socialism that mutates: The sustainability dilemma in China’s overheated market for ‘fictitious commodities’

By: Xiaorui (Rae) Wang

Although everyone agrees to the idea of sustainability, this unanimous good intention has difficulties to turn into action. From the perspective of anthropological economics, the reason could be put into a rather simple way: To make economic activities sustainable, humans need to accept some serious trade-offs; and that is where it hurts. Nowadays, the whole world seems to have found itself in...

Scientific paper • 2016

Can technologies help to reduce the physical and human degradation in transition towards a degrowth society?

By: Patty L'Abbate

This article outlines the role that technology has to play in order to enable human beings to move towards a degrowth society. Against the background of the problems we face today, the authors E.E. Schumacher, N.Georgescu-Roegen and others have been re-examined. This work also explains the concepts of entropy and emergy and the “fourth” principle of thermodynamics revised in the light of the...

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

Intervening at the regional level

By: Mark H Burton

I am part of a small collective that is promoting an alternative socio-economic approach to the society-economy-environment nexus in "post-industrial" Greater Manchester, England. I will describe the approach we have taken which is to promote alternative thinking via publication, networking, and working in alliances with actors from a variety of sectors. I will reflect on what we have learned...

Scientific paper • 2016

Prospects of an unconditional basic income in a degrowth economy

By: Thomas Frisius

It is already evident that current present-day industrial nations can offer a basic income without risking the collapse of the economy. Even the supply with an unconditional basic income (UBI) is imaginable. However, it is not obvious whether an UBI sufficing for more than the subsistence consumption can be realized in a degrowth economy. A simple mathematical model is applied to estimate the...

Scientific paper • 2016

Re-embedding the food economy in food politics

By: Lanka Horstink

Food, whether conceptualised as necessity, system or industry, is central to major social, economic and ecological challenges, both source and solution of wicked problems such as hunger, poverty, and climate change. It has been foundational to economic thinking and policies, from the first complete theory of economics by physiocrats, to classical economics and the sociologies of Marx, Weber and...

Scientific paper • 2016

Rethinking Degrowth with Diverse Economies (Panel 1)

By: Phedeas Stephanides, Esra Erdem, Esra Erdem, Bianca Elzenbaumer Fabio Franz, Lise Skou

Rethinking Degrowth with Diverse Economies (Panel 1): Narratives and visions of actually-existing degrowth praxis As there seems to be no alternative to the capitalist status-quo, the task of overcoming capitalism through degrowth appears daunting. This implicates that degrowth concepts become confined to either pre-capitalist cultures or a future society. How, then, might we escape this...

Scientific paper • 2016

Rethinking Degrowth with Diverse Economies (Panel 2)

By: Phedeas Stephanides, Tuomo Alhojärvi, Tuomo Alhojärvi, Bronwen Morgan

As there seems to be no alternative to the capitalist status-quo, the task of overcoming capitalism through degrowth appears daunting. How, then, might we escape this impasse and build an emancipatory narrative? This two-part session brings together researchers affiliated with the international Community Economies Research Network (CERN) to start this dialogue. Analyses inspired by locally...

Scientific paper • 2016

Scenarios of energetic and societal transitions: potentials and impacts of a sustainable regional economic system

By: Mathieu Le Dû

In 2012, the NGO Virage-énergie Nord-Pas de Calais started a research project focused on energetic, societal and economic transitions within the Nord-Pas de Calais region in France, in partnership with two academic laboratories: TVES (University of Lille 1 - Science and Technologies) and Ceraps (University of Lille 2 - Health and Law). The aim of this research was to evaluate, using data models...

Scientific paper • 2016

Science and degrowth

By: Fabrice Flipo

Political prayers lie on the growth’s comeback to ensure financial incomes to be given out. That for science is seen by many essentially as a tool to provide techniques able to raise productivity, whatever the environmental or social consequences. For those reasons, and especially since the second half of the 20th century, public policy and investment have allowed unprecedented technical...

Scientific paper • 2016

Secular stagnation, new normal, and growth criticism

By: Angelika Zahrnt, Seidl

In 2013, L. Summer brought back the discussion of secular stagnation which has first been introduced by Hansen and Keynes (late 1930s). Summer argues that presently western economies may be facing a such a stagnation (long term stagnation) triggered by the financial crisis and enhanced by decreasing population, shrinking investments and productivity gains, excess of saving, insufficient demand....

Scientific paper • 2016

Strategies for degrowth in a Nordic context

By: Karin Bradley, Erika Öhlund, Alexander Paulsson, Tuuli Hirvilammi, Paavo Järvensivu

This session explores strategies for futures beyond growth in the context of the Nordic welfare states, reflecting a growing public interest, and ongoing academic research projects that critically examine current growth paradigms. Degrowth has been described as not primarily driven by the government, but rather evolving through grassroots movements. Nordic models of a strong welfare...

Scientific paper • 2016

The degrowth side of post-development (and vice versa)

By: Tzekou Eirini-Erifyli, Gritzas Giorgos

The degrowth side of post-development (and vice versa) Although it's been over 20 years since the first edition of "Development Dictionary" (Sachs, 1992), which marks the beginning of the debate on the end of the era of development and the transition to the age of post-development, and about 15 years since the emergence of the degrowth discourse as an activist slogan (Demaria et al, 2013), and...

Scientific paper • 2016

The Economy for the Common Good: an approach to alternative company practices in accordance with degrowth?

By: Jasmin Wiefek, Josefa Kny

The Economy for the Common Good (ECG) is a social movement as well as an alternative economic model that views the common good as the purpose of economic activity. Monetary profits are seen as a mere means. Enterprises participating in the ECG compile so-called common good balance sheets, which assess to which extent the company acts according to values, such as ecological sustainability and...

Scientific paper • 2016

The Realities and Contradictions of the Growth Economy and Challenges for a Social Ecological Transformation

By: Clive Spash

Clive will cover growth and its contradictions and challenges for degrowth and social ecological transformation. Facilitator: Filka Sekulova This media entry was a contribution to the special session „The Realities and Contradictions of the Growth Economy and Challenges for a Social Ecological Transformation“ at the 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest in 2016.

Scientific paper • 2016

Un-common business sense

By: Jana Gebauer

Empirical studies on firm size and growth show that the larger proportions of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), are voluntary or forced non- and slow growers. Yet, the generally unquestioned postulate is that growth is the entrepreneurial raison d’être and an indispensable (societal) obligation for an economic actor. In this spirit, ‘non-growth’ appears to be a...