Library

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 for sustainable futures beyond GDP growth 2050

By: Åsa Svenfelt

The idea of continued economic growth is increasingly questioned and critically analysed on the basis of it´s potential negative sustainability impact. Along with the critique, visions and strategies for alternative systems need also be brought onto the agenda. The research program "Beyond GDP growth - Scenarios for sustainable building and planning" explores what could happen in the Swedish...

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

Social enterprises in Hungary

By: Julianna Kiss, László Hubai

Social enterprises are becoming more and more recognized across the world, and there is a growing interest towards such initiatives in Hungary as well. The present paper analyses the phenomenon in our country focusing on its conceptual and historical developments, as well as the current situation. Research on social enterprise has developed in the USA and Western Europe. As a “western term” it...

Scientific paper • 2016

Social organization strategies for a reduction of energy consumption

By: Raúl Velasco-Fernández

Energy saving and efficiency strategies are generally focused on optimization of devices, end uses appliances or productive machinery. However, their utilization factors are much more crucial when talking about redistributive downscaling of production and consumption in industrialized countries and are usually forgotten. If the utilization factor is usually very high in the production processes...

Scientific paper • 2016

Solidarity as a Form of Life

By: Bastian Ronge

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité were the famous keywords of the French Revolution. Modern philosophy reflected intensely on the concepts of freedom and equality, but neglected fraternity or rather solidarity. Hence, solidarity remained a “wishy-washy concept” (Jaeggi 2001, 287) until today. In my presentation I suggest conceptualizing solidarity as a form of life. That means: I will put forward...

Scientific paper • 2016

Solidarity organizations

By: Matthias Rätzer

Within a general orientation towards growth, ecologic (Meadows et al. 2004), economic (e.g.Martinez Alier 2009) as well as social (Hirsch 1976) problems remain unsolved. Modern approaches seek applicability in reduction of emissions (see Kyoto protocol, COP 21 2015) and Green-New-Deal-trade-offs to cope with a globalized village. The maxim is to produce, act and be ‘sustainable’ – but – within...

Scientific paper • 2016

Spatial mobility and degrowth strategies: A note on the role of shared transportation modes

By: Marion Drut

This paper investigates the mechanisms through which shared modes lead to degrowth strategies and help reduce major spatial and environmental issues related to mobility in urban areas, namely road congestion, rivalry of use for parking spaces and air pollution, as well as the number of goods in the economy. In this article, I use gross space consumption estimations for different transportation...

Scientific paper • 2016

Sport and (de)growth: what type of competition makes us happier?

By: Szathmári, Tamás Kocsis

Training, selection, peaking, workloads, etc. are common notions associated with our growth-oriented, capitalist society. However, these concepts are also inherent in elite sport as well, where ‘the winner takes all’. Thus the logic of modern sport resembles the capitalist milieu in which it has evolved: individualism, competitiveness, peak performance, and productivity are all essential...

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

Strategies for purposive degrowth transformations

By: Panos Petridis

In order to advance our understanding on the potential synthesis and complementarity of strategies for purposive degrowth transformation, there is a need to examine more closely those institutions that “put us in the best position to do more later” (Wright 2013: 21), and those practices that can, at the same time, survive and root in the present system, but also prefigure and embody alternative...

Scientific paper • 2016

Structural obstacles to degrowth: What can be learned from the history of the critique of growth and contemporary heterodox political economy?

By: Hubert Buch-Hansen, Max Koch, Max Koch, Emanuele Leonardi, Alexander Paulsson, Stefania Barca

Reflecting and continuing discussions of the interdisciplinary Degrowth research project at the Pufendorf Institute at Lund University, this special session addresses structural obstacles to degrowth by contextualising degrowth approaches in the history and social structures of the capitalist economy and contrasting them to alternative research traditions in heterodox political economy and...

Scientific paper • 2016

Subjective Well-being in an Era of Relentless Growth: The Case of Turkey Between 2004-2014

By: Ahmet Atil Asici

This paper analyses the subjective well-being levels in Turkey between 2004 and 2014 by relying on Turkish Statistical Institute’s Life Satisfaction Surveys. This is the first study, in Turkey, ever to suggest an alternative well-being approach for Turkish population which is solely based on subjective measures. The analysis benefits from the approaches to well-being of Bhutan’s Gross National...

Scientific paper • 2016

Sufficiency Policy for Sustainable Degrowth

By: Angelika Zahrnt, Felix Ekardt, Anja Humburg, Joachim Spangenberg, Joachim Spangenberg

Sufficiency is the anti-thesis to the dominant orientation towards getting ever “more, further and faster”. Often treated as a lifestyle issue for the better-off, it essentially requires (1) a fundamental policy change to offering new opportunity spaces, from advertisement- and commerce free spaces via repairable design to reverting work intensification, and (2) a change in societal standards...

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 Farm Systems? Applying Energy—Landscape Integrated Analysis in past and present Western agricultures

By: Claudio Cattaneo

ELIA (Energy Landscape Integrated Analysis) is a method that combines energy analysis of agroecosystems (energy flows and capacity to store energy within them) with land cover / land use change and so it represents the energy imprint over a landscape. First applied to Vallès County in the Barcelona Region a similar study is here replicated to a new time point and to other ten cases across...

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

Synergies between the degrowth movement and the global ecovillage network

By: Stella Veciana

The primary question of this analysis relates to specific key issues fostering actual and potential synergies between the degrowth and the ecovillage movement. As analysis frame, first some distinctive perspectives around de-growth are introduced on the basis of interviews with experts of the Global South and the Global North. More than reinforcing the criticism of growth societies and...