Nathan is currently a PhD candidate at the WU in Vienna. His research focuses on degrowth and strategies for social ecological transformation. He is an active member of Degrowth Vienna, and recently edited a collected volume titled "Degrowth & Strategy: how to bring about social ecological transformation". He enjoys working with well-organized groups to realize collective goals.
About
Nathan Barlow
By: Giorgos Kallis, Nathan Barlow
In October of this year Giorgos Kallis, Julia Steinberger and Jason Hickel were awarded 9.9 million euros by the European Research Council (ERC) for a project titled Pathways towards post growth deals. This constitutes the largest ever sum of funding for a degrowth research project! We interviewed Giorgos Kallis to find out more about this important milestone!
By: Joe Herbert, Nathan Barlow, Jacob Smessaert, Carol Bardi
Degrowthers have recently seemed to find a lot of inspiration in Erik Olin Wright’s framework of political strategies for transformations beyond capitalism. In this blog post, we wish to highlight some crucial insufficiencies of Wright’s framework in relation to degrowth transformations, and propose some adaptations which can enhance its utility for further strategy discussions.
By: Joe Herbert, Nathan Barlow
This piece will close the ten-part degrowth.info series on strategy, highlighting some of the key insights and charting the development of the strategy debate within degrowth. We will then offer some insights on how our own understanding of strategy and degrowth has changed over the last two years since we first urged the community to engage with this topic more. Finally, we will consider the...
By: Nathan Barlow
No one really told us what organizing a degrowth conference would entail. We simply knew we wanted to do it. Two years of organizing, meeting, discussing and struggling have passed and now we’re less than seven weeks away from the first day of the conference. The initial motivation we all had in the summer of 2018 has not gone, but it has faltered at times. There have been days when I would...
By: Nathan Barlow
Degrowth imagines a radically different future, which is why so many have connected to its message. But it is a future which seems very distant from today’s political, economic and social system. So what does it mean, in practical terms, to organize towards a degrowth future in a highly commodified and competitive present? Fundraising for degrowth I have been coordinating the fundraising...
By: Nathan Barlow
There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things - like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective. A recurring point is that most people simply cannot fathom the amount of money he has. The number is $150...
By: Nathan Barlow
The holidays are special; a chance to stop working, slow down and spend time with family and friends. The numerous family gatherings will likely involve discussions about the state of the world, politics, climate change, and maybe even degrowth. In case you find yourself in this scenario, we have put together this list of tips and suggestions for how to discuss degrowth with family and...
By: Nathan Barlow
Reflections on organising next year's degrowth conference, which will explore strategies for social and ecological transformation. I headed to Barcelona last year with a friend to attend the two week degrowth summer school, a rite of passage in the degrowth community. It takes place at the intellectual center of degrowth, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and at a...
By: Nathan Barlow
Two loose movements have emerged on either side of the Atlantic with the aim of transforming the economy. In the U.S. –the new economy movement and in Europe - the degrowth movement . Both originated as critiques of the current political-economic system, and gained momentum after the financial crisis, since flourishing into nascent social movements composed of practitioners, academics,...
By: Nathan Barlow, Colleen Schneider, Nikolai Weber, und Frederik Amann
Am 15. März 2019 fand in über 100 Ländern der Erde ein von "Fridays for Future" organisiert Klima-Streik statt, bei dem über eine Millionen Schüler_innen auf die Straßen gingen. Wir haben drei Personen aus Wien, die verschiedenen Strömungen der Klimagerechtigkeitsbewegung angehören, gefragt, was sie zu dem Streik sagen. 1) Organisation und Planung des Weltklimastreiks von Colleen...
By: Nathan Barlow, Colleen Schneider, Nikolai Weber, and Frederik Amann
On March 15th 2019 a global climate strike organized by Fridays for Future took place in over 100 countries around the world, mobilizing over 1 million students to the streets. We asked 3 people from Vienna involved in different streams of the Austrian climate justice movement to share their perspectives on the event. 1) Organization and planning of the Strike by Colleen Schneider In January...
By: Nathan Barlow
My colleagues and I wrote an initial blog post arguing that the question of strategy has received too little attention in the degrowth movement, and by degrowth scholars. Further, we observed that the discourse on strategy in degrowth was excessively plural, being open to all strategies in all contexts, rather than considering case-appropriateness (spatially, temporally, sectorally...