Anti, Alternative, and Post: A Review of Post-Growth A Review of Post-Growth Approaches to Radical Transformation in the Global South

Abstract

A diverse set of post-growth theories, proposals, and practices are emerging out of dramatically different contexts across the Global South in response to the recognition that the negative impacts of economic growth are rooted in dominant global systems including development, capitalism, and coloniality. The emergence of post-growth comes after decades of failed attempts by reform-based approaches, such as sustainable development, limits to growth, and alter-globalization, to meet environmental and social objectives. While reform-based approaches provide important tools for calculating appropriate limits for growth and promoting sustainability agendas, they do not address growth’s embeddedness in dominant systems. Also, reform measures often neglect the historical and spatial complexities of poverty, inequality, and environmental problems in Southern societies, rendering these approaches inappropriate and/or infeasible. As a result, a number of radical post-growth theories, including political ecology, post-development, anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, capitalist crisis critique, decolonial theory, and post-ideological anarchism reject system reform and call for the creation of alternatives that address the unique circumstances of the Global South. Despite having disparate conceptualizations of the global systems of domination, radical post-growth theories largely converge around the politics and processes of change, espousing the construction of ‘alternatives to’ via a series of radical democratic practices including open-endedness, pluriversality, and prefigurative politics. Through an examination of the academic approaches that engage with post-growth in the Global South, this review will contribute to understanding and potentiating Southern efforts at anti-systemic transformation. It will reveal how different radical post-growth theories (1) identify and understand the systems of domination responsible for upholding the primacy of economic growth; (2) contemplate Southern contexts and concerns; and (3) foment long-term processes of building anti-systemic alternatives. It will identify some practical impediments to moving beyond post-growth theories to implementable proposals, policies, and practices, many of which are exemplified by post-extractivist efforts in Peru.