Abstract
Abstract Harmful environmental consequences of growth have been rigorously documented and widely publicized throughout the past half-century. Yet, the quantity of matter and energy used by human economies continues to increase by the minute, while governments and businesses continue to promise and to prioritize further economic growth. Such a paradox raises questions about how we humans change course. This introduction to a Special Section offers a new theoretical approach to change, together with glimpses of adaptations underway around the world. It directs attention away from individual decision-making and toward systems of culture and power through which socialized humans and socioecological worlds are (re)produced, sustained and adapted. Potential for transformative change is found in habitual practices through which skills, perspectives, denials and desires are viscerally embodied, and in cultural systems (economic, religious, gender and other) that govern those practices and make them meaningful. Case studies reviewed illuminate diverse communities acting to maintain old and to forge new moral and material worlds that prioritize wellbeing, equity and sustainability rather than expansion. This article endeavors to galvanize change by conceptualizing degrowth, by decolonizing worldviews of expansionist myths and values, and by encouraging connections between science and activism, north and south. Key words: degrowth, transition, climate change, socioecological systems
Highlights
A surge of experimentation in search of more just and sustainable futures launched the term "degrowth" into late 20th century politics, science and social movements
Therein lies the challenge for our conventional minds. We participants in this Special Section struggled against a tendency to portray degrowth as a single voice: "degrowth argues X," "degrowers deny Y," and "degrowth fails to consider Z." Conspicuously absent, among the sundry aims associated with the term is ambition to consolidate an orthodox scientific paradigm or a unified political platform
Degrowth is embraced as a banner under which actors and movements gather from sources as diverse as ecological economics and green theology, in pursuit of goals ranging from increasing democracy to reducing climate change
Summary
A surge of experimentation in search of more just and sustainable futures launched the term "degrowth" into late 20th century politics, science and social movements. Degrowth is embraced as a banner under which actors and movements gather from sources as diverse as ecological economics and green theology, in pursuit of goals ranging from increasing democracy to reducing climate change. Most tangibly, we live degrowth as a multi-sited, multilingual and multiform network supporting the opportunity for lifeways motivated by desires other than growth to survive and to thrive in the shadow of those forms that dominate contemporary societies This Special Section has taken shape via dialogue among 17 authors from an extraordinary range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, representing formation in anthropology, geography, human ecology, political science, sociology and sustainability studies. More comprehensive characterizations can be found in sources including Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era (D'Alisa, Demaria and Kallis 2014)
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