About this book
This handbook takes stock of 'degrowth', a concept and movement gaining increasing visibility in the 2020s. Contributors explain contexts for degrowth's significance, elaborate its diverse history and detail its unique approaches, practices, challenges and potential futures.
Part I sets the ecological, economic and political contexts framing degrowth's evolution as a significant concept for societies facing the challenges of deepening socio-political inequities and ecological unsustainabilities. Part II identifies themes characterising degrowth movements in a sample of distinctive countries, starting with its origins in France. Part III shows degrowth 'concepts in action', explaining in practical ways the meanings of terms such as 'conviviality', 'degrowth doughnut', 'frugal abundance', 'commoning' and 'defashioning'. Part IV offers analyses and forward-looking imaginaries for degrowth from the perspectives of distinctive agents, agendas and theoretical frameworks. Contributors engage with topics such as ecofeminist futures, utopian thought and show how degrowth is necessary to address poverty.
Highly experienced and knowledgeable contributors from varied scholarly and practitioner fields address a range of strategic, activist, policy and research questions in this handbook. Grounded in empirical cases, they identify significant social and ecological challenges, relevant to students, researchers, activists, policymakers and practitioners at various levels within the wide range of fields in which degrowth can be applied.
Contents
Part I. The current growth conjuncture
1. Degrowth has come of age / Anitra Nelson and Vincent Liegey
2. Fossilised metabolism: the social ecology of capitalist growth / Éric Pineault
3. Unequal uses of earth / Timothée Parrique
4. Capitalist crisis and affective alternatives / Marina Sitrin
Part II. Degrowth: origins and steppingstones
5. The French origins and pillars of degrowth / François Jarrige and Vincent Liegey
6. Degrowth in Italy: early beginnings, political disputes and a plural social movement / Karl Krӓhmer, Margherita Forgione, Michel Cardito and Mauro Bonaiuti
7. Postwachstum: German roots and currents of degrowth / Matthias Schmelzer and Barbara Muraca
8. A Catalan way towards degrowth / Borja Nogué-Algueró and Giacomo D’Alisa
9. Accidental degrowth practices: illustrations from Czechia / Slavomíra Ferenčuhová, Eva Fraňková, Tomáš Hoření Samec and Jan Malý Blažek
10. Greece: real-existing degrowth and its challenges / Marula Tsagkari, Chris Vrettos and Agisilaos Koulouris
11. ‘Degrowth’ and the implications of English language hegemony / Nick Fitzpatrick
12. Latin American indigenous perspectives meet degrowth / David Barkin
13. Degrowth in an African periphery: from necrocapitalism to a pluriverse of nowtopias / Roland Ngam
Part III. Degrowth practices: concepts in action
14. Conviviality and commoning / Andrea Vetter and Matthias Fersterer
15. Autonomy and freedom in individual to societal transformation / Clive L. Spash
16. The degrowth doughnut / Mladen Domazet
17. Frugal abundance: meaning in practice in an Icelandic village / Adrien Plomteux
18. Defining defashion: a manifesto for degrowth / Sandra Niessen
19. Degrowth: health and healthcare / Martin Hensher and Jean-Louis Aillon
20. Holistic care economies: degrowth ways of provisioning and the Global East / Lilian Pungas and Jana Gebauer
21. The pedagogy of degrowth and the political ecology of technology / Luis I. Prádanos
22. Mapping the spectrum of degrowth work / Eeva Houtbeckers
23. Reimagining collaboration: degrowth practitioners, scholars and activists / Orsolya Lazányi, Vincent Liegey, François Schneider and Logan Strenchock
Part IV. Degrowth futures: perspectives and strategies
24. Twenty years of degrowth: what has been achieved? / Serge Latouche with Vincent Liegey
25. Roles of utopian thought in a degrowth transformation / Alexandra Köves
26. Growth, degrowth and poverty reduction / Olivier De Schutter
27. Imperial and solidary modes of living: alternatives to eco-imperialism / Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen
28. Prefigurative degrowth politics: decolonisation and the non-aligned movement / Paul Stubbs
29. Ecofeminist and decolonial feminist degrowth futures / Susan Paulson, Anna Saave and Sourayan Mookerjea
30. Fostering degrowth in men: beyond masculinity and the gender binary / Bob Pease
31. Degrowth, urbanisation and spatial planning / Federico Savini
32. Degrowth-aligned commoning organisations / Ben Robra, Sabrina Chakori and Chris Giotitsas
33. Ecosocialism and degrowth / Gareth Dale
34. Beyond growth: beyond divisions / Anuna De Wever (Van Der Heyden) and Lena Hartog
35. Degrowth: future research directions / Anitra Nelson and Vincent Liegey
Customer Reviews
Biography
Anitra Nelson is an activist scholar and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Informal Urbanism Research Hub (InfUr-), University of Melbourne (Australia). Among numerous degrowth publications, she is co-editor of Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021) collections, and co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020).
Vincent Liegey is an engineer, interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer on degrowth. He has co-authored several books on regrowth, including Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020, Pluto Press), and Decroissance, Fake or Not (2022, Tana Editions). He is one of the coordinators of the international degrowth conferences and of Cargonomia, a centre for research and experimentation on degrowth in Budapest.
