Library

Scientific paper • 2016

Macro-economic modeling of sustainability transitions

Established macro-economic models used for economic policy analysis, but also for the evaluation of climate policies, often are neoclassical general equilibrium models. Even though these models are based on comprehensive empirical databases and allow the linking of economic theory with physical resources and different types of environmental impacts, equilibrium models underly severe...

Scientific paper • 2016

'Made in China'

By: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson

One can hardly imagine a world without trade or at least certain forms of exchange. The volume and intensity of trade, often long-distance, lies at the core of our growth-based societies. The so called free trade agreements (such as the TTIP or TTIP) pushed forward by certain governments and corporate lobby groups or the striving for creation of new forms of and spaces for trading (e.g. in...

Scientific paper • 2016

Mapping Degrowth

By: Joanna Boehnert

This project will provide an overview of the degrowth movement. I will do this by visualising the degrowth discourse along with other environment discourses on a matrix. I will use surveys and discourse mapping techniques. I will start by constructing a short survey to collect opinions within the degrowth community on discourses in environmental movements. The survey will identify 100 global...

Scientific paper • 2016

Mapping sustainable wellbeing viewpoints on two dimensions: technical and socio-cultural decoupling

By: Timo Järvensivu

It seems that discussions between camps such as ”green growth” and ”degrowth” often end up being debates, even if the aim would be a dialogue. The purpose of this paper and presentation is to draw a map of the main arguments of some of the camps, with the hope of improving the dialogue. Discussion on sustainable wellbeing is often carried along two main dimensions. The first dimension concerns...

Scientific paper • 2016

Modeling degrowth: LOW GROW for Germany.

By: Gran, Christoph

Abstract: In 2007 Peter Victor and Gideo Rosenbluth published their groundbreaking article on managing without growth (Victor und Rosenbluth 2007). The authors developed the system-dynamics based model LOW GROW of the Canadian economy and started exploring the connection between growth, no growth, degrowth and a prosperous societal development. The present paper shows the results of the...

Scientific paper • 2016

Money and subjective well-being

By: Max Koch, Filka Sekulova, Filka Sekulova, Christopher Boyce, Martin Fritz

Interest in subjective well-being in public policy has been growing steadily over the last decades arriving at a voluminous and thematically diverse literature. A reoccurring theme for debates is the extent to which short and long-term income growth relates to well-being. Although many studies have shown that income growth at the societal level contributes little, if any, to well-being over...

Scientific paper • 2016

More degrowth, less capitalism – What can critical geography tell us about their relationship?

By: Felix Wilmsen

In the degrowth literature, the question to what extent opposition to the growth paradigm may interfere with capitalism is often avoided, arguing that a potential degrowth society will eventually develop from practice and should not be pre-defined. Without contradicting this view, one has to recognise that alternatives to the status quo will unlikely emerge from out of nowhere, but will have to...

Scientific paper • 2016

Needs or wants? Identifying the foundations of a new narrative for the future

By: Antonietta Di Giulio

One of the paradigms of consumerism builds on the assumption of humans having an increasing amount of needs to be satisfied, and a corresponding mechanism is feeding this list. One of the sustainable consumption strategies questions this paradigm asking for a sufficiency approach limiting needs and their satisfaction. This in turn by quite a number of people is perceived to be an attack to...

Scientific paper • 2016

New institutions for new technologies

By: Christian Kerschner, Salvador Pueyo, Arpita Bisht, Benjamin

This is the third of a planned ‘trilogy’ of sessions on the contentious relationship between degrowth and technology. It represents the third of three subthemes of a special issue on technology and degrowth, which is currently being edited for JCP. The aim of this special session is to analyse potentials of technological developments, which entail normative aims like democratisation, devise...

Scientific paper • 2016

Non-Monetary Degrowth is Strategically Significant

By: Anitra Nelson

Even for many radical adherents of degrowth, money is a common-sense — not simply capitalist — tool, so alternative currencies and banks abound. This paper argues against this common-sense logic, as follows. The most direct and efficient form of degrowth requires as-local-as-is-feasible production focusing on people’s basic needs, implying that future distribution is decided simultaneously with...

Scientific paper • 2016

Norwegian second homes: cultural heritage or growth machine?

By: Rasmus Steffansen

Second homes and degrowth (P4) This paper uses the Norwegian second home phenomenon as a case for discussing the overconsumption of housing from a degrowth perspective. Second home development in Norway is a growing threat to environmental sustainability as well as it contributes to individual loan taking which in turn has social consequences for the individual that relates to their life...

Scientific paper • 2016

Nothing is more

By: Verónica Sánchez Carrera

Indiscriminate and careless use of the technique leads to exploitation without limit. Martin Heidegger. A change in the social model is necessary, where interventions may arise as a result of the needs, which appeal - against the economic - to a new profitability: global, environmental, reversible, social and cultural. Real sustainability is social because it includes the needs of citizens,...

Scientific paper • 2016

On Degrowth in the South: The Case of India

By: Alex Jensen

However much of a growing consensus there may be against continued economic growth in the global north, there is much less clarity about the topic when it comes to the global south. For many critics of northern growth, when it comes to the global south, the 'need' for continued economic growth is often taken as self-evident. Economic growth, it is assumed, is still needed to achieve justice,...

Scientific paper • 2016

On the Limit with Ivan Illich

By:

A central aspect of degrowth-narratives is a postulated incommensurability between an infinitely expanding economic process and “limits” - in particular absolute, material limits. However, the recourse to such limits within the contemporary degrowth-debate is criticized by Onofrio Romano for failing to transcend the logic of “life for life's sake” that expresses the very “neutralist” heart of...

Scientific paper • 2016

Opening panel: Degrowth in semi-periphery context

By: Giorgos Kallis, Danijela Dolenec, Szandra Koves, Zoltán Pogátsa

Renowned speakers will kick-off the discussions for the conference. The topic of the panel debate will be ‘Degrowth in semi-periphery context’, allowing us to understand the backdrop of the region in which the 5th International Conference on Degrowth takes place. Three visible panelists will be challenged by a participative moderator to place the conference into semi-periphery context and open...

Scientific paper • 2016

Opening plenary: Connecting the dots of degrowth

By: Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria, Vincent Liegey, Filka Sekulova, Szandra Koves

The opening event of the conference will provide a short introduction to the subject of degrowth, explaining how degrowth can represent a variety of aspects, from being an activist slogan to a social movement. It will also map the dots of degrowth worldwide, show the latest research on degrowth in global context, present the semi-periphery context of the conference and introduce the key themes...

Scientific paper • 2016

Open-localisation for degrowth

By: Vincent Liegey, Francois Schneider, Francois Schneider, Adrian Despoisse

Roundtable & Assembly on Open-Localisation Alternative to globalisation or closure (we want neither indirect nor direct barbarity!). Everybody is invited to intervene on this important theme. Society is closing : closed borders or doors, accusations of immigrants, votes for anti-immigrants parties. People want to « preserve their lifestyles » supposedly to defend their culture. But isn't it...

Scientific paper • 2016

Organizational practices, social values and economic measures in Community Supported Agriculture: A historical overview

By: LE, Nhu Tuyen

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) concept was born in the 1980s in the United States and has been expanded throughout the world. CSA is a “concept describing a community-based organization of producers and consumers. The consumers agree to provide direct support to the local growers who will produce their food. The growers agree to do their best to provide a sufficient quantity and...

Scientific paper • 2016

Peasant references for a degrowth society

By: Igor SH de Carvalho

In this work I seek for peasant common characteristics considered useful for the construction of a sustainable degrowth society. These characteristics are: direct link to the earth as a production resource; inseparability of living and production space; importance of solidarity, reciprocity and inter-knowledge relationships; minimal use of external inputs on the; poli-production systems; common...

Scientific paper • 2016

Permaculture and Degrowth: Paths for an effective collaboration

By: Mildred Gustack Delambre

The main subject of this paper is the path taken by two movements that apparently support the same economical and environmentalist action but don't mandatorily talk with each other in an intimate way. Our aim is to analyze the relations between Permaculture and Degrowth, while considering both movements going towards post-growth proposals. Another goal is to study where the links are and the...