nav-icons nav-icons
Progress in Political Economy (PPE) Progress in Political Economy (PPE)
LOGIN REGISTER
LOGIN
REGISTER
linklink
  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
  • Past & Present Reading Group
  • A Political Economy of Australian Capitalism
  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • Pedagogy
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)
The Disasters of War in Afghanistan
Previous
Literary Geographies of Race and Space
Next

Degrowth?

by Anitra Nelson on January 4, 2021

Degrowth?

Anitra Nelson | January 4, 2021

Tags: degrowth
degrowth
| 0 800

Degrowth is on the agenda as a set of theories increasingly encountered in scholarly articles and books as well as activist journalism. Yet degrowth is a much maligned and misinterpreted concept and approach, and is especially difficult for economists to handle. Is that because using money to produce and exchange inevitably, intrinsically, leads to growth economies? Or, perhaps, economists find the non-monetary akin to nudity?

My 2020 was dominated by work on two recently published degrowth works — Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide by Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, a collection edited by Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards.

These books are complimentary. Exploring Degrowth offers an analysis of degrowth as an activist movement and theoretical explanations of degrowth. In a nutshell degrowth is about minimising the use of Earth’s materials and energy in all forms of production and human practices more generally, including matters referred to as ‘waste’.

Advocates have developed a range of terms to reorient attention and practices around degrowth values. A first principle of degrowth is to minimise inequities between people. For instance, ‘open relocalisation’ refers to forms of localising economies and regional autarky while encouraging the universal sharing of ideas and techniques for achieving sustainability.

In ‘frugal abundance’ simple living meets a communal cornucopia of ‘good life’ benefits. Frugal abundance highlights degrowth’s focus on diverse qualities in contrast to the highly comparative and competitive obsessions of growth economies associated with capitalism’s reliance on strongly quantitative criteria expressed purely and simplistically in money.

Theories constituting degrowth as a concept evolved during the latter decades of the last century in works by physical and social scientists, such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Ivan Illich, André Gorz and Serge Latouche. Yet degrowth only really took off as a movement this century, starting in France and spreading through Europe to become international. Current degrowth activists draw eclectically from the works of political philosophers such as Cornelius Castoriadis and John Holloway.

Even more concerned with practical matters, Food for Degrowth follows the model set by another collection, published in 2018, that I co-edited with François Schneider — Housing For Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Both international collections highlight chapters focusing on degrowth cases studies from four continents and key degrowth themes by activist scholars.

Degrowth elicits questions around settlement design, typically presenting as a citification and decentralisation debate. Food for Degrowth includes a chapter arguing that current growth plans for Melbourne preclude the possibility of a city that is sustainable and collectively sufficient even in the basic need of food, as such pointing towards decentralised settlements.

Food for Degrowth engages with care economies, community supported agriculture and First Nations food sovereignty. One chapter critiques circular economies while another introduces ‘belonging economies’. The part on degrowth networks evaluates collaborations, technologies and institutions to facilitate communication and multilevel food governance.

Exploring Degrowth delves into ways activists express and experiment with degrowth in their everyday lives as members of households, and of collectives and cooperatives, as protesters, and within a decentralised, horizontally organised network. We identify key political and practical challenges for the movement, and constructively examine a popular cluster of policies and practices strategically combined into a degrowth project, a degrowth future.

Among these holistic approaches to visions of sustainable and equitable futures are nonmonetary forms of achieving modest levels of collective sufficiency. Instead of a guaranteed minimum income within a capitalist economy, Exploring Degrowth argues for an ‘unconditional autonomy allowance’ to mobilise a postgrowth transition. Local co-governance and a direct hands-on-approach to what is produced, for everyone’s basic needs, in both human and Earth caring ways, substitutes for extensive trade, monetary calculations, market forces of supply and demand, and overriding concerns with profit and growth.

NOTE

Register to hear and engage with the co-editors of Food For Degrowth, Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards, and contributor Terry Leahy, at a free National Sustainable Living Festival Food for Degrowth online event at 4pm (AEST) 23 February 2021, hosted by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (University of Melbourne).

Share this post

  • Tweet
  • Share Post:

Author: Anitra Nelson

Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar and Associate Professor, Honorary Principal Fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, author of Marx’s Concept of Money: The God of Commodities (1999/2014), Small Is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018), co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020) and co-editor of Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (2011).

Related Posts

 

Housing — and planning — for Degrowth

In capitalism, i.e. ‘growth’ economies, housing (construction) is a significant — even leading — economic sector and area of social concern. Moreover, housing exposes ma...

Comments

Leave a Response Cancel reply


Join our mailing list

© Progress in Political Economy (PPE)

Privacy | Designed by Nucleo | Terms and Conditions

  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
  • Past & Present Reading Group
  • A Political Economy of Australian Capitalism
  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • Pedagogy
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)
 

Loading Comments...