De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth 3110778033, 9783110778038

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De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth

De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth Edited by Lauren Eastwood and Kai Heron

ISBN 978-3-11-077803-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-077835-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-077847-2 ISSN 2748-016X Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946628 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

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Acknowledgements This handbook is a product of warnings ignored. When we told friends and colleagues about the scale of the project we invariably received the reply “rather you than I”. On more than one occasion when we explained the project to people who had edited collections of this length and breadth they stated plainly that they would never do it again and that, quite frankly, we were making a mistake. We’re glad we ignored the warnings. Editing this handbook hasn’t always been plain sailing, but it has been less trying to collate than our counsels intoned. In large part this is because we have had the good fortune of working with a group of truly brilliant, punctual, and collegial authors. Our heartfelt thanks go out to them all. Thanks are also due to Steve Hardman at De Gruyter for his encouragement of the project from its earliest stages. We would also like to thank Tim Cadman for his mentorship on how to bring a handbook together, and not least his fastidious file management strategies. Tim’s suggestion that we enlist the help of Kirrallee Grace as copy editor was stellar. Thank you, Kirrallee, for your attention to detail, hard work, and late nights meeting across time zones. We also appreciate the support we received from Jaya Dalal at De Gruyter who was always on hand to answer questions and give advice. Lastly, we would like to thank the authors and venues who gave permission for us to include reworked versions of essays that had previously been published elsewhere. Chapter 13 previously appeared in a similar form in the Journal of Australian Political Economy No. 86, pp. 379-405, and Chapter 22 previously appeared in Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation (2020), Burkhart, C., Schmelzer M., & Treu, N. (eds.). Winchester, UK ZerO Books.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-202

Contents Acknowledgements

VII

List of Contributors

XIII

Jason Hickel Foreword

1

Kai Heron and Lauren Eastwood Introduction – Degrowth: Swimming Against the Ideological Tide

7

Part I: Degrowth Agendas Matthias Schmelzer 1 ‘Without Growth, Everything is Nothing’: On the Origins of Growthism 25 Anitra Nelson 2 Degrowth: Monetary and Nonmonetary Economies

41

Maja Hoffmann, Maro Pantazidou and Tone Smith 3 Critiques of Work: The Radical Roots of Degrowth

55

Matthew Paterson 4 Cultural Political Economy and Degrowth Politics

75

Milena Büchs, Max Koch and Jayeon Lee 5 Sustainable Welfare: Decoupling Welfare from Growth and Prioritising Needs Satisfaction for All 89

Part II: Degrowth in Practice Nathan Barlow, Merle Schulken and Christina Plank 6 How and Who? The Debate About a Strategy for Degrowth Nick Fitzpatrick 7 Translating Degrowth: From Policy Proposals to Praxis

109

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Sabrina Chakori and Shane Hopkinson 8 Living in Abundance: Tool Libraries for Convivial Degrowth Artemis Theodorou 9 Materialising Degrowth Agrifood Architecture with Earth

149

167

Harry Holmes 10 They Want Us to Live in Caves: Degrowth and the Housing Question

191

Part III: The Urban and the Rural Karl Krähmer and Anton Brokow-Loga 11 The Case for Solidary Degrowth Spaces. Five Propositions on the Challenging Project of Spatialising Degrowth 213 Benedikt Schmid 12 Urban Degrowth

233

Alex Baumann, Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon 13 Land Commodification: A Structural Barrier to Degrowth Transition

251

Chloe Broadfield 14 Agroecology as Degrowth in Practice: Resistance Rooted in HumanNature Relationality 273 Bjørn Inge Melås 15 Organising Nature Through Urban Gardening

291

Part IV: Critical Connections Anna-Maria Köhnke, Aino Ursula Mäki and Sherilyn MacGregor 16 Interlocking Crises, Intersectional Visions: Ecofeminist Political Economy in Conversation with Degrowth 311 Mariano Féliz 17 Dependency, Delinking and Degrowth in a New Developmental Era: Debates from Argentina 327

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Shivani Kaul and Julien-François Gerber 18 Degrowth and Psychoanalysis: From Transition to Transformation

339

Alf Hornborg 19 Degrowth Disagreements with Marxism: Critical Perspectives on the Fetishisation of Value and Productivity 361 James Jackson 20 Not Just Newer, but Fewer: A Bridge Between Ecomodernism and Degrowth? 377

Part V: Degrowth and the Global South Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez and Maria Kaufmann 21 From Marxist Development Theories to Their Translation in the Degrowth Discourse: Transforming Unequal International Structures for Environmental Sustainability 397 Ashish Kothari 22 Radical Ecological Democracy: Reflections from the South on Degrowth 417 Barbara Magalhães Teixeira and Başak Koşanay 23 Degrowth Beyond the Metropole: Theory and Praxis for a Revolutionary Degrowth 427 Linda Thorpe 24 Growing Degrowth: Alliances with Environmental Movements in the Global South 447 Ciarán Ó Briain 25 ‘For the Greater Good’– Green Sacrifice Zones and Subaltern Resistance: The Politics and Potential of Degrowth and Post-Extractivist Futures 461 List of Figures About the Editors Index

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479 481

List of Contributors Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez completed her PhD in France in 2016, after which she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam. She is now an assistant professor in the chair of economic theory and policy at the Radboud University’s Department of Economics. Her areas of expertise include environmental sustainability, governance, institutions, macroeconomic indicators, welfare and social economy, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. She co-coordinates the interdisciplinary research group TransAct (Transformative sustainable change in Action). ORCID: 0000-0001-7123-2704 Samuel Alexander (PhD) is currently Director of the Simplicity Institute. Prior to this he spent ten years as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His interdisciplinary research focuses on degrowth, permaculture, voluntary simplicity, ‘grassroots’ theories of transition, postcapitalism and the relationship between culture and political economy. He is author of twenty books, including Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2019, co-authored with Brendan Gleeson); Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future (2018, co-authored with Josh Floyd), and Art Against Empire: Toward an Aesthetics of Degrowth (2017). ORCID: 0000-0003-4057-735X Nathan Barlow is a PhD candidate and researcher at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) in the Department of Socio-Economics, with the institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development. He has coordinated multiple degrowth projects with Degrowth Vienna and with the degrowth.info web collective. Most recently, he co-edited the collected volume Degrowth & Strategy: How to Bring About Social Ecological Transformation (Barlow et al., 2022). His research interests are in the area of strategies for social ecological transformation and comparing pathways for transformation in the U.S. and Europe. ORCID: 0000-0003-3045-6941 Alex Baumann, BA Hons, PhD (WSU), is a sessional lecturer and curriculum fellow in the School of Social Science at Western Sydney University. His subject area is post-development, specifically relating to land privatisation as a structural obstacle in post-growth/degrowth transition strategy. His work also explores the potential of urban housing and food commons as part of a way to overcome this postgrowth transition obstacle. This has involved him with the ‘Neighbourhood That Works’ project (www.ntwonline.weebly.com) – a project concept that is seeking to reframe public housing policy, providing an example of local collaborative development on public land. ORCID: 0000-0001-6873-1617 Chloe Broadfield, BA Hons, MSc, is an agroecological farmer and educator. She works on a market garden and runs courses in agroecology on the farm where she works. ORCID: 0000-0003-4524-751X Anton Brokow-Loga researches at the interface of urban studies, political science, and transformation research. He is a research associate at the Chair for Urban Studies and Social Research at the Bauhaus University Weimar and part of the I.L.A. collective. In his work, he examines, among other things, the role of growth critique for urban policy and spatial planning under the heading ‘Postwachstumsstadt’ (postgrowth city; cf. https://postwachstumsstadt.de/). He is an initiator of the international network ‘Spaces beyond growth – Municipal Degrowth Network’, launched in autumn 2021. ORCID 0000-0002-2780-483X. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-204

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Milena Büchs (PhD) is Professor of Sustainable Welfare at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds. Combining theories and methods from ecological economics, social policy and sociology, Milena’s research focuses on sustainable welfare, climate change and inequality and just low carbon transitions. She has published widely and received research funding from UK Research and Innovation and the European Union on these topics. Prior to joining the University of Leeds in 2016, she was a lecturer/associate professor in sociology and social policy at the University of Southampton (2005-2016). ORCID: 0000-0001-6304-3196 Peter Burdon (PhD) is Associate Professor at the Adelaide Law School and Deputy Dean (Learning and Teaching) for the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics. Peter is an expert in environmental theory and has written and edited books on Earth Jurisprudence and Earth Democracy. In 2021 his monograph – Earth Jurisprudence: Private Property and the Environment – was translated into Mandarin and is distributed by Routledge and the Commercial Press. In 2017 Peter published a book on Hannah Arendt and the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. ORCID: 0000-0003-0967-4987 Sabrina Chakori holds a BSc Biology (University of Geneva) and MSc Environmental Management (University of Queensland, UQ), and an interdisciplinary PhD (UQ). Her research looked at the drivers of packaged food and at degrowth strategies that could increase the sustainability of food systems. Sabrina is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and associate lecturer at UQ. Her current research focuses on navigating the sustainability transition. Her research interests include degrowth, circular economy, food systems and systems methods. Sabrina has cofounded and led numerous organisations, including the Brisbane Tool Library and the Degrowth Journal. ORCID: 0000-0001-5857-4742 Mariano Féliz, BA in Economics (UNLP), MA in Economic Sociology (UNSAM), PhD in Social Sciences (UBA), PhD in Economics (Paris XIII/Nord), is a researcher at the Center for Geographical Research (CIG) of the Institute of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (IdIHCS) of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and the National University of La Plata (UNLP), Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences of Education of the UNLP, La Plata (Argentina). He specialises in political economy of development, crisis and social conflict, from a Marxian dependency theory approach. ORCID: 0000-0002-3000-3873 Nick Fitzpatrick, BSc Environmental Science (University of Wollongong), MSc Geology (Aarhus University), is a La Caixa doctoral INPhINIT fellow at the Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research (CENSE), NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. His main interests include climatology, political economy and public policy. His research focuses on imagining degrowth trajectories through incorporating notions of power and participation into decision-making processes. ORCID: 0000-0003-3773-2099 Julien-François Gerber is a Swiss political ecologist at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Prior to that, he was based at universities in Bhutan, India and the United States, including Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University. He has published on debt, ownership systems, agrarian change, social movements, economic theory, and psychoanalysis. Maja Hoffmann is a PhD candidate at Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria). Her research in environmental social science focuses on postwork/critiques of work in the context of social-

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ecological transformation, degrowth and postcolonial theory. She has a background in political science, Nordic philology, environmental studies and sustainability science from the universities of ErlangenNuremberg (Germany), Västerås, Stockholm, and Lund (Sweden). ORCID: 0000-0002-2773-9273 Harry Holmes, BA Hons (Oxon) MA, is a PhD student within the Department of Geography at King’s College London. He specialises in the political ecology of climate adaptation to flooding, with a particular focus on the north of England and Yorkshire. He is interested in the ways regional inequalities, housing and land ownership and class determine different responses to climate impacts and the wider ways in which radical movements can respond to disasters. He is active in ecological justice movements and as a housing organiser in the Newham and Leytonstone Branch of London Renters Union. ORCID: 0000-0003-0480-1414 Shane Hopkinson is an adjunct researcher in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Science at CQ University in Mackay Queensland where he has taught sociology and social change for 20 years. Since completing his PhD on radical Black activist Frantz Fanon as a theorist of race, class and gender, he has been involved in regional social development projects and the New Economy movement. His research interests include peer support projects to combat suicide, sustainability in regional councils, community resilience and liveability. He has a permaculture design certificate and is president of the local community garden. ORCID: 0000-0002-5280-5586 Alf Hornborg holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology (Uppsala University, 1986) and is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His transdisciplinary research on human–environmental relations is at the intersections of anthropology, environmental history, ecological economics and political ecology. He is author of The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), Global Magic (2016), Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene (2019), and The Magic of Technology (2023). ORCID: 0000-0003-2102-5875 James Jackson is a post-doctoral research associate at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. He completed his doctorate at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI). He specialises in the intersection of environmental policy with fiscal and monetary policy, low carbon transitions and the environmental decisions of central banks. As well as his work in Manchester, James also works alongside colleagues in Germany and Norway on examining the unique features of each country’s transition to a carbon-neutral economy. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2069-4957 Shivani Kaul is a Kashmiri-American PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and visiting researcher at the Royal University of Bhutan. Postgraduate training in multidisciplinary practice in mental health from the Tavistock Clinic, psychological anthropology at University College London, arts and aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University and global health equity research at Harvard Medical School inform her present work on post-growth science and health. She co-teaches the post-development, feminisms and degrowth course in the MA programme in Degrowth at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and has published on alternatives to sustainable development, post-growth approaches to global health and embodying degrowth. Maria Kaufmann is an assistant professor at the Chair Group of Environmental Governance and Politics at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Maria’s research experience focuses on environmental

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policies mainly in Europe, i.e., examining environment–society interactions in the context of climate change (including climate adaptation and energy transition). She is particularly interested in analysing processes of societal transformation and the justice implication of these transformations. She co-coordinates the interdisciplinary research group TransAct (Transformative sustainable change in Action). Max Koch (PhD and habilitation from Freie Universität Berlin) is a sociologist and Professor of Social Policy and Sustainability at Lund University. His research addresses patterns of capitalist restructuring and how these are reflected in social structures and the environment. His books include Capitalism and Climate Change: Theoretical Discussion, Historical Development and Policy Responses and Postgrowth and Wellbeing: Challenges to Sustainable Welfare (with Milena Büchs). His articles on degrowth have appeared in journals such as Ecological Economics, Global Environmental Change, Futures, Environmental Values, Environmental Politics, Social Policy and Society and British Journal of Sociology. ORCID: 0000-0003-0932-3570 Anna-Maria Köhnke (BA Hons, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, MA Political Economy) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, UK. Her thesis explores the possibility of expressing well-being through working conditions and other indicators of work quality. In particular, she investigates how work research can be made more inclusive of unpaid reproductive activities, precarious work and employment policy challenges arising from climate change. She currently teaches Politics at Leuphana University Lüneburg and Economics at The University of Manchester and she is employed as a work quality manager at a local nursing service. ORCID: 0000-0003-2188-7168 Başak Koşanay, BA Hons in Political Science (Isik University), MA in International Political Economy (Bilgi University), is an independent researcher. She specialises in degrowth, political ecology, ecological economics, state theory and post-development studies. ORCID: 0000-0002-4834-6153 Ashish Kothari is founding member of Kalpavriksh and a member of many people’s movements. He has taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, coordinated India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, served on boards of Greenpeace International and India and the ICCA Consortium. He has also acted as a judge on the International Tribunal on Rights of Nature. He helps coordinate Vikalp Sangam (www.vikalpsangam.org), the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (www.globaltapestryofalternatives. org) and Radical Ecological Democracy (www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org). He is also co-author/coeditor of Churning the Earth, Alternative Futures, and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Karl Krähmer is a research fellow on food geographies at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin. His work focuses on how to spatialise degrowth at different scales: be it observing bottom-up practices, critically examining urban climate policies or studying global commodity chains as a form of urban metabolism. Furthermore, he is an activist in the Italian degrowth movement (www.decrescitafelice.it). ORCID 0000-0001-6778-8857. Jayeon Lee (fka Lindellee, PhD), is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg. She defended her doctoral thesis in 2018 at Lund University in Sweden, focusing on distributive consequences of changing the unemployment benefit provision system in Sweden. Her broad research interests include changing social policy and labour market policy. She currently studies the role

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of civic participation in developing eco-social policies addressing ecological unsustainability and social inequalities at the same time. ORCID: 0000-0001-5321-6946 Sherilyn MacGregor is Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, UK. She researches relationships between environmental (un)sustainability and social (in) justice, applying insights from intersectional ecofeminist and other critical political theories. Her publications include the edited Handbook of Gender and Environment and the monograph Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care, as well as many journal articles on feminist perspectives on climate change and sustainability. She is editor of Environmental Politics journal. ORCID: 0000-0003-1815-2267 Barbara Magalhães Teixeira, BA International Relations (PUC MINAS), MSc Peace and Conflict (Uppsala University), is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden. Her research and teaching focus on peace and conflict processes; natural resources, the environment and climate change; alternatives to development; extractivism and degrowth – all from a critical, decolonial and feminist perspective. ORCID: 0000-0002-7798-9051 Ursula Mäki is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Their thesis is focused on the concept of housewifisation. Located at the boundary between political economy and ecology, their work brings literatures on social reproduction, queer theory and critical political economy into conversation with critical ecofeminist theory and environmental politics. Originally from Helsinki, Finland, they studied politics with international relations at the University of York and continued into postgraduate study to acquire a master’s degree in international political economy at the University of Manchester. Their masters’ dissertation was on the topic of socialist (eco)feminist critiques of sustainable development. At present, their research interests focus on the connections between heteronormativity and environmental governmentality, particularly in relation to the global politics of COVID-19 and the climate crisis. Bjørn Inge Melås, M. Arch (NTNU), PhD (NTNU), has recently completed his artistic PhD project, Ecologies of Urban Gardening. The project has been done through a practice-based and artistic approach, where initiating and being part of three urban gardens in Trondheim, Norway has been central. These gardens have been the working tools and have provided experiences and challenges, spurred new initiatives and explorations and led the research into explorations on topics such as soil health, composting and the future of peri-urban land, which has been explored through writing, videos, photos, installations and exhibitions. ORCID: 0000-0002-5002-7813 Anitra Nelson is honorary principal fellow in the Informal Urbanism Research Hub at University of Melbourne (Australia). Her research focuses on ‘money’ as a concept and practice, ecological sustainability, housing and degrowth. Her key works include Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy (2022, Pluto Press), Small Is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018, Pluto Press), Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020, Pluto Press, co-author), and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021, Routledge, co-editor) and Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018, Routledge, co-editor). See more at https://anitranelson.info/ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3505-4474 Twitter handle: @AnitraNelson E: [email protected]

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Ciarán Ó Briain, BA Hons (DBS), MSc (UCD), MSC (UCD), is a researcher affiliated with University College Dublin’s Centre for Sustainable Development Studies. His current research work examines the social, political and environmental impacts of resource extractivism, renewable energy and green capitalism. His research interests are political theory, climate justice, political ecology, climate migration and just transitions. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1363-4382 Maro Pantazido is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, UK. Her research explores the politics of time and care and the links to reimagining the work-based society. She also practises strategy-making with social justice organisations and activist groups and was previously head of global impact and learning at Amnesty International. Matthew Paterson, BA Hons (Newcastle), Phd (Essex), is Professor of International Politics and Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. His work focuses on the political economy, global governance and cultural politics of climate change. His most recent book is In Search of Climate Politics (CUP, 2021). ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0007-2229 Christina Plank, Dipl.-Kulturw. Univ. (University of Passau), Dr. (University of Vienna), is Assistant Professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. She co-edited the collected volume Degrowth & Strategy (Barlow et al., 2022). She researches and teaches on political ecology, state theory and social-ecological transformation with a focus on critical agrarian studies. She specialises on Central and Eastern Europe, currently working on the food and climate crisis in the corporate food regime. ORCID: 0000-0003-2236-1512 Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian, networker and climate activist. He is a post-doctoral researcher at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and works at the Laboratory for New Economic Ideas in Leipzig, Germany. His main interests include the political economy of capitalism, social and environmental history, climate catastrophe and alternative economics. He is author of the award-winning The Hegemony of Growth (Cambridge University Press, 2016), has recently co-authored The Future is Degrowth (Verso, 2022) and has written on 20th-century social and economic history, monetary politics, international organisations and degrowth. ORCID: 0000-0003-3987-1930 Benedikt Schmid holds a doctorate in geography from the University of Luxembourg and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the chair of Geography of Global Change at the University of Freiburg. His research focuses on the interplay between community-led organisations, eco-social enterprises and local institutions in post-growth-oriented transformations. ORCID: 0000-0002-7296-6125 Merle Schulken is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During her master’s programme in Vienna she was a member of Degrowth Vienna and co-edited the collected volume Degrowth & Strategy (Barlow et al., 2022). She is interested in radical economic approaches to sustainability and the role of economic planning in a social ecological transformation. Tone Smith is an ecological economist (Dr.) and human geographer (MPhil). She has previously worked for the Austrian Ministry of Sustainability, Statistics Norway and the OECD and taught at various

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universities, but is now an independent scholar and freelance writer. Her research focuses on alternative (economic) institutions, decommodification and local degrowth economies, as well as critiques of financialisation of nature, greenwashing and green new deals. She is a board member of the European Society of Ecological Economics, co-founded Rethinking Economics Norway and is active in the international degrowth movement. Artemis Theodorou, NAAB-B.Arch (Pratt Institute), is an architect and post-master’s (Degree of Specialisation and Proficiency – DSA) candidate in ‘Earthen Architecture’ at the International Centre on Earthen Architecture (CRAterre) based within the National School of Architecture of Grenoble (École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Grenoble – ENSAG). She is practising architecture mainly in Cyprus, focusing on rehabilitations of vernacular buildings, ‘informally informed’ bioclimatic design and use of natural and local materials, most notably earth. ORCID: 0000-0002-6162-7996 Linda Frances Thorpe, BSc Hons (UvA), MSc Hons (LU), works in the private and public sector as sustainability consultant, supporting businesses and public institutions in the development and improvement of their business strategy. She focuses on topics related to climate justice in the Global South, governance of sustainable development, circular economy and natural resource extraction, environmental politics and policy. ORCID: 0009-0000-5099-657X

Jason Hickel

Foreword We face a double crisis as the 21st century unfolds. On the one hand, it is an ecological crisis: climate breakdown and several other Earth System pressures are exceeding planetary boundaries to a dangerous extent. On the other hand, it is also a social crisis: several billion people are deprived of access to basic goods and services. More than 40% of the human population cannot afford nutritious food, 50% do not have safely managed sanitation facilities, 70% do not have necessary healthcare. Deprivation is most pronounced in the periphery, where imperialist dynamics of structural adjustment and unequal exchange continue to perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment. But it is evident also in the core: in the United States, nearly half the population cannot afford healthcare; in the United Kingdom, 4.3 million children live in poverty; in the European Union, 90 million people face economic insecurity. These patterns of deprivation are shot through with brutal inequalities of race and gender. No political theory that promises to analyse and resolve the ecological crisis can hope to succeed if it does not also simultaneously analyse and resolve the social crisis. Attempting to address one without the other leaves fundamental contraditions entrenched and will ultimately give rise to monsters. Indeed, monsters are already emerging. It is critically important to understand that the dual social-ecological crisis is being driven, ultimately, by the capitalist system of production. The two dimensions are symptoms of the same underlying pathology. By capitalism here I do not mean simply markets, trade and businesses, as people often so easily assume. These things existed for thousands of years before capitalism and are innocent enough on their own. The key defining feature of capitalism that we must confront is that it is, as a condition for its very existence, fundamentally anti-democratic. Yes, many of us live in electoral political systems – as corrupt and captured as they may be – where we select political leaders from time to time. But even so, when it comes to the system of production, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy enters. Production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital: large corporations, major financial firms and the 1% who own the lion’s share of investable assets. Capital wields the power to mobilise our collective labour and our planet’s resources for whatever it wants, determining what we produce, under what conditions and how the surplus we generate shall be used and distributed. And let us be clear: for capital, the primary purpose of production is not to meet specific human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to achieve any concrete ecological goals. Rather, the overriding objective is to maximise and accumulate profit. Jason Hickel, Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-001

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The result is that the capitalist world-system is characterised by perverse forms of production. Capital directs finance to highly profitable output, like Sport Utility Vehicles, industrial meat, fast fashion, weapons, fossil fuels and property speculation, while reproducing chronic shortages of necessary goods and services like public transit, public healthcare, nutritious food, renewable energy and affordable housing. This dynamic occurs within national economies but also has clear imperialist dimensions. Land, labour and productive capacities across the Global South are roped into supplying global commodity chains dominated by Northern firms – bananas for Chiquita, cotton for Zara, coffee for Starbucks, smartphones for Apple, and coltan for Tesla, for the benefit of the core, all at artificially depressed prices – instead of producing food, housing, healthcare, education and industrial goods to meet national needs. Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labour and resources from the periphery (Hickel et al., 2022). It should therefore come as no surprise that despite extremely high levels of aggregate production – and levels of energy and material use that dramatically exceed sustainable boundaries – deprivation remains widespread within the capitalist worldeconomy. Capitalism produces too much, yes, but also not enough of the right stuff. Access to essential goods and services is limited by commodification. And because capital seeks to cheapen labour at every opportunity, particularly in the periphery, the consumption of the working classes is constrained. Peter Kropotkin (2007/1892) noticed this dynamic more than 130 years ago. In The Conquest of Bread they observed that despite high levels of production in Europe even in the 19th century, most of the population lived in misery. Why? Because under capitalism production is mobilised around ‘whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists’ (p. 3). ‘A few rich men’, they wrote, ‘manipulate the economic activities of the nation (p. 15).’ Meanwhile the masses, who are prevented from producing for their own needs, ‘have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance’ (p. 3). Consider, Kropotkin urged, all the labour that goes to sheer waste – here, in keeping up the stables, the kennels, and the retinue of the rich; there, in pandering to the caprices of society and the depraved tastes of the fashionable mob; there again, in forcing the consumer to buy what he does not need, or foisting an inferior article upon him by means of puffery, and in producing on the other hand wares which are absolutely injurious, but profitable to the manufacturer. (p. 15)

But all of this productive activity could be organized towards other ends. ‘What is squandered in this manner’, Kropotkin wrote, ‘would be enough to double the production of useful things, or so to plenish our mills and factories with machinery that they would soon flood the shops with all that is now lacking to two-thirds of the nation’ (p. 15). If the workers and farmers had collective control over the means of production they would easily be able to ensure what Kropotkin referred to as ‘well-being for all’ (p. 21). Mass poverty, deprivation, and the artificial scarcities that characterise capitalism could be ended more or less immediately.

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Kropotkin’s argument stands today. It would not take much, as a share of total global productive capacity, to ensure decent lives for everyone on the planet. But with the reality of the ecological crisis, we must also face a second challenge, one that Kropotkin could not appreciate in the 19th century. That challenge is to achieve well-being for all while at the same time reducing global aggregate use of energy and materials (specificaly in the core) to enable sufficiently rapid decarbonisation and to bring the world economy back within planetary boundaries. Technological innovation and efficiency improvements are crucial to this; but high-income countries also need to scale down less necessary forms of production to reduce excess energy and material use directly. (Hickel, 2023; Hickel et al, 2023). If capitalism has always been unable to achieve the former goal (well-being for all), it most certainly cannot achieve the latter. It is a structural impossibility, as it runs against the core logic of the capitalist economy, which is to increase aggregate production, indefinitely, to maintain the conditions for perpetual accumulation. It is clear what needs to be done: we must achieve democratic control over finance and production, as Kropotkin argued, and now organise it around the double goal of well-being and ecology. This requires that we distinguish, as Kropotkin did, between the socially necessary production that clearly needs to increase for social progress and the destructive and less-necessary forms of production that urgently need to be scaled down. This is the revolutionary world-historical objective that faces our generation. What would such an economy look like? Several objectives stand out. To secure the social foundation, first we must expand and decommodify universal public services (Hickel, 2023). By this I mean healthcare and education, yes, but also housing, public transit, energy, water, internet, childcare, recreation facilities, and nutritious food for all. Let us mobilise our productive forces to ensure everyone has access to the goods and services necessary for well-being. Second, we must establish ambitious public works programmes, to build renewable energy capacity, insulate homes, produce and install efficient appliances, restore ecosystems and innovate socially necessary and ecologically efficient technologies. These are essential interventions that must be done as quickly as possible and we cannot wait around for capital to decide they are worth doing. Third, we must introduce a public job guarantee, empowering people to participate in these vital collective projects, doing meaningful, socially necessary work with workplace democracy and living wages. The job guarantee must be financed by the currency issuer but should be democratically governed at the appropriate level of locality. Consider the power of this approach. It allows us to achieve ecologically necessary objectives. But it also abolishes unemployment. It abolishes economic insecurity. It ensures good lives for all, regardless of fluctuations in aggregate output, thus delinking well-being from growth. As for the rest of the economy: private firms should be democratised, brought under worker and community control as appropriate, and production reorganised around the objectives of well-being and ecology.

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As we secure and improve the socially and ecologically necessary sectors, we also need to scale down socially less-necessary forms of production. Fossil fuels are obvious here: we need binding targets to wind this industry down, in a fair and just way.1 But – as degrowth scholarship points out – we also need to reduce aggregate production in other destructive industries (automobiles, airlines, mansions, industrial meat, fast fashion, advertising, weapons, and so on), while banning planned obsolescence and extending product lifespans. This process should be democratically determined, but also grounded in the material reality of ecology and the imperatives of decolonial justice. Finally, we urgently need to cut the excess purchasing power of the rich, using wealth taxes and maximum income ratios (Millward-Hopkins & Oswald, 2023). Right now millionaires alone are on track to burn 72% of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees (Gössling & Humpe, 2023). This is an egregious assault on humanity and the living world and none of us should accept it. It is irrational and unjust to continue diverting our energy and resources to supporting an over-consuming elite in the middle of an ecological emergency. If after taking these steps we find that our society requires less labour to produce what we need, we can shorten the working week, give people more free time and share necessary labour more evenly – thus permanently preventing any unemployment. The internationalist dimension of this transition must be front and centre. Excess energy and material use must decline in the core to achieve ecological objectives (Hickel et al., 2022a; Hickel, 2020; Keyßer & Lenzen, 2021), while in the periphery productive capacities must be reclaimed – and in many cases increased – to meet human needs and achieve development, with throughput converging globally to levels that are sufficient for universal well-being and compatible with ecological stability. For the South, this requires ending structural adjustment programs, cancelling external debts, freely transferring necessary technologies and enabling governments to use progressive industrial and fiscal policy to improve economic sovereignty (Hickel, 2021). In the absense of effective multilaterial action, Southern governments can and should take unilateral or collective steps towards sovereign development and should be supported towards this end. As all of this should make clear, degrowth – the framework that has cracked open the political imaginations of scientists and activists over the past decade – is best understood as an element within a broader struggle for ecosocialism and anti-imperialism. Is the programme outlined above affordable? Yes. By definition, yes. As even the influential capitalist economist John Maynard Keynes acknowledged – and as socialist economists have always understood – anything we can actually do, in terms of productive capacity, we can pay for. And when it comes to productive capacity, we have far more than enough. By establishing democratic control over finance and production we can simply shift the use of this capacity away from wasteful production and elite accumulation to achieve social and ecological objectives.

 See the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty campaign. https://fossilfueltreaty.org/.

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Some will say this sounds utopian. But these policies happen to be extremely popular. Universal public services, a public job guarantee, more equality, an economy focused on well-being and ecology rather than growth – polls and surveys show strong majority support for these ideas and official citizens’ assemblies in several countries have called for precisely this kind of transition. This has the potential to become a popular and feasible political agenda. But none of this will happen on its own. It will require a major political struggle against those who benefit so prodigiously from the status quo. This is not a time for mild reformism, tweaking around the edges of a failing system. This is a time for revolutionary change. It is clear, however, that the environmentalist movement that has mobilised over the past several years cannot serve as the sole agent of that change. While it has succeeded in bringing ecological problems to the forefront of public discourse, it lacks the structural analysis – and political leverage – to achieve the necessary transition. The bourgeois green parties are particularly egregious, with their dangerous inattention to the question of working-class livelihoods, social policy and imperialist dynamics. To overcome these limitations, it is urgently important for environmentalists to build alliances with the unions, the labour movements and other workingclass political formations that have much more political leverage, including the power of the strike. To do this, environmentalists must foreground the social policies I have listed above, organising to abolish the economic insecurity that leads working-class communities and many unions to fear the negative ramifications that radical ecological action may otherwise have on their livelihoods. But the unions also need to move. I say this not as a critic from the outside but as a lifelong union member. How did we ever let the political horizons of the labour movement shrink down to industry-specific battles over wages and conditions, while leaving the general structure of the capitalist economy intact? We must revive our original ambitions and unite across sectors – as well as with the unemployed – to secure the social foundation for all and achieve economic democracy. Finally, progressive movements in the core must unite with, support and defend radical and anti-colonial social movements in the Global South. The workers and peasants of the periphery contribute 90% of the labour that fuels the capitalist world economy and the South holds the majority of the world’s arable land and critical resources, which places substantial leverage in their hands. Any political philosophy that does not foreground Southern workers and political movements as leading agents of revolutionary change is simply missing the point. This requires the hard work of organising, establishing solidarities, and uniting around common political demands. It requires strategy, and it requires courage. Is there hope? Yes. We know it is empirically possible to achieve a just and sustainable world economy. But our hope can only ever be as strong as our struggle. If we want hope – if we want to win a just and ecological economy – we must build the struggle.

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The book you hold in your hands is a vital guide to toward this end. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, degrowth scholarship has helped build the theoretical and empirical foundations that are necessary for us to achieve a just and ecological economy. This volume advances the field with fresh insights and diverse voices covering work, land, agriculture, housing, commons, dependency and development. May it provoke new ideas, inspire connections and contribute to the revolutionary praxis this moment demands.

References Gössling, S., & Humpe, A. (2023). Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5° C ambitions. Cleaner Production Letters, 4, 100027. Hickel, J. (2023, 12 April). Universal public services: The power of decommodifying survival. Resilience. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-12/universal-public-services-the-power-ofdecommodifying-survival/ [Accessed: 5 June 2023]. Hickel, J., Dorninger, C., Wieland, H., & Suwandi, I. (2022). Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015. Global Environmental Change, 73, 102467. Hickel, J., O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L., & Zoomkawala, H. (2022). National responsibility for ecological breakdown: A fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017. The Lancet Planetary Health, 6(4), e342–e349. Hickel, J. (2020). Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(9), e399–e404. Hickel, J. (2021, 15 October). How to achieve full decolonization. New Internationalist, 15. https://newint.org/ features/2021/08/09/money-ultimate-decolonizer-fjf [Accessed: 5 June 2023]. Jason Hickel, “On technology and degrowth”, Monthly Review (2023); Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel, “Is green growth happening? Achieved vs. Paris-compliant CO2-GDP decoupling in high-income countries”, The Lancet Planetary Health (2023). Keyßer, L. T., & Lenzen, M. (2021). 1.5 C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways. Nature communications, 12(1), 2676. Kropotkin, P. (2007/1892). The conquest of bread. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/ 23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm [Accessed: 7 June 2023]. Millward-Hopkins, J., & Oswald, Y. (2023). Reducing global inequality to secure human wellbeing and climate safety: A modelling study. The Lancet Planetary Health, 7(2), e147–e154.

Kai Heron and Lauren Eastwood

Introduction – Degrowth: Swimming Against the Ideological Tide It is difficult to imagine a less auspicious name for a movement striving for social and ecological justice. Degrowth. To have less. To reject progress. To abandon the idea that future generations could live richer, fuller lives than we do now. Positive associations with growth have become so ingrained today that even before we get to degrowth’s propositions its name insults our common sense. Things hardly get better when those propositions are scrutinised: reducing gross domestic product (GDP), limiting personal consumption, scaling down material throughputs and using less energy to name only a few. Those who lived through the crushing austerity European governments imposed after 2008’s financial crash, or who have experienced the hardship of double-digit inflation after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and war broke out in Ukraine, would be forgiven for wondering how any of this could be presented as a serious political agenda. Degrowth is so unsettling because we are told all the time that the world’s problems are not because of too much growth but because of too little of it. If a country in the Global South suffers from high poverty levels or has weak domestic industry, it is because it needs to encourage foreign investment or domestic private industry to achieve growth (World Bank, 2022a). If a country’s education, health, and social care systems are in decline – as they are in the UK where one of us is based – we are told it is because of slowed economic growth (Mason, 2022). If wages are declining in real terms, as they are throughout the so-called ‘developed’ world, then economists and politicians tell us this too is because of a lack of healthy economic returns measured in GDP (International Labour Organization, 2022). And last but not least, we are told that the important task of decarbonising the global economy depends on renewable energy and industrial throughputs becoming cheap enough to galvanise a new era of capitalist expansion or ‘green growth’ (Wei, Jiandong, & Saleem, 2023). For every problem, the same solution. It is enough to make one suspicious. Degrowth is the name for a diverse set of thinkers, practitioners and social movements that are indeed suspicious of the just-so stories we have been told about growth. It is a perspective that swims against the ideological tide, that dares to call into question some of the most basic assumptions of contemporary capitalist society. As the contributions to this handbook testify, degrowth’s proponents disagree on many things, but they are united by a rejection of what is variously called the ‘growth paradigm’ (Schmelzer, Vetter, & Vansintjan, 2022), ‘growthism’ (Hickel, 2021) or the

Kai Heron, Lancaster University, UK Lauren Eastwood, Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-002

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idea that human and non-human flourishing is best achieved by pursuing economic growth. Degrowth notes at least two intractable socioecological paradoxes at the core of the growth-based paradigm. First, growthism promises abundance for all but the pursuit of growth has generated extreme poverty and inequality. Oxfam’s 2023 report Survival of the Richest found that the world’s richest one percent own almost half the world’s wealth, while the poorest half of the world’s population own just 0.75%. The report also found that 81 billionaires – a number that could comfortably travel together on a single double-decker bus – own more wealth than 50% of the world’s population combined, or four billion people (Christensen et al., 2023). The World Bank, meanwhile, finds that in the years between 2019 and 2022, 56 million people were plunged below the global poverty line, where they joined an astonishing 23% of the world’s population (World Bank Group, 2022b). As degrowth’s proponents argue, the growth paradigm has achieved abundance for the few by imposing scarcity on the many (Mehta & Harcourt, 2021). Growth, in other words, does not alleviate poverty. It creates it (Sullivan & Hickel, 2023). Second, proponents of the growth paradigm promise that an exciting new era of green prosperity and ecological repair will be ushered in by green technologies, carbon markets, and ‘natural capital’ (Helm, 2015). And yet it is the organisation of society around growth that has put the world on a collision course with non-negotiable ecological limits to begin with (Steffen et al., 2015). A transition to green energy does nothing to change the fact that many of the world’s wealthiest and most fortunate are consuming unsustainable levels of energy, meat and personal consumables (Brand & Wissen, 2021). Nor does it change the fact that dominant development discourse, stemming from the colonial assumptions of Walt Whitman Rostow’s thoroughly debunked modernisation theory (Gilman, 2007), takes the extension of this profoundly antiecological way of life as its objective for the world’s ‘underdeveloped’ nations and peoples. This is an agenda that pays no heed to ecological limits, local ecologically sound forms of production or the absence of correlation between limitless energetic and personal consumption and collective wellbeing and personal happiness (Kallis, Kerschner, & Martinez-Alier, 2012). It is also a paradigm that ignores how the imperial core’s growth has always been achieved through the active underdevelopment of the world’s periphery (Rodney & Davis, 2018; Patnaik & Patnaik, 2016). At risk of putting things too simply, a growth-based ‘green transition’ amounts to unplugging the global economy from one energy source (fossil fuels) and plugging it into another (renewables) without changing anything essential about the social structures, ways of living, ways of knowing and patterns of ownership that have created the ecological crisis. From this perspective, green growth becomes nothing other than a peculiarly sophisticated kind of climate denialism and like all climate denialism its goal is to sustain the status quo. To put the issue at its most paradoxical: green growth promotes change so that nothing essential has to change. Taken together, these paradoxes show what growth promises (human and nonhuman flourishing) it doesn’t deliver and what it promises to avoid (poverty, inequality

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and ecological collapse) it delivers in spades. For proponents of degrowth, it follows that no matter how much it may insult common sense, the world does not have too little growth, it has too much of it. It is the prioritisation of growth that means most of us are worse off, the prioritisation of growth that has set in motion irreversible social and climatic calamities and the ideological hegemony of growth that is blocking remedial action. To really achieve human and non-human flourishing, then, we must break up with growth. Instead of pursuing the good life for all through the mediating proxies of GDP, increased material throughputs or limitless energy consumption, the good life for all can and should be aimed for directly through the democratic and just provisioning of the necessities of life. This, in brief, is degrowth’s critique of the growth-based paradigm. It is a thesis that has proven as powerful as it is provocative.

The Emergence of Degrowth The origins of degrowth are commonly traced back to a debate about the relation between growth and capitalism organised by Nouvel Observateur in 1972 (Sutter, 2017). In his contribution to the debate, the French New Left socialist André Gorz used the French verb décroissance, translated as degrowth, in its contemporary sense for the first time when he asked: ‘Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth [décroissance] – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?’ (Gorz, 1972, p. iv). For Gorz, this was a rhetorical question because the answer was an emphatic no. And since growth was nothing other than a word to describe capitalism’s drive to the accumulation of value, this meant doing away with capitalism altogether. In his 1977 book Ecology as Freedom, Gorz took these ideas further. Growth, he noted, was integral to capitalism but it was also integral to productive socialist traditions, including those that were supposedly being put into practice in the Soviet Union. Hence, Gorz wrote: Radicals who refuse to examine the question of equality without growth merely demonstrate that “socialism”, for them, is nothing but the continuation of capitalism by other means – an extension of middle class values, lifestyles, and social patterns . . . Today a lack of realism no longer consists in advocating greater wellbeing through degrowth and the subversion of the prevailing way of life. Lack of realism consists in imagining that economic growth can still bring about increased human welfare, and indeed that it is still physically possible. (Gorz, 1980, p. 13)

In these brief interventions, Gorz carved out a space for theory and practice that was socialist without being productivist and ecologically disposed without reproducing the bourgeois environmental tropes (Montrie, 2018; Dauvergne, 2018) of movements that had been inspired, for example, by the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 (2000) or The Limits to Growth in 1972 (Meadows et al., 1972). Though both Gorz and the latter of these foundational bourgeois environmental texts both underscored the dangerous effects of growth, Gorz maintained that at root the problem

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was capitalism itself, while The Limits of Growth problematically displaced the blame from capitalism to overpopulation. Gorz is widely credited with the first use of the term degrowth in the sense explored throughout this handbook, but it is the Romanian economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegan who has arguably had the greatest influence on degrowth’s development to date. Georgescu-Roegan’s signal intellectual contribution was to bring principles from thermodynamics to bear on the discipline of economics. All economic activity, he argued in his 1971 work The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971), was entropic in character, meaning that it converted energy and matter from available to unavailable forms within a closed energetic system. The economy, in other words, was a biophysical process. Though this may seem somewhat obvious, even today mainstream economics acts as if ‘the economy’ exists above and beyond ecological processes and the messy realities of energetic and resource throughputs. Nonhuman nature appears to economics only insofar as it can be commodified or valorised as so-called ‘natural capital’ such as carbon credits, carbon offsets and ecosystem services (Buller, 2022). Non-human nature in this sense is little more than a line on a balance sheet. Marginal utility theory, for example, studies an economic agent’s increased or decreased satisfaction upon consumption of a commodity or service. Unless a part of non-human nature is commodified and thereby translated into a consumable, it is all but irrelevant. Georgescu-Roegen’s point was that this is to overlook the fact that all economic activity is always, necessarily and intractably ecological (Georgescu-Roegen, 1992, 75–76). More than this, given that the laws of entropy apply to all forms of social activity, an economic model predicated on infinite growth was an impossibility theorem. New economic practices were needed that did not assume endless energetic and material throughputs could serve as the foundation of a stable economy. In 1979, the French historian philosopher Jacques Grinevald translated one of Georgescu-Roegen’s essays into French under the title Demain La Décroissance: Entropie – Écologie – Économie (Tomorrow Decline: Entropy, Ecology, Economy) (Georgescu-Roegen, 2006). Georescu-Roegen approved of the translation and the term degrowth began to circulate in the work of French ecological economists, most notably the influential Serge Latouche (2022). In this way, Georgescu-Roegen’s work inspired a new generation of economists, the emergence of a new sub-discipline – ecological economics – and the consolidation of degrowth as a research agenda. Despite its significant academic influence, Georescu-Roegen’s scholarship had little direct impact on social and environmental movements. This changed in 2008 when the first International Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equality was held in Paris to great success. Further conferences followed in Barcelona, Montreal, Venice and Leipzig among others (D’Alisa, Demaria, & Kallis, 2014, XXVIII). Through these events and related academic and non-academic publications, degrowth has developed into one of today’s most vibrant, compelling and controversial intellectual movements. Degrowth’s ideas have come to influence struggles and practices all over the world, from local movements for community tool libraries and growing proj-

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ects (Thomas & Jonathan, 2021), to policy proposals for a four day workweek and universal basic income (Levy, 2017), to the thought and practice of decolonial and antiimperialist climate justice (Dengler & Seebacher, 2019), to even being discussed by the EU Parliament at 2023’s Beyond Growth Conference and appearing in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s AR6 report on climate change mitigation strategies (IPCC WGII, 2022). As these varied engagements suggest, degrowth means many things to many people. It’s a perspective that resonates across disciplines, political vantages and visions for the human and non-human future.

Why this Handbook Exists: An Unidisciplinary Approach Degrowth’s origins may lie in the sub-discipline of ecological economics, but it is currently difficult, if not impossible, to contain degrowth’s concerns within a single academic discipline. Degrowth’s ideas have influenced research agendas across the social sciences, humanities and STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). To give just a few examples, degrowth’s problematics have informed scholarship in the disciplines of political ecology, political theory, architecture, climate science, anthropology, engineering, geography, social movement studies, critical agrarian studies, urban studies, English literature, sociology, cultural studies and philosophy. As this breadth of disciplines suggests, and as this handbook’s contributions testify, degrowth is not a coherent theoretical approach, it does not demand specific research methods and it does not take a specific area of social activity as its object. Degrowth therefore spills over any usual way of defining a discipline (Massey 1999) and yet to date most degrowth Special Issues, edited collections, and publications have spoken to and from a particular disciplinary background (e.g., Whitehead, 2013; Chertkovskaya, Paulsson, & Barca, 2019; Andreucci & Engel-Di Mauro, 2019). As we collated contributions for this handbook, we sought to take a different path. Following Immanuel Wallerstein, we have treated degrowth as an ‘unidisciplinary’ intellectual project. As Wallerstein explains, unidisciplinarity must be distinguished from interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. These terms each denote research agendas that incorporate the skills, research methods, ontologies and epistemologies of two or more distinct disciplines. Unidisciplinary research on the other hand: refers to the belief that in the social sciences at least, there exists today no sufficient intellectual reason to distinguish between separate disciplines at all, and that all work should be considered part of a single discipline, sometimes called the historical social sciences. (Wallerstein, 2004, p. 98)

For Wallerstein, the disciplines as we know them are intellectually suspect insofar as they are ultimately the products of 19th century institutions and ways of knowing that

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were invested just as much in the colonial conquest and domination of the capitalist world-system as they were in producing so-called ‘objective’ and verifiable knowledge. To this, we would add that today’s disciplines increasingly pose a barrier to meaningful action on global heating and ecological collapse. The cascade of ecological crises we face today call into question established disciplinary boundaries, especially between so-called ‘value-neutral’ climate science and the social sciences, as well as foundational ontological distinctions between ‘Society’ and ‘Nature,’ the human and the non-human (Bennholdt-Thomsen, Mies, & Werlhof, 1988; Moore, 2015). Ecological crises, or better socio-ecological crisis, do this both intellectually and practically. Intellectually, insofar as they pose ‘wicked problems’ that cannot be solved without dismantling barriers between disciplines. Practically, and far more dramatically, in their devastating effects. There is, as Neil Smith has put it, no such thing as a ‘natural disaster’ (Smith 2006) since all ecological disasters are simultaneously the effect of past and present organisations of nature (Moore 2015), the effects of which are at least partially invisible to any particular discipline. Political economy can trace the social and economic effects of reduced wheat harvests caused by heat stress, but it can say nothing about how stress changed the grain’s chemical and nutritional content, nor can it propose agroecological solutions. Part of what makes degrowth such an important intellectual project today is that it begins from this baseline assumption, consciously eschewing disciplinary boundaries, to make unidisciplinary contributions across the social sciences and beyond. We have therefore, as far as possible, sought to replicate this through the handbook’s structure and contributions. The handbook has been assembled with the explicit intention of challenging disciplinary lines to capture the complexity of degrowth’s influence and engagements. In lieu of a disciplinary focus, we have chosen to think of degrowth’s ‘propositions and prospects’ as a unifying theme and organising principle. By propositions, we mean degrowth’s central and non-negotiable principles such as the incompatibility of growth with human and non-human flourishing, the need to secure decolonial justice as part of a degrowth agenda and the importance of democratising the economy. Through their engagements with degrowth, this handbook’s contributors explore, advance and challenge degrowth’s central propositions. By prospects, we mean degrowth’s present and future potential to shape academia, social movements and practitioners such as architects and urban designers. This integrative approach, at once critical and constructive, aims to preserve for readers the sense of possibility that has drawn people to unidisciplinary degrowth scholarship thus far. We think this unidisciplinary approach, rooted in degrowth’s propositions and prospects, sets this handbook apart from other special issues, handbooks and edited collections about degrowth. Across this handbook’s pages you will find essays written by scholars associated with the disciplines of human geography, architecture, psychoanalysis, feminist political theory, global politics, ecological economics, political ecology, global political economy and more. Though these contributions are wide-ranging in their scope and points of departure, the handbook does not claim to, and could never hope to, fea-

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ture work from every discipline degrowth has influenced. We have been limited both by the material bounds of our networks and knowledge and by the limitation of page numbers. We therefore hope that the handbook will be received as an invitation to further unidisciplinary research into how degrowth’s propositions and prospects can help to rethink disciplinary boundaries or collapse them altogether. It is also important to note that the contributions to this handbook are not uniformly written by proponents of degrowth. Contributors adopt varied and often antagonistic positions with respect to degrowth as a political project. Some are what we might call proponents of degrowth, though as we discuss below there is plenty of room for disagreement about what this might entail. Other authors are supportive but critical. What unites contributions is a belief that degrowth asks the right questions for scholars and social movements in our times of socio-ecological calamity. We have assembled some of the questions that we believe are raised by this handbook’s contributions at this introduction’s conclusion. A few brief remarks are also in order here about our relationship, as editors, to the essays contained within this collection and to degrowth in general. The two of us are by no means straightforward degrowth proponents. In our own ways, each of us associate more comfortably with eco-Marxist theory and practice. Marxism, we maintain, offers a more sophisticated critique of what degrowth calls the ‘growth imperative’, but which might more accurately be called capital accumulation. Marxism’s notions of primitive accumulation, class struggle, modes of production, value, social reproduction, imperialism, dependency, under-development and metabolic exchange remain critically important anchoring concepts in theories and struggles against capitalism’s degradation of the human and more than human world. We are nevertheless deeply appreciative of degrowth’s contributions to our respective fields of research and supportive of generative discussion and debate between what we consider two of today’s most persuasive responses to the ecological crisis and capitalism’s exploitation of human and non-human nature (Heron, 2022). As Jason Hickel’s foreword to this handbook demonstrates, in recent years there have been exciting rapprochements between degrowth and eco-Marxism, which have challenged the Promethean and productivist orientation of some Marxist movements and intellectual traditions (Saito, 2023). Marxism’s influence on some degrowth scholars has, in turn, rendered political disagreements within the broad tradition of degrowth more palpable. These developments, too, in our view, are extremely welcome. Our Marxist orientation is shared by some, though by no means all, of this handbook’s contributors. It is also resoundingly critiqued by some contributors (see, for example, Hornborg’s contribution). Regardless of our own perspective, or that of our contributors, throughout this handbook we have sought to encourage collegial and productive disagreement. At times, these disagreements take obvious forms, such as disagreements about whether degrowth requires state-level policy interventions or whether it ought to be ‘bottom up’. At others, disagreements are more subtle, playing out over the intricacies of what a degrowth perspective entails vis-à-vis, for instance,

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modernist development. These disagreements are testament to richness of a degrowth perspective and speak to the complexity of the world we inhabit, where economic systems are inextricably interwoven with social, cultural and political institutions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with all, some, or none of this handbook’s contributions, we hope readers will agree that each adds something important to our collective understanding of the world’s socio-ecological problems and to degrowth’s continuing development as a theory and practice of social critique and transformation.

Overview of Parts and Chapters Given the depth and breadth of degrowth’s engagements, we had many discussions about how to group this handbook’s chapters into coherent parts. We are ultimately hoping that readers will note that these are imperfect designations. In fact, we are hoping that readers will develop their own sense of the continuities and discontinuities amongst the materials in this collection, as that would represent a deep engagement with the complexity of these ideas. That being said, the logic behind the current configuration of five parts is as follows. While all five of the handbook’s parts feature chapters that wrestle with what degrowth means for some of the most important questions of our day, the first part, Degrowth Agendas, contains pieces that get to the core of some of degrowth’s most pressing concerns. Matthias Schmelzer’s contribution starts the handbook by launching a historically grounded attack of the growth paradigm as it exists as a taken-for-granted fact of life. Schmelzer then uses this as a basis to propose degrowth as a viable alternative. Anitra Nelson also takes aim at growth but this time through a critique of the money-form. Nelson shows persuasively that growth only makes sense as a concept and as an aim in relation to money. Capitalism, from this perspective, is a social machine that seeks to create money from money through the exploitation of land and labour. From here, Nelson proposes that anti-capitalist traditions of thought that do not interrogate the money-form of exchange are fraught with pitfalls that degrowth would do well to avoid. Maja Hoffman, Maro Pantazidou and Tone Smith delve into the place of work and anti-work politics, through an examination of degrowth’s underlying tenets concerning labour. Matthew Patterson then broaches the question of where degrowth sits with respect to modernism. Drawing from Marshall Berman’s classic theorisation of modernity, modernisation and modernism, Patterson raises important questions about how a degrowth politics might be met by those still ambivalently attached to the modernist project broadly conceived. Lastly in this part, Milena Büchs, Max Koch and Jayeon Lee invite us to address the profound connection between the welfare state and fossil-fuelled growth, raising the difficult question of how, and if, degrowth can envision a ‘sustainable welfare’ system decoupled from ecologically destructive growthism. Together, these chapters provide entry points into some of the fundamental arguments

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that one encounters in the degrowth literature: growth versus degrowth, the role of money, work and anti-work, modernism versus anti-modernism and sustainable welfare provisioning – whilst simultaneously drilling down into particular facets of degrowth that need to be considered in future research. Part two, Degrowth in Practice, gathers pieces that reflect in one way or another on the challenges of actually implementing degrowth’s propositions. Nathan Barlow, Merle Schulken and Christina Plank open the part by asking how degrowth will be implemented and by whom. A primary question these authors address involves the ways in which degrowth can step beyond the strategy of dispelling growth’s myths and towards the difficult work of building alliances and coalitions with other movements for socio-ecological justice. This overview of debates surrounding degrowth strategy is followed by two chapters that address different sides of the debate. Nick Fitzpatrick’s analysis centres on state-level policy frameworks, whereas Sabrina Chakori and Shane Hopkinson argue that community tool libraries are an instance of community-level ‘bottom up’ degrowth. Next, Artemis Theodorou shifts registers by considering how degrowth can transform architectural practice. Modern agrifood buildings, Theodorou argues, are designed and built in ways that are divorced from local cultural and ecological conditions, but which seek to maximise capital accumulation. This productivist orientation puts quantity over quality. A degrowth architecture, meanwhile, must reverse this order of prioritisation. While still providing abundant food for all, Theodorou shows that a degrowth architecture must begin from the very cultural and ecological specificities that modern growth-based architecture tends to ignore. Harry Holmes closes the part by bringing degrowth and Marxism together to ask how decent housing can be secured for all within ecological limits. Through an investigation of housing struggles in Newham, London, Great Britain, Holmes suggests that an answer lies in Marxism’s understanding of housing systems’ embeddedness within, and reproduction of, class relations. Part three, The Urban and the Rural, groups pieces that raise questions about degrowth’s potential within and across urban/rural divides. Karl Krähmer and Anton Brokow-Loga begin by asking how degrowth ought to be spatialised. Arguing for a multi- and trans-scalar approach to degrowth’s implementation, Krähmer and Brokow-Loga develop five propositions about how abstract and despatialised demands for degrowth can be realised through their spatialisation. Benedikt Schmid follows by taking an explicitly urban perspective on degrowth. Cities, Schmid shows, are primary spaces and drivers of economic growth and must therefore lie at the heart of a degrowth agenda. Despite this, degrowth scholarship has only recently started to consider the role of the urban in degrowth’s political ambitions. Schmid seeks to remedy this weakness by, in his words, ‘journeying’ with degrowth through the European cities of Berlin, Freiburg, Amsterdam and Barcelona. The third chapter of the part, provided by Alex Baumann, Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon, return us to the problem of housing to show how land’s commodification acts as a barrier to any possible degrowth transition. In response, they propose the development of an urban

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commons through public housing policy and a ‘participation income.’ Shifting decisively to the rural, Chloe Broadfield then argues that agroecology is a clear instance of degrowth in practice, before Bjorn Inge Melås closes the part by returning us to the urban once more to suggest that urban gardening exhibits many of the characteristics of degrowth and indeed cultivates degrowth sensitivities in its practitioners. The handbook’s fourth part, Critical Connections, features essays that each bring an outside theoretical perspective to bear on degrowth’s proposition and prospects. In so doing, they bring to light interesting points of tension and seek to encourage further investigation. Anna-Maria Köhnke, Aino Ursula Mäki and Sherilyn MacGregor’s contribution opens the part by critically appraising degrowth from an ecofeminist perspective. Much of the degrowth literature, they suggest, has either overlooked or misunderstood the contributions that ecofeminist scholarship has been making to areas of concern to degrowth for decades. Unless degrowth incorporates these lessons, they argue, it risks perpetuating the same racialised and gendered inequalities that prompted degrowth’s development to begin with. Next, with reference to Argentina, Mariano Feliz considers degrowth from the vantage point of Marxist dependency theory. For Feliz, degrowth is compatible with emancipatory projects in the Global South, providing that it is understood as a synonym for anti-imperialist delinking from the capitalist world economy. Shivani Kaul and Julien- François Gerber show how degrowth has unexplored connections with the psychoanalytic tradition and ask how bringing these to the fore could transform degrowth’s research and practice into subjects such as psychological burnout and climate grief. Alf Hornborg then launches a critique of Marxism from a degrowth perspective, suggesting that Marxism adheres to a fallacious theory of value and the incorrect assumption that the development of the productive forces is politically neutral. For Hornborg, degrowth must state clearly that it disagrees with Marxism on these important topics. Part four’s final essay, penned by James Jackson, takes a very different path by seeking to reconcile some of the underlying assumptions of degrowth and productivist ecomodernism. Jackson proposes that a degrowth transition should be concerned with the principle of ‘newer but fewer’, which entails superseding carbon intensive technologies with low carbon alternatives, while ensuring a planned reduction in aggregate economic activity. The handbook’s fifth and final part broaches the complicated question of degrowth’s relevance to the Global South. Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez and Maria Kaufmann’s essay returns us to the nexus of Marxist dependency theory and degrowth, this time to propose that degrowth should draw on dependency theory’s theoretical and practical insights. In this way, Alenda-Demoutiez and Kaufmann suggest that there is compatibility between degrowth and the concerns and theorisations of movements in the Global South. In contrast, Ashish Kothari follows with a contribution that argues degrowth is only relevant for industrialised countries in the core of the capitalist world-system. For those in the periphery, more relevant worldviews and practices of well-being exist, such as the Indian notion of swaraj, the Ecuadorian and Bolivian concept of sumak kawsay and the Zulu and Xhola derived philosophy of ubuntu. Ko-

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thari argues that resistance to global powers of domination and exploitation requires building on commonalities between degrowth and these ideas, while respecting intractable differences. Barbara Magalhães Teixeira and Başak Koşanay then draw from Paulo Freiere’s critical pedagogy to suggest that the oppressed in the Global South are the true leaders of a revolutionary transition towards degrowth. Only the Global South, they claim, can liberate both themselves and their oppressors in the Global North by undoing global structures of neo-colonial domination. In the handbook’s penultimate chapter, Linda Thorpe suggests that degrowth is limited today by the fact that it remains a primarily academic concept, lacking an actual agent of social and political change. For Thorpe, degrowth is most likely to find allies in the global environmental justice movements located in the Global South. Thorpe makes her case through three case studies taken from across the Global South which show how degrowth’s ideas are productively translated into, or otherwise inform, non-Western contexts. Finally, Ciarán Ó Briain’s essay closes the part and the handbook by proposing that resistance in green sacrifice zones in the Global South are a model of degrowth’s implementation in practice. This argument leads Ó Briain to critique growthbased green transitions in the Global North, such as the Green New Deal or European Green Deal, which are predicated on the extraction of labour and resources from the Global South. Even so, Ó Briain proposes that a global transition towards degrowth may nevertheless require the selective expansion – or growth – of essential low carbon infrastructures if the world is to move away from fossil fuels and polluting extractive industry. What emerges is a complex picture of degrowth’s implementation, in which there are no easy answers.

Questions for Degrowth Though we have sought to categorise chapters with respect to their areas of primary concern, other ways of making contributions speak to one another present themselves, whether that’s thematically – housing, core/periphery relations, the role of the nation state – or in terms of the questions raised and answered. We think several critical questions arise across this handbook’s warp and weft that we hope will inspire future research and practice. We offer these in lieu of a conclusion: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Is degrowth a global project or is it specifically a project for and from the Global North? What is degrowth’s orientation towards modernity and modernising projects? How might degrowth’s propositions and prospects transform what constitutes a good life for humans and non-humans alike? Does degrowth require ‘top down’ intervention from states and international organisations, or must it be a ‘bottom up’ project realised by social movements? If

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both are required, how are tensions between the state and social movements to be navigated? Who is the agent of degrowth politics? Over what issues do they cohere and drive forward systemic transformation? What industries and sectors, perhaps ironically, need to grow to secure a degrowth future?

References Andreucci, D. & Engel-Di Mauro, S. (2019). Capitalism, socialism and the challenge of degrowth: Introduction to the symposium. Capitalism Nature Socialism 30 (2): 176–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10455752.2018.1546332. Bennholdt-Thomsen, V., Mies, M., & Von Werlhof, C. (1988). Woman the last colony. 1st edition. Zed Books. Brand, U., & Wissen, M. (2021). The imperial mode of living: Everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism. Verso. Buller, A. (2022). The value of a whale: On the illusions of green capitalism. 1st edition. Manchester University Press. Carson, R. (2000). Silent spring. Penguin Classics. Chertkovskaya, E., Paulsson, P., & Barca, S. (Eds.) (2019). Towards a political economy of degrowth. Illustrated edition. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Christensen, M.B., Hallum, C., Maitland, A., Parrinello, Q., Putaturo, C., Abed, D., Brown, C., Kamande, A., Lawson, M., & Ruiz, S. (2023). Survival of the richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality. Oxfam. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/survival-of-the-richest-how-we-musttax-the-super-rich-now-to-fight-inequality-621477/ [Accessed: 13 June 2023]. D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.) (2014). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. 1st edition. Routledge. Dauvergne, P. (2018). Environmentalism of the rich. Reprint edition. MIT Press. Dengler, C., & Seebacher, L. M. (2019). ‘What about the global south? Towards a feminist decolonial degrowth approach’. Ecological Economics 157 (March): 246–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon. 2018.11.019. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The entropy law and the economic process. Reprint 2014 ed. Harvard University Press. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1992). ‘The entropy law and the economic problem’. In H. E. Daly and K. N. Townsend. Valuing the Earth, second edition: Economics, ecology, ethics (pp. 75–88) MIT Press. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (2006). La Décroissance – Entropie – Ecologie – Economie. 3e édition. SANG TERRE. Gilman, N. (2007). Mandarins of the future: Modernization theory in Cold War America. Revised edition. JHUP. Gorz, A. (1972). Proceedings from a Public Debate Organized in Paris by the Club Du Nouvel Observateur. Presented at the Club du Nouvel Observateu. Gorz, A. (1980). Ecology as politics. 1st edition. Black Rose books. Helm, D. (2015). Natural capital: Valuing the planet. Yale University Press. Heron, K. (2022, 14 December). The great unfettering. Sidecar. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/ the-great-unfettering [Accessed: 13 June 2023]. Hickel, J. (2021). Less is more: How degrowth will save the world. 1st edition. Windmill Books. International Labour Organization. (2022). Global Wage Report 2022–2023. https://www.ilo.org/digital guides/en-gb/story/globalwagereport2022-23#home [Accessed: 13 June 2023].

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II. (2022). ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ [Accessed: 13 June 2023]. Kallis, G., Kerschner, C. & Martinez-Alier, J. (2012). The economics of degrowth. Ecological Economics, 84 (December): 172–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.08.017. Latouche, S. (2022). La Décroissance. 2e édition. Que sais je. Levy, A. (2017). Prometheus unwound: Shorter hours for sustainable degrowth. In P. A. Victor & B. Dolter. (Eds) Handbook on growth and sustainability, (pp. 303–25). Edward Elgar Publishing. Mason, R. (2022, 5 October). Liz Truss Promises “Growth, Growth and Growth” in Protest-Hit Speech. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/05/liz-truss-says-she-wants-growthgrowth-and-growth-in-protest-hit-speech-tory-conference [Accessed: 13 June 2023]. Massey, D. (1999). ‘Negotiating disciplinary boundaries’. Current Sociology, 47 (4): 5–12. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0011392199047004003. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. & Behrens III, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth; A report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. 2nd edition. Universe Pub. Mehta, L., & Harcourt, W. (2021). Beyond limits and scarcity: Feminist and decolonial contributions to degrowth. Political Geography. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102411. Montrie, C. (2018). The myth of silent spring: Rethinking the origins of American environmentalism. 1st edition. University of California Press. Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. Verso Books. Patnaik, U., & Patnaik, P. (2016). A theory of imperialism. Columbia University Press. Rodney, W., & Davis, A. (2018). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Verso. Saito, K. (2023). Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the idea of degrowth communism. New edition. Cambridge University Press. Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A., & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism. Verso. Smith, N. (2006). There’s no such thing as a natural disaster. Items: Insights from the social sciences. Social Science Research Council. https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/theres-no-such-thing-as-anatural-disaster/ [Accessed: 13 June 2023]. Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., De Vries, W., De Wit, C. A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G. M., Persson, L. M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B., & Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223): 1259855. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1259855. Sullivan, D., & Hickel, J. (2023). Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century. World Development 161 (January): 106026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106026. Sutter, A. J. (2017). The birth of “décroissance” and of the degrowth tradition. SSRN Scholarly Paper. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3010271. Sigler, T., & Corcoran, J. (Eds.). (2021). A modern guide to the urban sharing economy. Edward Elgar Publishing. Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-systems analysis: An introduction. Duke University Press Books. Wei, S., Jiandong, W., & Saleem, H. (2023). The impact of renewable energy transition, green growth, green trade and green innovation on environmental quality: Evidence from top 10 green future countries. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10, 2448. Whitehead, M. (2013). Degrowth or regrowth? Environmental Values, 22 (2): 141–45. World Bank Group. (2022a, 11 January). Global growth to slow through 2023, adding to risk of “hard landing” in developing economies. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/01/11/globalrecovery-economics-debt-commodity-inequality [Accessed: 14 June 2023]. World Bank Group. (2022b). Poverty and shared prosperity report 2022: Correcting course. https://www.world bank.org/en/publication/poverty-and-shared-prosperity [Accessed: 14 June 2023].

Part I: Degrowth Agendas

This first part of the handbook contains pieces that not only articulate some of the key tenets of degrowth scholarship but also get to the core of some of the most pressing concerns associated with degrowth. Matthias Schmelzer’s contribution provides a foundation for all of the materials to follow by outlining a historically grounded attack on the growth paradigm as a taken-for-granted fact of life. Degrowth is then posited as the alternative. Anitra Nelson also takes aim at growth, this time through a critique of the money-form. Nelson shows persuasively that growth only makes sense as a concept and as an aim in relation to money. From this perspective, capitalism is a social machine that seeks to create money from money through the exploitation of land and labour. From here, Nelson proposes that anti-capitalist traditions of thought that maintain the money-form of exchange are fraught with pitfalls that degrowth would do well to avoid. Maja Hoffman, Maro Pantazidou, and Tone Smith dive into the place of work and anti-work politics through an interrogation of degrowth’s underlying tenets concerning labour. Matthew Patterson then broaches the question of where degrowth sits with respect to modernism. Drawing from Marshall Berman’s classic theorisation of modernity, modernisation and modernism, Patterson raises important questions about how a degrowth politics might be met by those still ambivalently attached to the modernist project broadly conceived. Lastly in this part, Milena Büchs, Max Koch and Jayeon Lee invite us to address the profound connection between the welfare state and fossil-fueled growth, raising the difficult question of how, and if, degrowth can envision a ‘sustainable welfare’ system decoupled from ecologically destructive growthism. Together, these chapters provide entry points into some of the fundamental arguments that one encounters in the degrowth literature – growthism versus degrowth, the place of money, work and anti-work, modernism versus anti-modernism and sustainable welfare provisioning – whilst simultaneously drilling down into particular facets of degrowth that need to be engaged with in future research. Lauren Eastwood and Kai Heron

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1 ‘Without Growth, Everything is Nothing’: On the Origins of Growthism Abstract: While studies show the incompatibility of continued GDP growth in the Global North with reaching climate targets and while climate activists are increasingly criticising the ‘fairy tale of eternal growth’ as a dangerous myth threatening climate security, politics remains thoroughly committed to growth policies. In fact, economic growth is generally understood as a necessary condition for a functioning economy. Yet, how did the pursuit of economic growth become a key priority taken for granted among social scientists, politicians and the general public? This historical chapter provides answers by examining the genealogy of growthism. After analysing the emergence of expansionist ideas in the context of European colonisation and the industrial revolution, the article focuses on the historical making of the modern ‘growth paradigm’ in the post-war period. It analyzes this the growth paradigm as the core ideology stabilizing capitalist societies in the era of the Great Accelleration. The final section concludes by arguing that undoing the hegemony of growth, and thus overcoming not just the political focus on GDP, but the ‘growth paradigm’ as such, is a prerequisite for climate justice. Keywords: economic growth, climate change, ideology, social theory, inequality You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. (Thunberg, 2019)

With these powerful words, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist at the time, accused heads of state and government of failure at the UN Climate Summit in September 2019. Instead of ‘empty words’ and the ‘fairy tale of eternal growth,’ they called for a fundamental shift in thinking to implement the policies and solutions needed in light of the climate crisis. With such a critique of economic growth, analyses and positions in the young climate justice movement are currently radicalising. But what exactly is this fairy tale? How did it become so powerful that, one can rightly argue, it is dominating high level policy debates all around the globe? And how can it be debunked? Historical research on what has been called the ‘growth paradigm’ – a historically constructed and powerfully hegemonic ideology – aims at giving historical and social Matthias Schmelzer, Norbert Elias Center for Transformation Design & Research, University of Flensburg, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-004

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depth to our understanding of this ‘fairy tale’ of endless growth. This research, I will argue, is key for degrowth not least because a proper understanding of the historically entrenched power and hegemony of this ‘growth paradigm’ is necessary if we aim to overcome it. To put it briefly, the fairy tale of growth says that growth is good because it improves people’s lives. Growth is imperative because it’s a necessary prerequisite for societal progress and without it, societies are in crisis. Growth is a universal solution to all kinds of other challenges facing modern society – from reconstruction after the Second World War to massive unemployment in the 1970s to environmental protection in the 1990s – and growth can continue forever, if the right governmental and international policies are pursued (Dale, 2012; Schmelzer, 2016b). The fairy tale of growth is invoked continuously by basically all political parties around the world – but no one more clearly than the recently retired German chancellor Angela Merkel in a 2009 government declaration when they introduced the socalled ‘growth acceleration act’: Without growth there is no investment, without growth there are no jobs, without growth there is no money for education, without growth there is no help for the weak. And vice versa: with growth comes investment, jobs, money for education, help for the weak and – most importantly – trust among the people. That is my conviction, a conviction that is based on my fundamental view of politics. (Merkel, 2009)

In this view – as summarised in a different occasion by Angela Merkel – ‘growth is not everything,’ because after decades of research showing beyond doubt that GDP does not measure human well-being, this now has to be acknowledged, ‘but without growth, everything is nothing’ (Merkel, 2003). This view of growth as a necessary condition of a functioning economy has become such deeply ingrained ‘common sense’ that without many people realising, it is dangerously impeding an unprejudiced look at current human predicaments, most importantly the climate catastrophe and mass extinction as well as deepening global inequalities. For example, the climate scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) largely ignore pathways without economic growth. This is not only a fundamental and consequential bias, but also serves to justify the apparent necessity of large-scale employment of dangerous negative emission technologies (Hickel et al., 2021; Kuhnhenn et al., 2020). Yet independent studies have demonstrated that achieving the necessary reductions in emissions is much more likely and perhaps only possible if industrialised countries move to policies beyond economic growth (Haberl et al., 2020; Hickel & Kallis, 2020; Parrique et al., 2019). If affluence is the problem, growth needs to be addressed as a core driver of climate change and cannot be ignored any longer (Schmelzer et al., 2022; Wiedmann et al., 2020). There are indeed many sections in the latest report of the IPCC’s Working Part 3, published in 2022, that acknowledge the difficulty and unlikelihood of achieving sufficient rates of decoupling GDP growth from emissions and environmental impact, thus pointing to the need for degrowth (Parrique, 2022).

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So yes, Greta is right – the fairy tale of eternal economic growth that can become sustainable, green, and climate-friendly is largely ‘empty words’ when confronted with the science – yet we are still in the grips of the ‘growth paradigm.’ Economic growth has become and largely remains what scholars from various fields, including renowned historians, have described as a ‘fetish’ (John R. McNeill) or ‘obsession’ (Barry Eichengreen, Elmar Altvater), an ‘ideology’ (Alan Milward, Charles S. Maier), a ‘social imaginary’ (Cornelius Castoriadis, Serge Latouche), or an ‘axiomatic necessity’ (Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen) (for references, see Schmelzer, 2016b). However, while growth is at the centre of both public and academic debates, the question of how economic growth attained its status as an overarching priority in the first place has not received much attention by historians, nor by researchers in other disciplines. Even more striking is the absence of any historical perspective in the various current efforts to overcome the focus on growth. Both the search for new statistical measures ‘beyond GDP’ and the lively debates about political alternatives to the growth fetish – post-growth or degrowth – often tend to be ahistorical in that they largely ignore and underestimate the long-term historical roots, path dependencies and power relations of statistical standards and the growth paradigm more generally. This chapter analyses how the pursuit of economic growth became a key priority taken for granted among social scientists, politicians and the general public. After analysing the emergence of expansionist ideas in the context of European colonisation and the industrial revolution, the article focuses on the invention of ‘the economy’ through statistical standards and sketches the historical making of the modern ‘growth paradigm’ in the post-war period by focusing on four entangled discourses. These claimed that GDP, with all its inscribed reductions and exclusions correctly measures economic activity, that its growth serves as a magic wand to solve all kinds of often changing key societal challenges, that growth was practically the same as some of the most essential societal ambitions such as progress, well-being or national power and that growth is essentially limitless.1

The Growth Paradigm in the History of Capitalism Considering the sweeping acceptance of the pursuit of growth as a key policy goal around the world it is easy to forget that not only the reality of economic expansion, but even more so growth as a key category of economic and public discourse is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. Although a highly ambivalent and elusive term, the semantic core of economic growth is statistically fixed. It is generally defined as the annual increase in the monetary value of all the goods and services produced within a country, including the costs of producing all the services provided by the govern The chapter is partly based on earlier work, including Schmelzer, 2015b; Schmelzer et al., 2022.

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ment (either measured as GNP or GDP). Before the 1820s, when economic growth accelerated in the context of the industrial revolution, economic activity around the world had been characterised by periodic ups and downs, only expanding by an average of 0.05% annually – as far as this can be measured retrospectively – and this was largely due to the slow increase of populations. Even more recently, the term ‘economic growth’ was not widely used before the middle of the twentieth century, during the 1950s it advanced to become a key notion, not only within economics and other social sciences, but also in political discourses and everyday speech (see Figure 1.1). 20

Economics 15

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Figure 1.1: Percentage of articles published in all academic journals in the JSTOR database that contain the term ‘economic growth,’ by discipline, 1930–2010. Source: Own calculations, based on Data for Research, http://dfr.jstor.org.

However, before delving into this more recent history of the modern growth paradigm it is key to situate the making of this core feature of the religion of capitalism (Benjamin, 1991) within longer-term developments that reach back to the onset of intensified capitalist industrialisation in the early eighteenth-century or even further, to debates about cornucopianism, alchemy and Baconian philosophy in the context of colonial expansions. At that time, a new set of perspectives and ideas emerged that legitimised, enabled and even drove the expansion of the world system and which

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also laid the foundation for the later development of the modern growth paradigm (Borowy & Schmelzer, 2017a; Dale, 2012; Jonsson, 2014). To begin with, the idea of the ‘development’ or ‘progress’ of human societies in a linear course of time had to be actively produced. Most known cultures of the past – as well as some contemporary communities – had a cyclical understanding of time of ‘eternal recurrence,’ interpreted their present as an abandonment from a mythical ideal past to be restored, or had some other, non-linear conception of time. Yet beginning with the renaissance and building on Christian apocalypticism, which assumed an absolute end point of human societies with the Last Judgement, concepts of abstract time and space emerged in Europe, in particular since the seventeenth century. The spread of the mechanical clock promoted changes in the understanding of time as objective, linear and countable. Geometry and cartography also enabled a new conceptualisation of land and territory as abstract, borderless, uniform and measurable space that can be emptied or filled as needed, clearly demarcated and traded as merchandise through property rights (Dale, 2012; Malm, 2016; Merchant, 1983; Scheidler, 2020). Early modern natural sciences not only promoted the idea of abstract nature but also argued that humans could dominate nature. In a mechanistic view of the world, nature and human labour were conceived of as mechanisms governed by laws and flows of energy that could correspondingly be manipulated and controlled (Caffentzis, 2013; Merchant, 1983; Radkau, 2002). Concepts and practices of linear time, abstract space and mechanical nature became key ideological building blocks of the capitalist colonisation of the planet. The practical treatment of all things and living beings as comparable, interchangeable and tradable, as well as the mechanistic understanding of nature based on linear thinking, were consolidated in colonialism. The plundering of the planet was thus justified by the idea that land, natural resources, the work of women and the colonised, and all life are to serve humankind and can therefore be possessed, exploited and changed at will (Ghosh, 2021; Grove, 2010; Klein, 2014). Beginning with the seventeenth century, these ideas underwent a secularised reformulation: a linear narrative of progress divided people into ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’ based on racist metrics, thus legitimising colonial expansions. At the height of imperialism and in early ‘development’ discourse, poor countries were seen to need outside intervention by European or American experts, to speed up their ‘development’ on a linear path of social and economic improvement. In the twentieth century, the linear narrative was economised, as general social progress was increasingly conflated with the expansion of production (Escobar, 1995; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Rist, 1996; Schmelzer, 2016b). Under capitalism, growth became the secular promise of redemption. The mechanistic understanding of nature also laid the foundation for eighteenthcentury European economists’ understanding of ‘the economy’ as a separate area of social life that is measurable and predictable like clockwork and which corresponded to changes to the world of work (Dale, 2012; Kallis et al., 2018). This sector of the formal economy was characterised throughout the nineteenth century by the spread of

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gainful employment as a male-dominated sector separate from the rest of life. At the same time, unpaid reproductive work became ‘housewifely’ – devalued, but necessary for the reproduction of labour-power. Thus, the invisibility and appropriation of unpaid reproductive work associated with wage labour that still characterises gender relations and the world of work today became historically entrenched (Barca, 2014; Komlosy, 2014; Moore, 2015; Salleh, 2017). Different disciplinary technologies, manifested in institutions such as factories, the military, prisons and schools, promoted the proletarianisation of labour. This change in work led to the monetarisation of more and more spheres of life and was accompanied by the suppression of relationships of reciprocity. This proletarianisation of previously subsistence-based communities, rooted in the system of wage labour, created a lock-in effect, where workers too depend on growth to satisfy their most basic needs as they are no longer able to survive outside of the capitalist system (Graeber, 2019; Komlosy, 2014; Osterhammel, 2015; Pineault, 2020). The social implementation of abstract concepts of time and space, a process that took centuries to reach the entire globe, symptomatically stands for the abstract logic of capitalist modernity: the practice of the – scientific, and above all economic – production of equivalences between completely different concrete realities. The fact that labour, land and many other things were made measurable and comparable, largely by means of an abstract standard of comparison expressed in money, created the conditions for exchanging everything for everything else (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2006). One of the more basic, and important, ways to understand growth is as an ideological construction, a collective myth that shapes modern societies and how we are told to see the world and ourselves in it. Many people do not realise that the concept of growth itself, applied to the economy, is a surprisingly recent invention. Even though there are various precursors – such as ‘development,’ ‘progress,’ or the much quoted ‘wealth of nations’ by Adam Smith – the term ‘economic growth’ has only been used since the middle of the twentieth century. It was not until the invention of GDP in the 1930s that growth in the modern sense could be measured, and it was not until the 1950s that it became the key ideology of capitalist and actually existing socialist societies. Since then, the idea that growth was desirable, necessary and essentially infinite has become common sense, selfevident and far-reaching, fundamentally shaping the political, social and economic developments on planet Earth (Schmelzer, 2016b). This increasingly global ideology, which plays a central role in the hegemonic stabilisation of modern societies, is the ‘growth paradigm.’

The Invention of ‘the Economy’ An important prerequisite for economic growth becoming so central to state governance was the invention of ‘the economy,’ as an independent sphere of social life based on specific laws which can be statistically recorded and measured. As early as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, political economy in England and France

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postulated economic development as a relatively autonomous sphere that seeks to balance itself through the famous ‘invisible hand.’ This process was considered to be clearly separated from nature and politics and to be determined by its own laws. The separation between economic, political and natural laws is at the basis of liberalism, a doctrine advancing minimal state intervention into the autonomous sphere of economic activities (Brown, 2015). But it was not until the 1930s and 1940s that economic experts, politicians, and, increasingly, the public began to understand ‘the economy’ as a self-contained totality where flows of money regulate the relationships between the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services within nationally organised borders (Mitchell, 2014). This idea, which today is widely taken for granted, replaced the older view in which economic processes were conceptualised as physical material and energy flows, which naturally gave rise to limits to growth. In contrast, the new measures, which aimed at ‘the speed and frequency with which paper money changed hands,’ seemed to be able to expand without limit, without being limited by physical or territorial boundaries (Mitchell, 2011, p. 139). The development of accounting techniques and statistical tools, in particular national accounts and GDP, was central to this understanding of ‘the economy.’ The latter was developed in the 1930s and 1940s in conjunction with Keynesian efforts to combat the Great Depression and as a tool for planning war economies and arms production in the United States and England during the Second World War. In GDP, the formerly fuzzy sphere of ‘the economy’ was crystallised into a technical object with clearly defined contents and boundaries. Put simply, GDP measures the sum of the monetary value of goods and services, produced by paid labour, sold in a given period of time (e.g., one year) in a given economic area (e.g., Greece, or, the world). Often, GDP is divided by the number of inhabitants of a country or region and then expressed as per capita GDP. Over time, this became a much-used measure of prosperity and used especially as a metric to compare different countries or different time periods (Coyle, 2014; Fioramonti, 2013; Lepenies, 2016; Philipsen, 2015; Schmelzer, 2016b). GDP has been criticised from different perspectives. In essence, the criticism is that GDP only measures the monetary value of goods and services produced through gainful employment. It does not distinguish between the positive and negative effects of these products and services on the well-being of a society and makes everything that is not paid for invisible. In addition, GDP measurements fail to consider who gets paid for which work and how this is distributed within a society. Furthermore, as shown by theories of (ecological) unequal exchange, GDP accounting obscures the massive transfers of value from the periphery of the world system to the core, Apple’s profits made through globalised production appearing in the United States’ GDP data, for instance (Smith, 2016; Hickel et al., 2021). This means that unpaid activities such as housework and care, self-sufficiency or voluntary work, as well as stewardship of the land are not reflected in GDP data. An increase in car accidents, for example, can therefore increase GDP through medical treatment, car repairs and so on – and so can environmental destruction, if it leads to more paid work. The growing production

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of wasteful packaging, discarded electronics and damaged and non-repairable equipment, or the monetarisation of entire areas of society that were previously not regulated by money, such as ride-sharing, all contribute to economic growth (Macekura, 2020; Schmelzer, 2023). Far less well known is the fact that all these controversies about the correct measurement of wealth and the economy can be traced back to the period of development and international standardisation of GDP in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Almost all leading economists in the middle of the twentieth century, including the ones who invented GDP, spoke out against using it as a yardstick for the prosperity of nations and for international or historical comparisons (Fioramonti, 2013; Schmelzer, 2016b; Waring, 1999). There were several conceptual differences between national traditions for measuring GDP and fundamental disagreements about the measurement method. Debates revolved around concepts such as externalities, unpaid housework and subsistence. Accordingly, different countries defined income in different ways. Some, for example, did count unpaid housework or, in addition to monetary values, accounted for material flows such as processed steel in kilograms. But governments and international organisations (especially the OECD and the UN) streamlined these intense academic debates, as they urgently needed comparative statistics to manage membership dues and international aid payments, and unified existing approaches by standardising a particular version of measurement in the early 1950s (Schmelzer, 2016b, 2016a). Since then, this statistical measuring method established itself in the capitalist West and then globally, making GDP the ‘world’s most powerful number’ (Fioramonti, 2013). Although the statistical measurement method has been constantly updated and adapted within the framework of the UN – primarily to deal with changes in the importance of trade and technological innovations – the core logic of ‘(mis-)measuring our lives’ through GDP has remained the same to this day (Macekura, 2020; Philipsen, 2015; Stiglitz et al., 2010). This modern, dematerialised understanding of ‘the economy’ made invisible how present-day economies fundamentally depend on an ever-increasing flow of energy and matter. Its implementation is closely linked to technical and geopolitical shifts in the twentieth century, which led to the explosion of the global energy supply and the total materials and land used in subsequent decades. Bear in mind that GDP is far more than a technical tool for measuring economic activity. It generates a whole grammar that not only shapes economics but also structures shared ideas of the world, above all, through its close connection to the growth paradigm. So, while economic growth is a highly ambivalent and elusive concept, its semantic core is statistically fixed: it is defined as the annual increase in GDP or per capita GDP and is usually expressed in percentages.

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The Growth Paradigm The international standardisation of statistical measurements of the economy was central to making growth a policy objective. Only through this universalised concept of ‘the economy,’ commensurable over time and space, did it become conceivable to measure what was to grow: the sum of market transactions within national borders. Only then did the idea that long-term, stable and unlimited growth was at all possible and desirable become established. In fact, in the political discussions of the early post-war period, the idea of economic growth was conspicuously absent. Rather, the central themes were full employment, stability and reconstruction. Before 1950, there was almost no interest at all in economic growth as a policy goal in political statements or economic literature (Dale, 2012; Mitchell, 2014; Schmelzer, 2016b). In the following years, however, growth catapulted to the top of the hierarchy of political goals. At the time, movements for decolonisation were rising up in former colonies around the world, the Cold War was in full swing and it became imperative to pacify class struggles in both the Global North and South. Something needed to be done to stabilise Western economic dominance and capitalist class relations. There needed to be a way to show conclusively the progress of capitalist economies. First declared the goal of national economic policy by the chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers in 1949, it became the globally accepted measure of progress from the mid-1950s onwards. The sociological modernisation theories developed by North American and European white men were framed as an irreversible and unilinear process of economic growth (Escobar, 1995; Salleh, 2017). Cold War competition further fuelled the race for growth, through which governments could show their economic dominance. Growth became the yardstick for comparing the productivity of capitalist and socialist economies. Emblematic of this crucial phase of the development of the growth paradigm is a 1958 statement by Nikita Khrushchev, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union: ‘Growth of industrial and agricultural production is the battering ram with which we will smash the capitalist system’ (cited in Schmelzer, 2016b, p. 163). Nation states thus entered into competition not for equality, emancipation or jobs, but for the rising quantity of goods and services they could produce. By the late 1950s, growth had become a central goal of economic policy and the most important indicator, tying growth and welfare together and equating them with the continuous expansion of market transactions. In this constellation, GDP became the first and general indicator of the modernity, prosperity, standard of living, development and prestige of countries. While the growth paradigm emerged in the Fordist post-war regime as a Keynesian, and interventionist expression of ‘high modernism,’ it was flexible enough to encompass neoclassical and liberal schools of economic thinking and to adapt to the shifts in economic reasoning. Rather than undermining the growth paradigm, what has been called the monetarist ‘counter-revolution,’ the ‘marketisation’ of economics, or the rise of ‘neoliberalism’ merely re-articulated growthmanship in a new guise. Ar-

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guments justifying the benefits of growth were adapted to highlight the so-called ‘trickle down’ argument according to which not state-sponsored redistribution, but the unhampered workings of growing markets would benefit even the most disadvantaged. Most fundamentally, instead of seeing government as the guarantor in charge of boosting growth in multiple policy fields and ensuring through welfare state policies that growth benefitted the majorities, this ‘antistatist growthmanship’ deemed government interventions that did not enable free-market activities as obstacles to growth. In the neoliberal growth regime ‘growth’ still carried the promises of employment, equality, welfare and rising living standards, which had been so central to its rise in the post-war era. But ‘sustained non-inflationary growth,’ the new reasoning went, now depended on open trade, functioning markets, all-out liberalisation, higher investments and – most generally – higher ‘profitability’ (Abdelal, 2007; Collins, 2000; Schmelzer, 2016b). While the ‘golden age’ still acted as a legitimating force, higher rates of unemployment, declining wages, rising inequality and welfare cuts were justified as necessary prerequisites of faster growth, which, so the promise went, would create more jobs and rising wages and living standards in the future. Wendy Brown has argued that in the 1980s the state was radically economised in three ways: The state secures, advances, and props the economy; the state’s purpose is to facilitate the economy, and the state’s legitimacy is linked to the growth of the economy – as an overt actor on behalf of the economy. State action, state purpose, and state legitimacy: each is economised by neoliberalism. (Brown, 2015, p. 64)

A focus on the rise of the growth paradigm however, shows that already from the 1950s onwards the expansion of the economy became what could be described as the raison d’état (Brown, 2015, p. 64). Government interventions all over the world became largely focused on maintaining a stable growth path and on creating and maintaining favourable investment conditions. In the West, the growth state stood at the centre of the democratic-capitalist constellation of the ‘golden age,’ the long phase of stability and rising prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century. The growth paradigm has played a key role in transforming the social discourse on how to distribute wealth: from a zero-sum game in which a fixed amount is distributed (so what some win, others loose), to a seemingly positive-sum game in which everyone benefits from the growing economic product and therefore has a common interest in economic growth. Growth promised to turn difficult political conflicts over distribution into technical, non-political management questions of how to collectively increase GDP, an ideology that only partially reflected reality within the capitalist core during the ‘golden age,’ and much less so from a global socio-metabolic perspective (Pineault, 2021). By thus transforming class and other social antagonisms into so-called win-win situations, it provided what could be called an ‘imaginary resolution of real contradictions’ and played a key role in producing the stable post-war consensus around em-

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bedded liberalism (Eagleton, 1991; Maier, 1977; Schmelzer, 2016b). In the West, growth made it possible to redirect the demands of the workers’ movement towards more participation and equality. In the East, it justified the lack of democracy and the failure of revolutionary ambitions. In the ‘developing countries’ – a category itself developed through the logic of the growth paradigm – it served in combination with the idea of ‘development’ as justification for the smashing of subsistence and traditional economies and the implementation of large-scale technical infrastructures after the formal end of colonialism, and further as a way to justify structural adjustment and the stripping of public goods (Kallis, 2018; Schmelzer, 2015a, 2016b). Growth thus helped to overcome the political focus on equality and redistribution, depoliticising the economy. As noted by an American economist and adviser to President Eisenhower: ‘Growth is a substitute for equality of income. As long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable’ (Wallich, 1972, p. 62). Moreover, by transforming contested and changing societal goals into technical economic problems, growth discourses have deeply colonised our imaginaries: They not only reinforced the dominance of economic thinking and arguments by turning political or social questions into economic problems (what could be called ‘economism’), but they also strengthened the privileged positions of economic technocrats within modern societies and underpinned the primacy of the economy over politics. Growthmanship was mutually reinforced along with the increasing importance of economic knowledge production as a key justificatory basis for policymaking within the modern state. The economists’ ability to measure, model and steer growth made them increasingly indispensable for managing modern societies based on growth and thus reinforced the ‘superiority of economists’ just as the expansion of economic approaches also strengthened the growth paradigm (Fourcade et al., 2015; Schmelzer, 2016b). Even though the mid-twentieth century saw the proliferation of growing armies of experts, ranging from international relations theorists to demographers, anthropologists, sociologists to agronomists, economists were the only ones who managed to claim the mastery over what had become a fetish throughout the world: economic growth. In fact, growth became presented as the common good, thus justifying the particular interests of those who benefitted most from the expansion of market transactions and capital accumulation as beneficial for all. The historian Charles S. Maier puts it in a nutshell: ‘The true dialectic was not one of class against class, but waste versus abundance’ (Maier, 1977, p. 615). Drawing on the definition of hegemony, as developed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (2011), growth appears as an unquestionable, positive value at the centre of a network of ideas and everyday common sense which justifies, and silently coerces people into, contemporary relations of power and hierarchy, including social relations of production such as wage work. By tightly linking ideas of emancipation and progress to economic growth, the growth paradigm became the normative ideal of modernity, not just in liberal circles, but also in socialist thought. Indeed, the power of this myth became so powerful that it captured most

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Per adult annual growth rate in wealth, net of inflation (%)

intellectual currents and social movements on the progressive left that want to overcome capitalism – which, as put by Eric Pineault, ‘have remained imprisoned in the imaginary of growth.’ (Pineault, 2020, p. 32). 9%

Richest 1/100 million (Top 50)

8% Top 1/10 million (Top 500)

7% 6%

Top 0.001%

5% 4% 3% 2%

The top 1%

The bottom 50%

captured 38% of global wealth growth

captured 2% of global wealth growth

1% 0

10

20

30

←1% poorest

40

50

60

70

Global wealth group

80

90

99.9

99.99 99.999

0.001% richest→

Figure 1.2: Average annual wealth growth rate, 1995–2021 (Chancel et al., 2022).

Economic growth has arguably become one of the key justificatory ideologies of capitalism. Not only large-scale inequalities – as recently publicised by Thomas Piketty (2014) – and the divergence of uneven development between rich and poor nations are justified as being of a temporary nature, to be overcome by more growth in the future, but similarly societal cleavages along the lines of class, race and gender. Recent research has shown, how skewed the global distribution of the benefits of economic growth are (Chancel et al., 2022): While the bottom 50 percent hardly benefitted at all from all the wealth growth between 1995 and 2021, the richest one percent of the global population captured 38 percent of it (see Figure 1.2). With climate change, resource limits and secular stagnation, this make-believe ‘resolution of real contradictions’ reveals itself as clearly ‘imaginary.’ Consequently, to dismantle the hegemony of growth, climate movements have to develop a profound and critical understanding of the real societal contradictions, hierarchies and power dynamics shaping capitalism and transform them in new ways beyond growth.

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Overcoming the Growthocene To conclude, overcoming what’s recently been called the ‘growthocene’ (Chertkovskaya & Paulsson, 2016) demands a thorough understanding of what we are up against, both materially and socially as well as ideologically. For the climate justice movement to be successful, it must do many things, including to debunk the ‘fairy tales of eternal economic growth,’ as Greta put it. This requires dismantling the growth paradigm that has deep historical roots and is embedded in and thus supported by powerful institutions and structures such as the nation-state, capitalism, established understandings of ‘the economy’ and the power of economists in societies. Of course, this is not all there is to be done, but it’s a key precondition for societal hegemony of systemic changes in the direction of climate justice (Schmelzer et al., 2022). Economic growth as a core feature of capitalism. Capitalism can be understood as society driven by accumulation (for more on this, see Schmelzer et al., 2022). From this perspective, growth can be understood as the materialisation of this dynamic of accumulation. To understand and dismantle the politics of growth today, we need to analyse economic growth as three interlinked processes that have evolved dynamically over time. First, as analysed in this chapter, growth is a relatively recent idea, the hegemony of which is the core ideology of capitalism, justifying the belief that growth is natural, necessary and good and that growth, as the increase of output and the development of productive forces, is linked to progress and emancipation. Second, growth is a social process that has long preceded the current hegemony of growth in contemporary society: a specific set of social relations resulting from and driving capitalist accumulation that stabilise modern societies dynamically and at the same time makes them dependent on expansive dynamics of growth, intensification and acceleration. Third, growth is a material process – the ever-expanding use of land, resources and energy and the related build-up of physical stocks, which fundamentally transforms the planet and increasingly threatens to undermine the foundations of growth itself (Borowy & Schmelzer, 2017b; Pineault, 2020; Schmelzer et al., 2022). These three each have their own self-reinforcing dynamics, which are nevertheless interlinked, fundamentally shaping how we live. ‘Economic growth’ thus not only describes the increase and acceleration of the monetary production economy – that, which is measured as GDP – but also a comprehensive material, social and cultural process of mutually constitutive dynamics of expansion. This process of expansion has transformed life and the entire planet over the last five centuries. For a part of humanity, especially in the Global North, this has drastically improved material living conditions and enabled successful social struggles for participation. For others, this process was accompanied by exploitation and the destruction of livelihoods. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, these intertwined dynamics of expansion are increasingly reaching their limits because they undermine the ecological, social and political foundations on which they are based.

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We have been told that the rising tide of growth will lift all ships if we do not rock the boat (meaning if we do not disturb the progressive unfolding of the forces of growth and accumulation). However, in the face of the ecological crises of ‘existential’ proportions, the opposite seems more accurate: If we do not rock the boat of growth and pull the emergency lever, all lower decks will soon drown (Dale 2018). If we do not switch tracks now, we will continue to be rocked by crisis after crisis until growth itself throws society from its own rails – violently. It’s time to dismantle the ‘fairy tale of eternal growth.’

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Parrique, T., Barth, J., Briens, F., Spangenberg, J., & Kraus-Polk, A. (2019). Decoupling debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability. EEB. https://eeb.org/wp-content/up loads/2019/07/Decoupling-Debunked.pdf [Accessed 22 November 2022]. Philipsen, D. (2015). The little big number: How GDP came to rule the world and what to do about it. Princeton University Press. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. Pineault, E. (2020). The growth imperative of capitalist society. In C. Burkhart, M. Schmelzer, & N. Treu (Eds.), Degrowth in movement(s): Exploring pathways for transformation (pp. 29–43). Zero. Pineault, E. (2021). The ghosts of progress: Contradictory materialities of the capitalist Golden Age. Anthropological Theory, 21(3), 260–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499620980292 Radkau, J. (2002). Natur und macht: Eine weltgeschichte der umwelt (Brosch. Sonderausg., 1. Aufl., aktualisierte und erw. Fassung der geb. Aufl. 2000). C.H. Beck. Rist, G. (1996). The history of development: From Western origins to global faith. Zed Books. Salleh, A. (2017). Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the postmodern. Zed Books. Scheidler, F. (2020). The end of the megamachine: A brief history of a failing civilization. Zero Books. Schmelzer, M. (2015a). Entwickelter Norden, unterentwickelter Süden? Wissenseliten, entwicklungshilfe und die konstruktion des Westens in der OEEC und OECD. Comparativ, 25(5), 18–35. Schmelzer, M. (2015b). The growth paradigm: History, hegemony and the contested making of economic growthmanship. Ecological Economics, 118, 262–271. Schmelzer, M. (2016a). Die vermessung, der wirtschaft: konstruktionen und kontroversen in der internationalen standardisierung der volkswirtschaftlichen gesamtrechnung, 1940er- und 50er-Jahre. In J. Maeße, H. Pahl, & J. Sparsam (Eds.), Die innenwelt der ökonomie: wissen, macht und performativität in der wirtschaftswissenschaft (pp. 287–310). Springer VS. Schmelzer, M. (2016b). The hegemony of growth. The OECD and the making of the economic growth paradigm. Cambridge University Press. Schmelzer, M. (2023). From Luddites to Limits to Growth? Towards a systematization of growth critiques in historical perspective. Globalizations. 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2106044 Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A., & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism. Verso. Smith, J. (2016). Imperialism in the twenty-first century: Globalization, super-exploitation and capitalism’s final crisis. Monthly Review Press. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2010). Mismeasuring our lives: Why GDP doesn’t add up. New Press. Thunberg, G. (2019, September 23). Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Action Summit. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climateaction-summit [Accessed 22 November2022] Wallich, H. C. (1972). Zero growth. Newsweek. Waring, M. (1999). Counting for nothing: What men value and what women are worth. University of Toronto Press. Wiedmann, T., Lenzen, M., Keyßer, L. T., & Steinberger, J. K. (2020). Scientists’ warning on affluence. Nature Communications, 11(1), 3107. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y

Anitra Nelson

2 Degrowth: Monetary and Nonmonetary Economies Abstract: Capitalism cannot be defined without recourse to money. Capital is money making more money. Similarly, ‘growth’ is a monetary concept. In contrast, the qualitative emphasis of ‘degrowth’ implies nonmonetary economies based on ‘real values,’ i.e., social and ecological values. Given that many degrowth policy proposals leave intact, or even rely on, a market economy and that alternative-money frameworks are popular, this chapter argues that a money-free in-kind economy has greater potential than any kind of monetary economy for degrowth visions and transitionary strategies. From a transformational perspective, the Unconditional Autonomy Allowance model appearing in the 2009 Degrowth: Platform for Convergence and later developed and summarily updated in Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (Liegey & Nelson, 2020) allows for self-organisation on a hybrid monetary and nonmonetary model. Following Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy, (Nelson, 2022) this chapter shows why degrowth demands a glocal nonmonetary economy based on a community mode of production characterised by commoning, why the transition requires an emphasis on degrowth experimentation of a nonmonetary kind and the essentials of how a nonmonetary glocal society might operate. Keywords: money, value, degrowth, nonmonetary economies, capitalism, post-capitalism, growth Certain elaborations and interventions in degrowth debates propose that degrowth requires a nonmonetary economy to fully flower. At the same time, most degrowth proposals for institutional and policy changes leave intact, or even rely on, a market economy (for a policy review, see Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). Still, the proposition that degrowth is to growth as quality is to quantity centres the nonmonetary position. Moreover, production for trade is fractured into secretive and competing individual firms without operating systems to degrow and this stymies the development of degrowth within capitalism. This is one reason why newcomers to the concept tend to misinterpret degrowth as austerity, economic downturn and poverty. Indeed, eliminating or reducing activity within capitalism tends to collapse, not just of the economy but of society in socio-political terms given that capitalists manage both production and trade, while they and others rely on such production to gain both basic needs and wants. The capitalist state is a key institution provisioned by and maintaining this order. Moreover, reducing production for trade would have

Anitra Nelson, Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne, Australia https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-005

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markedly uneven impacts and the generic impact of inflation. Consequently, a majority of degrowth activists and scholars offer policies for monetary and financial reform and experiment with alternative currencies, as if these are both necessary and sufficient strategies to advance and transition to degrowth. For instance, prominent degrowth advocate Jason Hickel (2022, pp. 4, 11) calls for ‘a post-growth and postcapitalist economy’ while arguing that ‘markets, trade, and businesses existed for thousands of years before capitalism, and are innocent enough on their own.’ In contrast, a minority of degrowth activists and scholars observe and argue that degrowth points in critically anti-systemic directions in a monetary sense, and that this needs to be addressed strategically through advocacy and experimentation with nonmonetary models of economy and society. Their arguments go as far as suggesting that to institute degrowth requires a revolutionary transformation to societies that operate without money. They outline the benefits in socio-political terms – no money, no capitalists. The mainsprings of the position that degrowth requires a nonmonetary economy have become more conspicuous in recent years. Contributors include degrowth advocates such as Exner (2014), Exner et al. (2020), Leahy (2011; 2021, Chapter 4), Widmer (2018) and works of other authors referred to later in this chapter. I have presented papers and convened workshops at various degrowth conferences, and beyond, arguing this position, prominently in the collection Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (Nelson and Timmerman, 2011); in the article ‘Your money or your life’: Money and socialist transformation (Nelson, 2016); and in Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy (Nelson, 2022a). This work exposes the notorious weaknesses of market economies, characterised as they are by social inequities and ecological unsustainability. Significantly, in Beyond Money a constructive ‘real valuist’ way forward is presented, avoiding the rather defensively and antagonistically worded ‘non-market’ socialist and ‘nonmonetary’ arguments more generally. This chapter summarises key points made in such works by showing that social inequities and ecological unsustainabilities are generated by monetary economies, how making profits and its generic expression ‘growth’ is endemic to capitalist practices and how the state is implicated within the market and its hub, money. Central planning, alternative currencies and cooperatives do not substantially confront the free rein of capitalist practices producing inequities and unsustainabilities. Beyond logical arguments, certain findings of practical degrowth case studies point in the nonmonetary direction. A sketch of how a world without money might operate to be equitable and sustainable is offered before the conclusion.

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Inequities and Unsustainability The two great challenges of social inequities and ecological unsustainability are central to the aims and strategic concerns of degrowth activists. We need economic practices that deliver everyone’s basic needs, neither more nor less; the degrowth principle of equity requires economies based on ‘enough’ or ‘sufficiency.’ Moreover, we need to integrate the regenerative needs of Earth – non-human nature or the environment – into everyday economies of care and reproduction characterised by ecological efficiency, all of which is a radical departure from production for trade. Market economies are not designed to fulfil everyone’s basic needs. Money is both a carrot and a stick within market-based societies. Access to the all-providing market is limited by whether you have any, or enough, money. In dynamic ways monetary systems – conceptually misconceived as centred on equal exchange and, therefore, equality – as such reproduce and exaggerate inequities. Similarly, monetary minimum income schemes based on a set amount of money per capita, or household, inevitably fail to account for people’s and household’s diverse socio-material needs and Earth’s ecological needs. Most significantly for Earth, market economies have tendencies to extraction, overproduction and wastage, with multiple social impacts from insufficiency to over-consumption. In short, both production for trade and markets are ineffective at satisfying the basic needs of either people or Earth. Capitalist owners, investors and managers decide what is produced and how it is produced based on monetary rationale. Their accounting is based on calculations involving costs and prices and they make decisions so that their investment results in a greater amount of money (M—>M'). The peculiarly capitalist dualism separating Earth and people is rooted in capitalist managers’ everyday practices of substituting and limiting concerns with social and ecological values through their dominating interest in monetary values, units, indicators and processes. Monetary activities in competitive market economies pressure producers to exploit Earth as well as people. Clearly systemic failings of market structures and processes beget societies characterised by inequality and unsustainability. The lack of collective control over and secrecy surrounding privatised production, competition and associated marketing and waste, together with uncertainties around sufficiency of private monetary savings, all contribute to anxiety around each of us having as much money, commodities and assets as we can. The dominant value, money, contorts and eradicates social and ecological values. In contrast, degrowth critiques and visions concentrate on real values. A concept of real values – namely social and ecological values – saturates nonmonetary perspectives, economies and societies based on the degrowth principles of minimising inequities, providing for all and respecting Earth’s limits. Political economist and director of the German Museum of War Economy at Leipzig, Otto Neurath (1882–1945), refers to such money-free economies as in-kind economies (O’Neill, 1995). In a real value community mode of production, with monetary values absent, a commun-

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ity’s key concerns can focus on satisfying local social needs within the limits of the local natural environs. Co-governance is at the heart of collective activities oriented around achieving collective sufficiency. Many voices decide which need-satisfiers to produce, what quantities will be most appropriate and how and where to produce them. As the local economy is highly collectively sufficient, decision-makers understand and continuously integrate learnings about the ecological implications of production within their locale. These understandings are part and parcel of the realm of real values, which stretches far beyond concepts of ‘use-values’ limited to human qualities and purposes. As such real values are multifaceted, multidimensional, changing over time and space as social needs and environmental conditions alter within money-free economies (Nelson, 2022a, pp. 48–50, 100–101).

Making Profits and Economic Growth Acting as the grand comparator, the so-called ‘universal equivalent,’ money, effectively becomes both a central enabler and determinant of capitalist dynamics of competition, efficiency, profit and growth (Marx, 1976 [1867], pp. 159–63). Managing private production for trade, for the market, requires minimising inputs and maximising outputs simply in order to minimise risks associated with recouping one’s investment – let alone with a focus on making money, i.e., a profit. Firms can and do sustain losses or negative growth for certain, even extended, periods of time, but only by drawing on savings, arranging to borrow money, delaying payments or having debts forgiven. Otherwise, they wind up or go bankrupt. Production for the market is so uncertain that economic survival requires seeking as much money and losing as little money as possible at every point in deeply intertwined financial, productive and commercial processes. So, reducing production – or even keeping production stable – without reinvestment in another profitable activity carries risks of economic suicide or at least loss of capital (security, status and power within this system). Despite calls to reconstruct market economies without either profit-making or interest-bearing loans, the systemic pressures endemic to markets would seem to make such models impossible. Most significantly such economies have never evolved in practice. Clearly, the competitiveness and secrecy of capitalist firms pressures them all to sell as much as possible, demand as high a price as consumers can bear and expand their market. The profit imperative is associated with uncertainties around input and output prices, especially future prices. Because of all these uncertainties, managers are circumstantially forced to set an asking price that they estimate will be the maximum current price that purchasers are likely to be prepared to pay. Consequently, there is an incessant focus on trade, making profits and expanding production for trade, which escalates private ownership and the social reproduction of monetary val-

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ues, all of which constitutes generic economic growth. In short, profit-making is an essential buffer systemically created within production for trade to enable individuated enterprises to operate.

Class, State and Money Market-based societies are characterised by conflicts between capitalists and workers whose interests are clearly opposed. Yet both primary classes appear to be satisfied under conditions of strong growth, which becomes a further systemic pressure to make profits and grow the economy. This is the capitalist state’s balance point, offering states status from the perspectives of workers, capitalists and foreign political and economic powers. Of course, capitalist economies are not solely constituted by capitalist ownermanagers and workers. There are spheres of non-working investors; of dependents on owners, managers and workers; and of those marginalised from the market yet dependent on state or non-state welfare generally in the form of monetary incomes. So, the market becomes the source of satisfying everyone’s needs and wants. Yet production for the market is wholly dependent on decisions made by capitalist ownermanagers. As Geoff Mann (2022) points out, ‘Everything is premised on the assumption that Capital decides, and Labour does what it’s told.’ Thus owner-managers have more or less total control over what is produced, and how and where it is produced. Wrought by secretive plans and competition, they are united on defending the market and production for trade as the seat of their power, orchestrated via capitalist states. In contemporary late-stage capitalism, the state’s power revolves in essential ways on its monetary conduct and influence. Within competitive global capitalism, the relative power of states generally boils down to their present power in terms of national and international producers and traders. In fact, following state theories of money, the very constitution of states essentially relies on money. In the practices of temples and palaces as centres of power to which tributes were regularly paid – and from which the state eventually evolved – we find the origins of money as we know it, the hub of markets that are central to the capitalist mode of production, production for trade. As outlined by Paul (2020, pp. 42–3), the staff of Sumerian temples were paid in the shekel – ‘the first monetary unit we know of that remained valid for thousands of years’ – which evolved as a unit of account for comparable or substitutable in-kind tributes, appearing as tokens via ‘receipts’ signed off by both deliverer and receiver. Temple administrators identified a series of quantities of goods and services as equivalent for the purpose of fulfilling ruling class levies, enabling their worth to be expressed in shekel ‘prices’ for regulatory purposes. Around this time a linear calendar develops, enabling the setting of contractual times and dates so a restricted market

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and loans repaid with interest can evolve. Paul (2020, p. 43) concludes that, in Mesopotamia, ‘central planning gave birth to the market’ even if it takes until the fifth century BCE for a society oriented around market and money to arise in Athens based on the Tetradrachm currency. Following Paul (2020, pp. 48–49), a medium and symbol representing an abstract unit of account, coins, are introduced mid-sixth century BCE in Lydia, having arisen in the seventh century BCE as stamped pieces of electrum with which soldiers, and possibly others, are paid. These tokens, so the theory goes, stimulate free markets via a currency in which taxes can be paid. So, by the fourth century BCE, Plato and Aristotle can discuss money as a vital organising tool. Notably – because capitalism, as such, does not yet exist – monetary practices already embrace spurious uses for unjust gain, in short interest and profit. Here we see the development of money, markets and state as symbiotic. Similarly, private property develops from and with production for trade. The existence and grandesse of the state rely on monetary taxes, loans, subsidies and welfare. Standing alongside this unit of account as money of its realm, capitalists rely on a stable state to support that money, to regulate conditions for capitalist competition and for the smooth reproduction of their power. As such, capitalists, the capitalist state, markets and money are a veritable amalgam of power, always expansive, rationalising their roles in the world in monetary ways and language. Money is central to the discourse and all the primary practices forming the major relations of those living within capitalism. This paradigm is the black box within which resistance and would-be revolutionaries remain contained unless they can break through with an alternative vision and successful strategies to embed a new social order. As such, the ‘how’ of degrowth is the single biggest challenge facing the movement in the 2020s.

Central Planning and Alternative Currencies Some degrowth and steady-state economy advocates propose that either a centrally planned or much more highly regulated economy can avoid anti-social and antiecological outcomes regarding production and distribution via markets. However, in as much as products and services are marketed, demand and supply failures continue with risks of wastage and scarcity and anti-social and anti-ecological implications. Administrators, such as planners, at the top of the implicit hierarchy of centralised planning still have imperfect knowledge and foresight, yet make decisions affecting what, how much and how things are produced. Where trade is conducted with external parties, issues of unfair trade and so on persist. All these conditions risk less than optimum outcomes for the majority at the grassroots. The central planning route to degrowth is favoured mainly by a minority in the movement who are economists, especially of a ‘steady-state economy’ persuasion, or socialists. Nevertheless, a range of

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proposed degrowth strategies and policies often point towards this kind of direction (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). Other activists are attracted to cooperative structures (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). But even so-called not-for-profit worker cooperatives produce for trade and aim to make a profit, although that profit is generally dispersed in ways beneficial to the cooperative, the workers and even the wider community. At the same time, cooperatives are notoriously limited regarding their governance. It is rare to find a cooperative under direct governance of the wider community and, even then, if it operates within markets for sourcing inputs or delivering outputs, then flows connecting producers and consumers outside the governance circle determine many decisions. Other degrowth activists and reformists seek out and experiment with monetary and financial reforms, such as community-based currencies and community banks, imagining that they will suffice for a degrowth future or at least are necessary as a transitionary measure. There are several arguments against these kinds of proposals made, for instance, by Hornborg (2019) and Mellor (2017). The primary function of money is as a unit of account, whereby the average of a range of transactions results in a series of market prices for goods and services. Such prices are determined by anthropocentric calculations, pressures and assumptions more or less independent of communal and ecological concerns. Transactions and production for such trade are not determined by basic needs of all or by the ecological sustainability of Earth. Given that prices are based on a simplistic and singular unit of account and wholly independent of efficiently satisfying the regenerative needs of Earth and people, alternative currencies that substitute for the formal currency tend to replicate many of the main weaknesses of state money. A community bank has similar problems. The activities of banks centre on money, and institutionally limit the number of community members involved in conferring funds to one purpose rather than another. Subsequently, alternative currencies and community banks seem likely to result in marginally more benign and beneficial outcomes but do little in terms of transforming socio-economic and political relations towards a model of effective and efficient satisfaction of the basic needs of people and Earth (Nelson, 2022a). Right now, there is the serious pressure of time for degrowth (and other) activists to directly institute immediately successful measures to embed ecological sustainability and sharing and caring for everyone. There is little point in activists identifying the current period as a climate, ecological and socio-political emergency without working quickly and effectively at change directly themselves. After all, at the appropriate moment, even the snail executes a decisive design change by simply folding its spiral development back on itself. The market-oriented weaknesses of the models already discussed are minimised in small self-governing communities with localised economies based on real values. This is because producers are self-same consumers, and their erstwhile dependents are involved in decision-making, and all share the tasks of solving problems. Here cogovernance is efficient from holistic perspectives of social equity, ecological sustain-

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ability and the well-being of both an individual and the community within which they live. Moreover, in the model sketched in this chapter’s penultimate section such communities are not insular or remote but, rather, glocally interconnected and integrated. ‘Glocal’ refers to universal, global, principles applied and operating in locally customised ways, and allows for fit for purpose regional, cross-continent and intercontinental networks at various scales.

Practical Advances The 2009 Degrowth: Platform for Convergence (Liegey & Nelson 2020, pp. 158–62) calls for relocalised economies, encourages use of ‘local currencies and other non-speculative exchange systems,’ lifts pressures to do paid work through an unconditional autonomy allowance (UAA) and expands free public services, including access to water and land. This set of hybrid strategies – seated in this world, pointing to another – makes paid work less attractive via a maximum limit on monetary incomes and over-consumption difficult through high prices for excess use. Similarly, the more detailed UAA strategies and themes developed later in Liegey et al. (2013) are characterised by a hybrid of monetary, alternative currency and free access, publicly organised and delivered services and goods. This approach highlights ‘repoliticisation – implementing democratic debates on defining basic needs and how to self-organise locally to satisfy them in sustainable and fair ways’ (emphasis in the original, Liegey & Nelson 2020, p. 163). This elaboration clearly identifies ‘levers,’ such as ‘cultural transformation’ and ‘progressive demonetisation’ but is vague around roles (or not) for money (Liegey & Nelson 2020, p. 169). A rationale for leaving such implicit contradictions in visions and scenarios for transformation is to remain open to findings of agents of change as they experiment to forge the most effective outcomes in local circumstances. On the ground, activist experimentation in creating degrowth formations – actually existing clusters of integrated degrowth activities, pointing in prefigurative ways towards a degrowth future – gain pace. The activism of Vincent Liegey and other cofounders who remain active participants in the Cargonomia degrowth formation is a classic example (Cargonomia, 2022). Budapest’s Cargonomia evolved by integrating three pre-existing enterprises with similar social and ecological values. Cyclonomia is a do-it-yourself bicycle social cooperative. Zsamboki Biokert is a micro-farm growing organic vegetables and an agricultural community education centre. Some food grown there is distributed weekly as vegetable boxes to city households. Kantaa is a selforganised bike messenger and delivery company. Cargonomia has grown, developing partnerships, including with the city council, and acts as a degrowth social centre, communication hub and forum within Budapest.

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Insights from such degrowth experimentation suggest that nonmonetary economies are beneficial and even necessary. Jones and Ulman (2021, p. 30) describe their transition to localised ‘belonging economies’ as switching a sense of security oriented around money and supermarkets to gift exchanges and sharing. ‘Instead we are framed within a wheel of ecological culture,’ they write: what makes us feel secure is our bicycle maintenance knowledge, a full cellar of preserves, ferments and stored fresh produce, a diverse bank of saved seeds, a full wood stack and, perhaps most importantly, our ability to relate, care for and rely on, a diverse range of people in our region made up of family, friends, and community allies. (Jones & Ulman, 2021, p. 30)

Moreover, in their 2015 survey, Daněk and Jehlička (2021, p. 41) found that the majority of 2058 Czech home and allotment gardeners not only grow food sustainably but also share their food produce in non-reciprocal, nonmonetary ways with non-kin living within 10 km. Similarly, the glocal and purposively degrowth and ecologically beneficial community-supported agriculture (CSA) project CSA Veneto (Italy) ‘brings together volunteering and self-employment, not-for-market work in neighbourhoods and among friends and, above all, self-provisioning, nonmonetised production and producer-consumer cooperatives’ (Cristiano et al., 2021, p. 97). In all these case studies degrowth is expressed by self-provisioning and sharing, producing with convivial technologies and in more ecological and socially convivial ways, substantially breaking from production for markets and market exchange organised along monetary principles and processes. Similar characteristics appear in diverse cases of housing for degrowth (Nelson & Schneider, 2018), where intentionally modest eco-collaborative housing (such as specific examples of co-housing and ecovillages) offer social and ecological efficiencies, pointing to degrowth and nonmonetary futures (Nelson, 2018a, pp. 214–37). This is the case for the Twin Oaks Community in rural Virginia (US), a co-governing communal economy where members work a set number of hours per week while collective effort satisfies their basic needs mainly in kind (Kincade with the Twin Oaks Community, 2011). Similarly, Verco (2018, pp. 99–108) describes the around 900 inhabitants who have occupied around 85 acres of Copenhagen (Denmark) to constitute Christiania, as implicitly degrowth in a range of ways. Verco points to their high level of consensual decision-making within self-organisation, how they partially collectivise their costs of living and their efforts to decommodify housing. Here housing rights and responsibilities are collectively arranged and treated in terms of real values, without recourse to concepts of rent or private ownership. As with Twin Oaks, people come, are allocated spaces in buildings, contribute to building and often at some point leave yet the buildings remain under common governance of those living there. Cattaneo (2011, 2018) outlines several degrowth advances associated with political squatting, specifically exercising autonomous co-governance at a household level and practicing, and benefiting from, collective solidarity. Without the costs of rent or mortgage payments, and with real value efficiencies of collective living and sharing,

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occupants can avoid paid labour to spend more time in collective degrowth activities. A range of models, such as the German Mietshäuser Syndikat (Hürlin, 2018) and the UK Radical Routes (2022), effectively draw particular dwellings out of either mainstream real estate trading or tenant-landlord models, which offer further strategies for a transition to holistic degrowth practices. Degrowth activist-scholars, such as Sam Bliss (2022) and Kristofer Dittmer (2014), increasingly interrogate such models, questioning not just finance but money and its alternatives. My experiences of certain nonmonetary practices within collective living at the Round the Bend Conservation Cooperative (peri-urban Melbourne, Victoria) and Commonground (rural Victoria) have offered similar Australian cases for theoretical analysis and practical learnings (Nelson, 2018b, pp. 245–54; Nelson, 2022a, footnote p. 173).

A World without Money The very brief sketch of a community mode of production based on commoning in this section draws from both a detailed presentation in Beyond Money (Nelson, 2020, chapter 3) and, in particular, the script for a short eight-minute film Beyond Money: Yenomon (Nelson, 2022b). This imaginary is not designed to be prescriptive but rather to give content to discussions of a world without money which might be difficult to visualise otherwise. It is a world based on real values, social and ecological values, where co-government replaces money as the organising principle of a society. It is glocal, so diverse and unique local communities all follow the global principles of living based on meeting everyone’s basic needs and the regenerative needs of Earth. This is achieved by small co-governing, relatively collectively sufficient communities deciding altogether what is made, grown and done and for whom. Communities share knowledge, skills and productive responsibilities mainly within their locale, but maintain strong communication, interaction and concerns with neighbouring communities and those beyond. Communities form joint approaches to similar or common challenges and share responsibilities and outputs from conjoined nodes of production. There are no patents. There is no intellectual property. A global internet hub enables everyone to share their ideas, designs, techniques, technologies and organisational innovations. Imagine a global network of collectively sufficient, cell-like communities each responsible for the sustainability of the local environs off which they live. Communities of various sizes living within sub-bioregions offering direct efficient ways of fulfilling their needs, producing locally, close to end-users. Imagine each diverse empowered community caring for Earth, organised horizontally, relatively autonomous and seamlessly networked globally. There is personal property but no private property. The en-

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tire Earth is commons with clear and universal principles for commoning, sharing land through secure and fair use-rights. Everyone contributes a set amount of time to collective production. In return, everyone’s basic needs are met. Each household guesstimates their basic needs annually. Working groups report on the capacity of the local area and capability of locals to fulfil these various needs. Their plans are revised and adjusted. All community members plan how to create and care for things and decide who gets what in assemblies and other horizontally organised processes. Then, all year round, they work and monitor and tweak how to fulfil those orders, reporting back to the community at assemblies to revise as necessary. Once established, planning for the basic needs of all members mainly relies on updating previous calculations and taking account of seasonal, natural factors. They produce say corn, apples, solar electricity, potable water and clothes for particular, already specified, people. This is production on demand. Money or markets are unnecessary, superfluous. Every service or thing created goes to those who ordered them. At the same time, community members discuss and negotiate ‘compacts’ to produce for and to receive from neighbouring (or more distant) communities those goods and services that they cannot find or make locally. They don’t overconsume or go without or waste. They pass on or leave things that they don’t need in spaces for others to use them. They have collective stores for emergencies and to fill unforeseen gaps. As necessary or appropriate, such free things are shared with neighbouring and further flung communities. So, production for trade, markets and money are replaced with local decision-making, direct production on demand and distribution on the basis of need. In short, decision-making focusses on diverse real, biophysical, ecological and social measures and values. All these values and qualities go far beyond simple use-values related to the purposes and functions they have for consumers, users, as described by economists such as Marx (1976 [1867], pp. 125–31). A tree is understood in ways much more akin to the practices and perspectives of ecologically alert Indigenous people, as the source and beneficiary of multiple values for different ecological beings. If it bears fruit, such as apples, we can quantify them in terms of a number or weight. Such quantities can be compared with other fruit or like values in the context of how they contribute to the community’s and locale’s well-being. There is no false and simplistic equivalent, such as money as we know it, to compare the incomparable. The reward for contributing to collective daily tasks is lifelong security of communally meeting all peoples and Earth’s basic needs. People engage together respectfully to make decisions on local production, and on the terms of exchange agreed to in compacts with producers beyond our community. Real, social and ecological, values offer the democratic and materialist terms for replacing money as the organising principle of society. Collectively satisfying everyone’s basic needs, they are able to fulfil their real human potential as creative, active beings with real freedom, real liberation, real power.

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Conclusion The ‘how’ of degrowth is the single biggest challenge facing the movement in the 2020s. This chapter focusses specifically on what money is and its strategic significance as a key topic of concern for discussion and experimentation within the movement with respect to how we achieve degrowth. I have tried to show why degrowth demands a glocal nonmonetary economy based on a community mode of production characterised by commoning, why the transition requires an emphasis on degrowth experimentation of a nonmonetary kind and the essentials of how a nonmonetary glocal society might operate. The point is that money leads to capital(ism) and capitalism requires growth specifically due to its monetary nature. Therefore, going beyond growth demands going beyond money. Even if it didn’t, would we want money to remain the organising principle of our societies? Isn’t it preferable to reappropriate its power through collective self-governance based on real values?

References Bliss, S. (2022). Decommodifying food. Doctoral thesis submitted to Gund Institute for Environment (Economics for the Anthropocene Initiative), University of Vermont, Burlington (VT), US. Cargonomia (2022). Who are we. https://cargonomia.hu/who-we-are/?lang=en [Accessed: 25 November 2022]. Cattaneo, C. (2011). The money-free autonomy of Spanish squatters. In A. Nelson, & F. Timmerman (eds.), Life without money: Building fair and sustainable economies (pp. 192–213). Pluto Press. Cattaneo, C. (2018). How can squatting contribute to degrowth? In A Nelson, & F. Schneider (eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 44–53). Routledge. Cristiano, S., Auriemma, M., Cacciari, P., Cervesato, M., Maffeo, D., Malgaretto, P., & Nordio, F. (2021). Nourishing self-planned socioecological transformations: Glocal community-supported agriculture in Veneto, Italy. In A. Nelson, & F. Edwards (eds.), Food for degrowth: Perspectives and practices (pp. 90–99). Routledge. Daněk, P., & Jehlička, P. (2021). Quietly degrowing: Food self-provisioning in Central Europe. In A. Nelson, & F. Edwards (eds.), Food for degrowth: Perspectives and practices (pp. 33–44). Routledge. Degrowth: Platform for convergence. Constitutional convention of the Association of Objectors to Growth (19 September) in Beaugency (France). In V. Liegey, & A. Nelson (2020), Exploring degrowth: A critical guide (pp. 158–62). Pluto Press. Dittmer, K. (2014, September). Alternatives to money-as-usual in ecological economics: A study of local currencies and 100 percent reserve banking. [Doctoral thesis submitted to the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona]. Exner, A. (2014). Degrowth and demonetization: On the limits of a non-capitalist market economy. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 25(3): 9–27. Exner, A., Morgan, J., Nahrada, F., Nelson, A., & Siefkes, C. (2020). Demonetize: The problem is money. In C. Burkhart, M. Schmelzer, & N. Treu (eds.), Degrowth in movement(s): Exploring pathways for transformation (pp. 159–171). Zero Books.

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Fitzpatrick, N., Parrique T., & Cosme, I. (2022). Exploring degrowth policy proposals: A systematic mapping with thematic synthesis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022. 132764 Hickel, J. (2022). A new political economy for a healthy planet. In Reimagining the Human-Environment Relationship for Stockholm +50. United Nations Centre for Policy Research, United Nations Environment Programme. Hornborg, A. (2019). Nature, society, and justice in the Anthropocene: Unraveling the money-energy-technology complex. Cambridge University Press. Hürlin, L. (2018). Mietshäuser Syndikat: Collective ownership, the ‘housing question’ and degrowth. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 233–43). Routledge. Jones, P., & Ulman, M. (2021). Replacing growth with belonging economies: A neopeasant response. In A. Nelson, & F. Edwards (eds.) Food for degrowth: Perspectives and practices (pp. 19–32). Routledge. Kincade, K. with the Twin Oaks Community. (2011). In A. Nelson, & F. Timmerman (eds.) Life without money: Building fair and sustainable economies (pp. 173–191). Pluto Press. Leahy, T. (2011). The gift economy. In A. Nelson, & F. Timmerman (eds.), Life without money: Building fair and sustainable economies (pp. 111–135). Pluto Press. Leahy, T. (2021). The politics of permaculture. Pluto Press. Liegey, V., & Nelson, A. (2020). Exploring degrowth: A critical guide. Pluto Press. Liegey, V., Madelaine, S., Ondet, C., & Veillot, A.-I. (2013) Un projet de décroissance, Manifeste pour une dotation inconditionnelle d’autonomie. Éditions Utopia. Mann, G. (2022, 18 August). ‘Reversing the freight train,’ London Review of Books, 44(16). https://www.lrb. co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train [Accessed: 25 November 2022] Marx, K. (1976 [1867]). Capital: A critique of political economy. Volume I. Penguin Books with New Left Review. Mellor, M. (2017, August). Money for the people, Great Transition Initiative. http://www.greattransition.org/ publication/money-for-the-people [Accessed 24 November2022] Nelson, A., & Timmerman, F. (Eds.) (2011). Life without money: Building fair and sustainable economies, Pluto Press. Nelson, A. (2016) ‘Your money or your life’: Money and socialist transformation. Capitalism Nature Socialism 27(4), 40–60. Nelson, A. (2018a) Small is necessary: Shared living on a shared planet, Pluto Press. Nelson, A. (2018b). Non-monetary eco-collaborative housing. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (eds.) (2018). Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 245–54). Routledge. Nelson, A. (2022a). Beyond money: A postcapitalist strategy. Pluto Press. Nelson, A. (Dir.) (2022b). Beyond Money: Yenomon. Short film, 7 mins 45 secs. https://vimeo.com/722765718 [Accessed: 20 February 2023]. Nelson, A., & Schneider, F. (Eds.) (2018). Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities. Routledge. O’Neill, J. (1995). In partial praise of a positivist: The work of Otto Neurath. Radical Philosophy, 74 (November/December), 29–38. Paul, A. T. (2020). Money and society: A critical companion, Pluto Press. Radical Routes. (2022) Aims and principles. https://www.radicalroutes.org.uk/aboutrr/ [Accessed: 20 February 2023]. Verco, N. (2018) Christiania: A posterchild for degrowth? In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 99–108). Routledge. Widmer, H. (2018). Neighbourhoods as the basic module of the global commons. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 156–70). Routledge.

Maja Hoffmann, Maro Pantazidou and Tone Smith

3 Critiques of Work: The Radical Roots of Degrowth Abstract: Critiques of work are at the roots of degrowth. Early degrowth pioneers, in particular Gorz and Illich as well as the French décroissance tradition, placed considerable emphasis on overcoming the centrality of work in the organisation of society. However, more recent degrowth authors have largely been inconsistent or conflicting in the stance they take towards work. This contribution traces the development of degrowth thought with regard to work and critiques of work, from its roots in the 1970s until the present. It finds that at large, current degrowth debates do not embrace their postwork roots or engage with the postwork literature that has re-emerged over the last decade. At the same time, work is a prominent topic on the degrowth agenda and despite certain contradictions, degrowth remains open for critical work scholarship. For future degrowth debates, we argue that the perspectives of critiques of work and critiques of growth are natural allies and that a genuinely critical and radical degrowth debate should again adopt a clearer stance towards work. From engaging once more with postwork perspectives, degrowth could gain a more profound analysis of the unsustainable status quo and renewed momentum as a much-needed corrective in sustainability debates. Keywords: work society, critique of work, postwork, Gorz, Illich, décroissance, antiproductivism

Introduction Work1 plays a prominent role in degrowth research. Recurring debates include those on work-time reduction and various other work-related policies (Kallis et al., 2015), on

 Work is here understood in its specific modern meaning and organisational form as commodified employment, with its associated norms and institutions. This includes both waged work and the workbased society that encourages work and productivism to encroach upon all spheres of life, and structurally prioritises waged work above all other forms of sociality and activity. This definition thus captures work at the systemic level, as an essential feature and one of the main social relations of modern society. Maja Hoffmann, Tone Smith, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria Maro Pantazidou, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, UK https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-006

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the question as to whether there will be less or more (physical) work to do in an energy- and resource-constrained future (e.g., Sorman & Giampietro, 2013; Kallis, 2013; Frey, 2019), on the proposition that a shift to labour-intensive, low-productivity sectors is needed (e.g., Mair et al., 2020) and on the contributions of feminist theory, arguing for the decommodification and commonisation of care (Dengler & Lang, 2021). And this list is by no means exhaustive. With its focus on core aspects of work, degrowth is at the forefront of research and debate about a socially and ecologically viable future of work. What is often lacking, however, is a more fundamental analysis of work as a modern cultural phenomenon in the context of the modern growth- and work-dependent society, on its particular norms, structures and institutions, on what Kathi Weeks (2011) calls ‘work as a requirement, work as a system, work as a way of life’ (p. 3) and on critiques of precisely this historically contingent social arrangement. This is what the debate on postwork and critiques of work is investigating: it addresses the relentless centrality of work and productivism in modern society and explores, along nonreformist lines, the prospects of a radical reduction, reorganisation and ethical relegation of work (Hoffmann & Frayne, 2024). Postwork turns against a social order that assigns intrinsic value to an abstract, generalised idea of ‘work,’ and, on that ideological basis, not only justifies a whole range of severe social and ecological problems but is structurally incapable of resolving them (Hoffmann & Paulsen, 2020). Postwork authors therefore argue that no meaningful social-ecological transformation is possible without addressing work head-on as the ‘necessary center of social existence, moral duty, ontological essence, and time and energy’ in modern societies (Weeks, 2011, p. 109). With books such as Farewell to the Working Class (Gorz, 1982) or The Right to Useful Unemployment (Illich, 1978), André Gorz and Ivan Illich are prominent pioneers of postwork thinking and at the same time they rank among the early degrowth pioneers. Besides Gorz and Illich, there is the French décroissance tradition which is both a precursor of contemporary degrowth and clearly critical of work. Hence, critical research on work is at the roots of degrowth thought. Given this history, it is surprising that more recent (international) degrowth debates have mostly shifted their focus away from critically scrutinising work itself in its predominant and problematic function and organisational form. While some degrowth authors seem to take modern work and its institutions simply for granted, some take an outspoken ‘pro-work’ stance, uncritically embracing work and the work-centred society. The literature on postwork (e.g., Weeks, 2011; Frayne, 2015) has, aside from a few exceptions, so far not been taken up in degrowth debates. This contribution – a sympathetic critique – seeks to trace the development of degrowth thought with regard to work and critiques of work, from degrowth’s origin in the 1970s until the present. Degrowth scholarship can historically be divided into roughly three phases (Kallis et al., 2015). The first phase in the 1970s was influenced by the ‘Limits to Growth’ report as well as ‘pre-Rio’ radical ecological thinking. In the second phase, starting in the first decade of the new millennium especially in

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France (and Southern Europe more broadly) and inspired by critiques of sustainable development, degrowth came into use as an activist slogan and was soon followed by lively academic activity of a growing research community. The third phase, since 2008 with the first international conference, marked the beginning of degrowth as an established international field of research (Demaria et al., 2013; Muraca, 2013). Accordingly, with ‘recent’ debates we mean those of the past decade and ongoing; with ‘degrowth roots’ we refer to the first two phases of degrowth – its origins in the last third of the 20th century and the specific French décroissance tradition in the early 2000s. Following this timeline in chronological order, we first discuss the ‘roots’ of degrowth, focusing on the writings of Gorz and Illich, as well as some notable proponents of the French décroissance tradition. We continue by reviewing more recent degrowth contributions to trace their authors’ attitudes towards work. We do not claim to provide an exhaustive overview of a varied and rich degrowth terrain, but we highlight key and relevant texts in relation to the intersection of work and degrowth. Finally, we bring degrowth and postwork into conversation with each other before concluding. Overall, we aim to understand how a degrowth tradition explicitly critical of work and the work-based society has changed to one that often uncritically approaches work and leaves its many problematic preconditions and implications unquestioned, implicitly or explicitly demanding a continuation of the centrality of work in society, while often staying silent on degrowth’s ‘postwork roots’ and the valuable critiques and proposals that have been discussed earlier. We argue that the perspectives of critiques of work and critiques of growth are natural allies and that a genuinely critical and radical degrowth debate should, as previously, adopt a clearer and more consistently critical stance towards work. From engaging (once more) with postwork perspectives, degrowth could gain a more profound analysis of the unsustainable status quo and renewed momentum as a much-needed corrective in sustainability debates.

Degrowth’s Roots We first look into the history of degrowth scholarship from its beginning in the 1970 and 80s until the late 2000s. André Gorz is an intellectual pioneer both of degrowth and the postwork tradition. In the degrowth literature, he is usually the reference whenever more fundamental critiques of work are touched upon (e.g., Saave & Muraca, 2021). Gorz has always stressed that modern work (including its social order and ideology) is a relatively recent historical appearance in Western modernity since industrialisation, not the historically, culturally, or even anthropologically universal phenomenon that it is commonly assumed to be: The modern transformation of work ‘was a revolution, a subversion of the way of life, the values, the social relations and

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relation to Nature, the invention in the full sense of the word of something which had never existed before’ (Gorz, 1989, p. 21) [emphasis in original]. This historical fact also informs the demand of postwork authors to de-naturalise and politicise work (Weeks, 2011) and to envision a future in which a society based on waged work has become ‘as much a relic of history as the feudal peasant and medieval knight’ (Bastani, 2019, p. 147). This implies to transcend the modern work-based society, characterised by an extreme form of work-centredness, where work is one of the main social relations and decisive for one’s social existence – or exclusion – at the expense of all other forms of sociality (Frayne, 2015); a society that ‘distinguishes itself, on these grounds, from all earlier forms of society’ (Gorz, 1989, p. 13f.). Yet, in Gorz’ account (1982; 1989; 1999), the ‘abolition of work’ is well underway, its main driver being the ‘technological revolution’ under contemporary capitalism which means that decreasing amounts of labour are required for increasing production.2 According to Gorz, the automation-induced elimination of work in an otherwise structurally work-centred society needs to be dealt with: ‘the choice is: either a socially controlled, emancipatory abolition of work or its oppressive, anti-social abolition’ (1982, p. 8) [emphasis in original] in the form of rising unemployment along with a re-feudalisation of society and an increasing commodification of all spheres of life only to create jobs, in short, a ‘formidable social regression’ (1989, p. 6). The alternative introduces a normative angle: if the newly yielded free time is given meaning and content, and if managed well, the described development may be genuinely desirable as a political project of liberation from work and liberation of time for ‘existential sovereignty’ and for ‘life as an end in itself’ (1989, p. 117). Yet, it means radical social change with far-reaching structural and cultural implications. One of the main challenges becomes how to ensure social integration by changing the standards of what makes one a valued member of society. ‘[N]either the right to an income, nor full citizenship, nor everyone’s sense of identity and self-fulfilment can any longer be centred on and depend upon occupying a job. And society has to be changed to take account of this’ (1999, p. 54). To that end, Gorz has several political demands. First, a guaranteed and sufficient income, universal and unconditional.3 Second, a reduction in working hours – substantial, staged and without loss of income – towards a different rhythm of work over the life course, with intermittent and desynchronised working periods, as existed before ‘unemployment’ was invented

 While this ‘end-of-work through automation’ narrative is also prominent in one strand of postwork thinking (e.g., Bastani, 2019), other postwork thinkers have pointed out that it is not necessarily plausible in the logic of capitalism and work society, and that much more complex and ambiguous dynamics are at play. Others have also pointed out the ecological problems with technological utopianism (Hoffmann & Frayne, 2024).  Gorz changed his mind about such an income’s conditionality and a related right/duty to work, as well as other implications, a few times in his writing (1982; 1989), before explicitly abandoning certain, partly inconsistent views and even conceding a ‘right not to work’ (1999, p. 96).

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(1989, pp. 185, 195f.; 1982, p. 136). Further, Gorz suggests the equitable redistribution of the remaining ‘socially necessary’ work, including unpaid household tasks and all socially produced wealth (1999, p. 72; 1989, p. 201). Finally, his demands include the decentring of work and encouraging of new socialities and types of cooperation, social cohesion and bonds that are not structured around the wage relation, fostering a ‘multi-active’ life and new forms of autonomous production freed ‘from the constraints of the labour market’ (1999, p. 83). Here, Gorz sees (skilled) workers and traditional trade unionism as defensive, conservative forces, aligned with the rationality of capital. The ‘“social subject” of the abolition of work’ (1982, p. 6) instead is the ‘non-class of those who are recalcitrant to the sacralisation of work’ (1982, p. 10f.), who increasingly feel ‘allergic to work,’ seeing work as an imposition and waste of their lives. Unions do have a further role to play but must change fundamentally if they are to have a future (1989, p. 198f., 227). Crucially, Gorz stresses that the sphere of heteronomous work (commodity production and sale of labour) should be reduced as far as possible to ‘ensure that its logic does not dominate every type of individual activity’ (1982, p. 95) and to expand the sphere of autonomous activity. However, following Marx, heteronomous work can never be fully eliminated. In this, Gorz sees a parallel to Illich (1973) who also describes a necessary balance between the two spheres in a convivial society. It is also otherwise evident that Gorz has been influenced by Illich’s work, another important thought leader of the degrowth tradition. Ivan Illich formulates a consistent critique of the industrial mode of production and its radical predominance. In particular, he turns against industrial growth and the growing dependence on mass-produced commodities and formalised labour relations that cause people to become alienated from their needs and deprived of skills, creativity and freedom to be useful and provide for themselves in autonomous, nonmarket-based ways. Where subsistence modes of living characterised by independence and multiple abilities have been abolished, people are confined ‘to survival through being plugged into market relations’ (Illich, 1978, p. 8) and rendered ‘useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption’ (1978, p. 10), thereby losing their liberties and abilities to produce use-values in their own culturally shaped ways. In other words, ‘[e]xcessive forms of wealth and prolonged formal employment, no matter how well distributed, destroy the social, cultural, and environmental conditions for equal productive freedom’ (1978, p. 16). This ‘modernisation of poverty’ (that is, when market dependence oversteps a certain threshold and market relations encroach upon every sphere of life) is a global phenomenon, effectively leading to the uniformisation of the world. Yet, according to Illich, dependence rises not only on markets, jobs and commodities but also on ‘disabling professions’ (see also Illich, 1977) – that is, professional experts who control and promote access to markets, commodities and formal employment and at the same time colonise formerly free and non-marketed activities, skills, social relations and infrastructures. Just like each ‘new commodity degrades an activity by which people so

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far have been able to cope on their own [and] each new job takes away legitimacy from work so far done by the unemployed, [t]he power of professions to measure what shall be good, right and done warps the desire, willingness, and ability of the “common” man to live within his measure’ (1978, p. 81). Accordingly, Illich regards an ‘analysis of professional power as the key to social reconstruction’ and the challenging of the dominance of disabling professions as a means to ‘open the way to freedom for non-hierarchical, community-based competence’ (1978, p. 40). Under current conditions, ‘[u]nemployment means sad idleness, rather than the freedom to do things that are useful for oneself or for one’s neighbour’ (1978, p. 83) given that in ‘an advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work’ (p. 84). Against this, Illich drafts the vision of ‘useful unemployment,’ of a ‘post-professional ethos’ and of ‘modern subsistence’ understood as a way of life ‘in which people have succeeded in reducing their market dependence, and have done so by protecting – by political means – a social infrastructure in which techniques and tools are used primarily to generate use-values that are unmeasured and unmeasurable by professional need-makers’ (1978, p. 94). Such political means include, for example, enacting legislation or organising frustrated workers around the demand for productive liberties and equal distribution of resources, tools and infrastructure for autonomous use-value production outside of paid work (see also Gorz, 1982). It is in this sense that Illich (1973) uses the ‘term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity’ and claims that ‘[b]usiness ceases to be as usual when the populace loses confidence in industrial productivity’ and instead turns to the possibility of a coexistence of several distinct but complementary modes of production in a post-industrial society. After the first ‘limits to growth’ phase with its radical scholarship on social change, the neoliberal turn and the Rio agenda became predominant and growth critiques were marginalised. Since the early 2000s, the movement for décroissance has formed (mostly in France, but also in other Southern European countries) in explicit opposition to the sustainable development discourse, reinvigorating critiques of growth. French scholar Paul Ariès described degrowth in that phase as a ‘political UFO’ – mobilising unusually radical critiques against mainstream politics, even too radical for many leftist and green groups for whom degrowth was, amongst others, ‘suspiciously anti-work and anti-production’ (Liegey & Nelson, 2020, pp. 80–81). There is no doubt that Gorz in particular, but also Illich, had a great influence on the positions on work within the French décroissance movement. Moreover, the roots of the early degrowth movement in France go back to the student revolts of 1968 and include elements from the neo-rural movement, the emerging environmental movement, the situationists, as well as Marcuse’s existentialist critique of capitalism (Duverger in Muraca, 2013). Beyond these strands of thinking, Serge Latouche (another key thinker of degrowth) has posited the post-development tradition and a radical anthropological critique as one of the main origins of degrowth, underlining the negative implications of the imposition of the Western development model on the Global South

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(Muraca, 2013). Further, both Gorz and Latouche were part of the anti-utilitarian group establishing the Revue du MAUSS4. From this combined existentialist and anti-utilitarian basis, Illich, Gorz and Latouche put forward a specific critique of the institution of work. Besides the anti-productivist (environmental) critique stressing the need to produce less and hence work less, they focused on key aspects such as alienation and dependency (vs. autonomy), individualism and competition (vs. conviviality, cooperation and sharing), meaningless jobs (vs. socially useful activity) and living only to work (vs. a meaningful life). In 2007, the French degrowth journal Entropia dedicated a special issue to ‘décroissance et travail’ (degrowth and work). Gorz’ thoughts figure prominently in many of the articles (for example in Gollain, 2007). It also includes Gorz’ very last publication, synthesising his main ideas. Like Gorz, Ariès (2007) raises a number of fundamental and often difficult questions about the relation of degrowth and (critiques of) work, before stating that [w]e will remain incapable of rebuilding a new social project, in line with the environmental reality of the world, but also with the deepest human aspirations, if we are content to repeat the same banalities about lost work. The challenge is not only to question the current meaning of work, but to rethink human activities on the scale of life. (para 12 Our translation)

Likewise, Latouche (2007) challenges the mainstream (social democratic) left, its focus on job creation for its own sake, and its ‘nostalgic’ wish to re-establish full employment for all. Following Gorz, he highlights that the fundamental question is how to exit from work society (la société travailliste). Still, he is also concerned with policy suggestions necessary in the current phase of neoliberalism, therefore supporting – for pragmatic reasons, if not in principle – the right to work, minimum wages and stronger regulation of working hours. In a recent book, Latouche (2021) elaborates on the process of leaving the work-based society behind. It is in particular the ‘salaried servitude’ that he wants to see ended. This servitude implies an excessive commitment to work that devours life, stifles citizenship, causes stress and suffering and accelerates ecological breakdown. As in 2007, he supports requests for the ‘right to work,’ but only as a transitional policy. His main appeal is for a decommodification of work, analysing it as a fictitious commodity in the tradition of Karl Polanyi. To summarise, tracing aspects of critiques of work in the early degrowth tradition shows that most of the key authors were unambiguous about the fundamental problems with work, which led them to think about how to overcome this social arrangement in a radical sense, transcending the confines of the current social order. We will now discuss how that has changed in the more recent degrowth literature.

 MAUSS is the acronym for Mouvement Anti-Utilitaire dans les Sciences Sociales (Anti-utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences), while simultaneously referring to Marcel Mauss whose work on the gift economy was central to the MAUSS group.

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Recent Degrowth Debates Recent degrowth debates have often been inconsistent in their stance towards work, sometimes criticising, sometimes embracing it, or oscillating in between (Hoffmann & Paulsen, 2020; see also Foster, 2017). We now turn to investigating these various facets of the debate. Some degrowth and post-growth authors are outspoken proponents of work. Tim Jackson seems to take the clearest stance pro-work as essential for a fulfilled human existence, claiming that ‘[a]part from the obvious contribution of paid employment to people’s livelihoods, work is a part of our participation in the life of society. Through work we create and recreate the social world and find a credible place in it’ (Jackson, 2015, p. 179). Hence, he concludes that we should aim at ‘restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society’ (Jackson, 2012). Likewise, Mair et al. (2020) state that work is ‘key to human wellbeing’ (p. 5). Accordingly, their ‘vision of a post-growth utopia is one with more work, not less,’ believing ‘that a world with more but better work can not only be utopian in the best sense of the word but can provide a platform from which to agitate for a post-growth society’ (p. 6). While it is reasonable in a degrowth context to emphasise, as they do, the value of low productivity and thus more labour-intensive activities versus demands to constantly increase labour productivity, Jackson and colleagues buy into and reproduce work society’s core ideological belief in the inherent virtue and goodness of work, despite all evidence to the contrary (e.g., Frayne, 2015). Interestingly, Mair et al. (2020) draw on key postwork thinkers like Weeks (2011), Graeber (2018), or Srnicek and Williams (2015), but cite just some selected ideas and do not mention that these authors are mainly concerned with radically criticising and abolishing work, rather than trying to improve it. Stefania Barca (2019) also takes an affirmative stance to work, however is more nuanced in her assessment. Contrary to our argument in this chapter, she observes that the currently predominant degrowth approach to work was preoccupied with the ‘liberation from work,’5 in line with Gorz’ thinking and the fact that ‘degrowth is clearly at odds with waged work’ (Barca, 2019, p. 175–176). Nevertheless, Barca argues that under current global capitalist conditions (waged) work is here to stay. Hence, degrowth should also advocate for a ‘liberation of work’ perspective. Sticking to the wage relation and ‘firmly includ[ing] labour’s perspectives and subjectivities’ (p. 184) would help to make degrowth palatable to the working class and organised labour in order to build alliances with them. She outlines a classical eco-Marxist/socialist pro-

 She cites postwork critiques by Weeks, autonomist Marxism and others as evidence to that claim, however, to our knowledge such perspectives are far from being common sense and widely adopted in the current degrowth literature.

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gramme with projects such as just transition and workplace democracy (see also Barca, 2017). We fully agree with Barca’s (2019) point that ‘the growth society is the same as the work society. A political economy of degrowth thus needs, primarily, to expose, denaturalise, and politicise the social organisation of work as a key mechanism of capitalist political economy’ (p. 183). However, we draw other conclusions than Barca. Her outlined concerns and strategies are, we contend, marginal in real-existing labour struggles. We would also take Weeks’ (2011) argument that ‘[s]truggling only within, rather than also against, the terms of the traditional discourse of work both limits the scope of the demands that are advanced and fails to contest the basic terms of the work society’s social contract’ (p. 69). Consequently, a ‘liberation of work’ approach strengthens the fundamental norms of the economic status quo and thus contributes to reproducing it. In line with Barca’s argument is the widespread adoption in recent degrowthwork debates of the proposal for a job guarantee (JG). Most prominently, Alcott (2013) has argued that since ‘sea changes in attitudes towards “work”’ are unlikely and the ‘dignity of work’ (and other assumed benefits of the work-based society) need to be spread (p. 57), ‘the social marketing of degrowth’ (p. 59) should embrace the JG as a ‘right to work.’ With employment as a political right, full employment could be secured without economic growth, thus securing voters’ acceptance for degrowth. The JG is also featured in the Degrowth Vocabulary (D’Alisa et al., 2015), and promoted as a ‘point of convergence between the GND [Green New Deal] and degrowth narratives’ (Mastini et al., 2021, p. 7). A policy and discourse that continues to emphasise and construct as central the importance of a paid job for livelihoods and provisioning of societal needs, is very likely to cement society’s institutional and ideological set up and counteract any efforts to change it. Justifying this by appealing to an assumed popular opinion disregards the systemic coercion to work, the moralising discourse around it and the widespread indifference to or discontent with work (e.g., Graeber, 2018). It also leaves open the question concerning what degrowth is then supposed to be about, if not fundamental cultural and institutional change aimed at reducing absolute throughput – as opposed to a reformist social democratic project that in a 20th century mindset continues to mobilise vast amounts of resources and energy just for the sake of upholding work as an end in itself and promising everyone ‘a paid place in production’ (Alcott, 2013, p. 60).6 While some degrowth authors attribute work a central role and function even in an ideal degrowth society, others seem to bypass the whole question, taking modern phenomena such as labour markets, employment, employers, unemployment or ‘full

 Note that D’Alisa et al. (2015) also refer affirmatively to Lafargue’s ‘right to laziness’ (p. 217) but do not explain how to reconcile that with a ‘right to work’ scheme proposed in the very same book.

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employment,’ as well as the modern workfare institutions and discourses simply as a given. For example, work-time reduction (WTR) and other policies are regularly put forward as a means to prevent unemployment or increase employment levels in the absence of growth. Yet, the social function or desirability of (un)employment, nor any other of these specifically modern institutions are seldom if ever questioned (e.g., Alexander, 2012; in particular in macroeconomic modelling: Kallis et al., 2018). The modern organisational form of work as commodified employment in labour markets based on the wage relation as an integral element of the modern growth economy is thus tacitly taken for granted. Other authors take a work-centred stance in yet another way. Writing from a feminist perspective, there is agreement that work needs to be transformed fundamentally and that productivism and wage labour tend to be problematic. Otherwise, they comprise a bit of everything, both embracing and criticising the centrality of waged work – citing Barca’s working class-centred focus next to Salleh’s focus on those outside of capitalist production (Saave & Muraca, 2021); stating that care work should be valorised (Schmelzer et al., 2022) while Dengler et al. (2022) emphasise that care should be valued without valorising it; remaining work-focused (demanding access to decent work for all, workplace democracy, or strengthening workers’ rights), denouncing Lafargue’s ‘right to laziness’ as ‘sexist,’ and declaring that degrowth aims ‘to defend and strengthen . . . dignified work as a central component of human life’, while also referring positively to one of Gorz’ preferred political strategies of ‘the abolition of wage dependency through more artisanal forms of non-alienated production and a basic income guaranteed to all’ (Schmelzer et al., 2022, section 5.4). Yet, all have in common that they are essentially concerned with ‘reconceptualising’ work through ‘broadening’ the notion of work and thus ‘foregrounding the entirety of work’ (Schmelzer et al., 2022) or ‘the totality of work’ (Saave & Muraca, 2021). Besides waged work, this includes care activities (or reproductive labour in Marxist parlance) and all other kinds of activity and inactivity such as subsistence, voluntary work, political participation or leisure. However, extending the notion of work can be detrimental to the goal of emancipatory social change. In a postwork perspective it can be seen as an expression of the cultural centrality of work if recognition can only be achieved through the label of ‘work,’ a detour that implies a remarkable strategic move not to recognise and value essential and meaningful activities for their own sake. This not only reproduces the modern work ethic but may result in an extreme version of the work-centred society, projected in Frigga Haug’s productivist proposal of a 16-hour workday where virtually all spheres of life (including care, self-development, or political participation) are subsumed under work (see Dengler et al., 2022; Saave & Muraca, 2021). In this approach, ‘a long working-day and even a lifetime full of work, will not then be felt as a curse but as a source of human fulfillment and happiness’ (Maria Mies, cited in Weeks, 2011, p. 88). Besides ignoring varied utopian (including feminist) visions of a life beyond work, the proposed mechanism for change is highly doubtful, not least from a radical feminist perspective: This ‘glorification of work as a prototypically human endeavour,

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as the key both to social belonging and individual achievement, constitutes the fundamental ideological foundation of contemporary capitalism’ (Weeks, 2011, p. 109). Therefore, affirming and expanding work (if only discursively) as a central social institution and core value, obscures and naturalises work and thus ultimately stabilises and strengthens the system degrowth otherwise seeks to overcome. In other words, a preoccupation with academically redefining or reconceptualising work and extending it to all areas of life may not only be counterproductive (as well as analytically not useful), but actively depoliticising if not accompanied by a structural critique of the system of waged work. Such structural critique would aim at the entire organisation of society under the predominant notion of work which makes the devaluation of other activities possible in the first place – a reality that cannot be defined away but needs to be tackled directly. Thus, we agree with Dengler et al. (2022) that ‘changing wage relations is a central precondition of redefining, redistributing, and revaluing all kinds of socially necessary work’ (p. 315), which necessitates to ‘push back wage work [to] generate the structural conditions of possibility for a broader transformation of day-to-day relations, habits, and routines’ (p. 320). Yet, while they have rightly singled out waged work as a structural problem that needs specific attention, they go into little detail in terms of directly challenging the predominant morality, structures and mechanisms of modern work society. Rather, a solution is still found in redefining work towards a very broad notion of work, demanding the ‘freeing up [of] time spent in wage work that can then be devoted to all other forms of work’ (p. 317, emphasis added). The specific institutions and organisation of waged work and the work-based society are, as in Haug’s vision, not further analysed or tackled but conceptualised as an integral element next to other elements of an assumed ‘totality of work.’ Another instance where the issue of work is approached in somewhat conflicting ways and the overall direction remains unclear is Parrique (2019). He introduces ‘decent work’ and ‘green jobs’ without elaborating how these well-established and growthfocused concepts could fit together with degrowth or postwork, before then describing at some length what postwork could mean in a degrowth context. Yet, instead of developing suggestions for structural change to address the entrenched unsustainability of modern-day work, he proposes only the job guarantee as ‘an instrument for postwork (granted it is designed in a specific way)’ (p. 622). The latter addition is interesting, as he describes a JG scheme that is a mix of speculation and bold claims together with the conventional terms, ideas and social relations of the work society drawn from a single case study. Unsurprisingly, no other postwork proponent has ever endorsed – rather, explicitly turned against (e.g., Weeks, 2020) – a permanent state-funded programme that grants everyone a paid job to help patch up the existing work-centred society, as a serious measure to overcome the very same work-centred society. There are, however, a few recent degrowth authors who take an explicitly critical stance towards work. For example, Liegey and Nelson (2020) clearly write in a ‘postwork spirit,’ referring to Gorz, Böll, Graeber and Lafargue. They find that while the

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latter’s ‘objections to capitalist work have been swept aside by “right to work” arguments in workers’ movements and union activities, [t]he degrowth movement is inspired by those who challenge the practice of working for money and for profits’ (p. 43). The ‘kind of work capitalism offers is the other side of the coin from growth for growth’s sake,’ with a mode of valuing work that ‘is illogical not just inequitable.’ A core question then is how to ‘transform from a society centred around salaried work in jobs that people find objectionable, to a freer, more democratic society where people can direct their efforts to meaningful and emancipatory activities’ (p. 44). As one alternative, an ‘Unconditional Autonomy Allowance’ is proposed ‘to put an end to compulsory work and allow for choice of human activity’ (p. 161). Likewise, Cattaneo and Gavaldà (2010) in their paper asking ‘what kind of degrowth’ introduce a case study of self-organised, small-scale, squat economies as practical degrowth experiences where the purpose of economic activity is achieving joie de vivre. In their cases, this goes together both with a significant reduction of energy and resource use, and an equally significant reduction in hours of work and the need for money. With their labour time mostly spent in household production, they sell only a ‘small proportion of their time in the labour market, constituting a case of [Illich’s] “useful unemployment”’ (p. 588). Degrowth, in their context, occurs as a desire for autonomy in individual or collective allocation of time, under which a full-time job becomes a waste of time. Time is the central oikonomic end; in capitalism it is sold to the labour market. In rurban squats it is employed directly for the satisfaction of needs. Its recuperation and freely consented collective management should be a basic principle for a degrowth society. (p. 588)

Their way of living and practicing economic self-sufficiency is understood as part of a larger democratic transformation, in which degrowth should be ‘the outcome of a general transition towards a social and political organisation, where autonomy, freedom from wage labour, and collective decision-making are key. Alternative political systems and the capabilities to provide and organise them should be promoted’ (p. 588). Similarly, Foster (2017) discusses instances of what is consistently described in the anthropological literature and Max Weber famously called ‘traditional work ethic,’ i.e., an anti-productivist attitude of just working until one’s basic needs are fulfilled for then enjoying life, versus the modern/‘Protestant’ work ethic that elevates and glorifies work as an end in itself and a constant obligation. She finds clear empirical examples of the prevalence of the traditional work ethic and associated ways of life – including conscious opposition to the modern work ethic – in rural areas of contemporary Canada as well as the ‘neo-rural’ movement in general. Foster perceives the existence of this traditional mentality, with its orientation towards sufficiency, conviviality and ‘culturally-embedded relationships to work’ (p. 634), as ‘a source of great hope’ (p. 642), in that it shows a viable way out of modern growth-dependent societies. Yet, she has ‘found little [in the degrowth literature] in the way of theorizing, let alone studying empirically, how the [modern] work ethic contributes to the dominance of productivism and “the growth paradigm”’ (pp. 640–641).

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Finally, Gunderson (2018) explicitly refers to postwork as a concept. He starts from the observation that degrowth implies less work and activity, yet WTR cannot guarantee reduced environmental harm because leisure time may also be used for resource-intensive activities. He therefore considers the pessimistic and critical intellectual traditions and their ‘quiescent’ utopias of peaceful inactivity and idleness as environmental virtues and desirable aspects of the good life. In pessimism, collective renunciation from the insatiable modern expansion of desires, progress and growth is assumed to bring more contentment and freedom, a more peaceful and calm existence. In critical theory, Adorno (1974) outlines an emancipatory vision, not of progress as domination of nature, senseless productivism or ‘freedom as frantic bustle’ (p. 156), but of simply being in tranquillity, of possibilities, out of freedom, left unused, and of ‘peace as humanity reconciled with nature in rest’ (Gunderson, 2018, p. 1574). Overall, many authors emphasise the importance of work for any degrowth transformation and agree that a reduction of work is a necessary component of a degrowth future. However, in recent degrowth scholarship the attitude towards work often remains inconsistent or uncritical. With just a few exceptions, recent degrowth authors have not explicitly discussed, let alone challenged, the ‘essentialism and moralism of work’ (Weeks, 2011, p.109) and the whole apparatus of modern work around it. We now turn to discussing the potential of reversing this general trend and explore how the concepts of degrowth and postwork can complement and inspire each other.

Degrowth and Postwork Having traced critical attitudes towards work in the degrowth tradition, we find that the pioneering authors were concerned with rethinking and changing work fundamentally towards a new type of society beyond the modern, obsessively work-centred one. Recent degrowth debates on work are much more ambiguous and have mostly developed away from these roots. They oscillate between cautious critiques of work and embracing the work society, without taking a clear stance – if not taking an explicit pro-work stance. One reason why degrowth recently may have lost track of its own earlier critiques of work may be the adoption of a certain political pragmatism, which implies avoiding appearing too radical to not scare off potential voters or obstruct the building of broad alliances, for example with trade unions (Alcott, 2013; Barca, 2019). Related to that, we observe a general preoccupation in recent degrowth debates with a given set of ‘policies’ (e.g., Fitzpatrick et al., 2022), which is again a pragmatic attempt to make degrowth useful and practical for conventional politics but may hinder reflection or a deeper analysis of what kind of fundamental changes in politics, norms, structures and institutions are actually needed. There is also a certain uncomfortable relationship with critiques of work that has to do with the work ideology being ingrained in all

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of us, including the belief that productivity is inherently virtuous and that any progress towards a better (degrowth) society has to come through increased effort (what Illich (1973) called the widespread tendency ‘to solve a crisis by escalation’). This might also induce a lack of imagination to think of entirely different ways in which work and non-work may be valued and organised, or a reluctance towards the insight that work itself is an integral part of the problems degrowth seeks to address (Hoffmann & Spash, 2021). A more speculative explanation could also be the observation of the ‘social background of the majority of degrowth activists and scholars, that is, academic middle-class radicalism’ (Saave & Muraca, 2021, p. 751). People in this milieu usually enjoy their work and find meaning and fulfilment as well as options for self-development in it and thus may be less inclined to question work more fundamentally. Moreover, in such milieus people are familiar with academic debates of thinking the concept of work in broader terms and may assume this makes sense to everyone – while for many in society work is simply a job, often coerced, precarious or dull (Graeber, 2018; Frayne, 2015; Paulsen, 2014). For future degrowth debates on work, we argue (while acknowledging that degrowth is a heterogeneous field of scholarship) that the field should overall develop a clearer and, as previously, more critical stance towards work. Not only because this is what is needed in the current moment – work after all is an essential part of a disastrously unsustainable reality that needs to be tackled and dealt with urgently (Hoffmann, 2022) – but also because it is otherwise unclear what the point of degrowth is. If degrowth is really an ‘advanced reincarnation of the radical environmentalism of the 1970s’ (Kallis & March, 2015), if it wants to offer ‘a radical invitation to examine the roots of our problems’ (Liegey & Nelson, 2020, p. 83), and if it envisions ‘a society with a metabolism which has a different structure and serves new functions’ (Kallis et al., 2015, p. 4), then we would agree with Liegey and Nelson (2020) that degrowth needs to go beyond traditional discourses and frameworks and ‘must develop more radical responses than the conservative (if legitimate) reaction of simply protecting our rights to public assistance, goods and services, and jobs’ (p. 83, emphasis added). Going back to the roots may help degrowth to get something back of the ‘political UFO’ spirit that Ariès described when degrowth still acted as a ‘missile word,’ radical and unimpressed by mainstream objections. In an ocean of greenly growing unsustainability and politics of appeasement to please the mainstream, it is otherwise unclear who else should demand radical change and provide substantial research to that end. If degrowth were to pursue a more consistently critical trajectory in how it debates work, it could gain much from engaging with postwork perspectives. Although the literature on postwork/critiques of work has (with few exceptions) not yet been translated into degrowth debates, we suggest that the perspectives of critiques of work and critiques of growth are natural allies. This is not only because, as shown here, both intellectual currents have common intellectual ‘forebears’ in Gorz and Illich. Degrowth and postwork can be considered natural allies first of all because both ‘critiques’ share the same structure and logic. Both turn against the same economic

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phenomenon: strictly speaking, economic growth and modern work are ultimately the same thing; GDP is aggregated market-based work/production of goods and services in a given country in a given year. On that level, both critiques turn against GDP growth or paid employment as primary and ultimately empty goals in society and politics. On a more fundamental level, however, both critiques mean more than just ‘post-GDP’ or ‘post-employment.’ Both question and seek to overcome the historically contingent ideas of growth and productivism as ends in themselves, that some abstract thing called growth or work is inherently valuable, that life improves when there is ‘more’ and that we are better human beings if we do ‘more,’ that more growth and work are always better, while less of growth, production and productivity is associated with a backward past, a cultural regress, an undesirable future. Besides a common logic and a common ‘enemy,’ on a more conceptual level the broader vision of ‘post-capitalism’ can be a point of convergence – an imaginary that is used as a placeholder for various progressive transitions. Both postwork (e.g., Srnicek & Williams, 2015) and degrowth proponents (e.g., Schmelzer et al., 2022) have used post-capitalism as a point of reference for their respective visions of abolishing work or abolishing growth. Degrowth and postwork also usually put forward the same practical-political proposals with regard to work, most of all WTR and universal basic income (UBI) or other social guarantees and infrastructures.7 Moreover, there are common interests and research themes in both fields; for example, the idea of limits and collective self-limitation in an ecological and liberating sense (e.g., Kallis et al., 2015; Gómez-Baggethun, 2020; Illich, 1973, 1978; Gunderson, 2018; Frey, 2019), or of decommodifying work to organise it not in labour markets but in democratic, commonsbased or yet other ways (e.g., Dengler & Lang, 2021; Hoffmann & Paulsen, 2020; Foster, 2017). Beyond these commonalities, the fields of degrowth and postwork can further complement and inspire each other in various ways. For example, postwork could gain from degrowth debates by adopting an equally sound understanding of biophysical conditions and limits. This concerns mostly the ‘accelerationist’ strand of postwork (e.g., Bastani, 2019) that builds on the assumption of technological unemployment while appearing oblivious of the ecological preconditions and unsustainability of modern technology. Ecological concerns are already part and parcel of some postwork contributions (for an overview see Hoffmann & Frayne, 2024), yet this could certainly be enhanced.

 In fact, the only obvious difference in terms of proposed policies is the Job Guarantee. Postwork takes issue with the JG because it does not at all tackle the structural roots of the problems with work, strengthens the work-obsessed undercurrent of modern society and stands for a very limited horizon of social change. Instead, a postwork perspective suggests devising a deeper analysis of what kind of fundamental changes are actually needed, and to take inspiration from, for example, Illich’s proposal of a right to useful unemployment and modern subsistence, or Gorz’ vision of a regression of waged work and commodity based relationships in favour of other forms of sociality.

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Degrowth in turn can take inspiration from the literature on postwork and critiques of work: Postwork has come far in analysing how work is structurally implicated in many of the problems degrowth tries to resolve. Through addressing work as such, postwork tackles these issues in a very concrete way, instead of targeting abstractions like ‘capitalism’ or ‘growth,’ or pursuing only moderate changes towards some equally vague idea of ‘better work.’ The strategy of refusal of work also ‘offers a challenge to the work values that continue to secure our consent to the current system’ (Weeks, 2011, p. 109). Postwork can thus help advance debates that are otherwise stuck in pragmatically patching up an unsustainable status quo. Another example of how postwork could benefit degrowth debates concerns how work is seen in a global perspective. Some degrowth authors (again, mostly in the recent period) continue to portray growth and jobs as desirable and necessary for ‘development’ and ending poverty in the Global South (e.g., Jackson, cited in Spash, 2021; Mair et al., 2019; Hickel, 2021). What this ‘within the box’ thinking misses is that development imposes the alien structures of the modern industrial economy with jobs in cities for money- and market-based livelihoods onto otherwise (often sustainably) functioning societies. This introduces an existential dependence on waged work where there are no historically grown welfare state structures nor that much demand of labour on the part of global capitalism. Thus, growth and development often create poverty in the first place. Degrowth should therefore, inspired by post-development thinking, aim at transforming the modern growth economy in its entirety – including how work is organised – both in the Global North and South. This goes back, again, to degrowth’s roots: post-development ideas are articulated prominently in the décroissance tradition, most notably in Latouche (Kallis et al., 2018). Yet, with regard to work, the link between postwork and post-development is spelled out only in Illich (1978) who notes that ‘the poor are the first to suffer when a new kind of commodity castrates one of the traditional subsistence crafts. The useful unemployment of the jobless poor is sacrificed to the expansion of the labour market’ (p. 29) – while post-development theorists would object that even the label of ‘poor’ is a modern projection onto entirely different ways of life. Postwork can be useful in pointing out modern work as a central element of colonial development towards the growth-based industrial society, and in broadening the perspective beyond the trajectory of ‘jobs for the world’ as a universal path to a good, sustainable life, as postulated for example by Sustainable Development Goal 8 (e.g., Ferguson & Li, 2018; Hoffmann & Paulsen, 2020; Monteith et al., 2021).

Conclusions Degrowth debates on work are rich and often nuanced and one of the few places that are open for critical work scholarship. Tracing critiques of work in the degrowth literature from its ‘roots’ to the present, we have found that recent debates show quite

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some discrepancies compared to older degrowth thought, and that some valuable insights on work have been lost along the way. Aside from recurring anecdotal references to Lafargue or Gorz, and despite general agreement that transforming work is key to achieving degrowth, many of the recent degrowth authors no longer seem to take seriously or engage sufficiently with their own radical ‘anti-work’ tradition, thus abandoning a genuinely critical engagement with work and shying away from being bold in their imagination of how work could be organised and valued differently. We have nevertheless argued that degrowth and postwork are natural allies, and that degrowth should take a clearer and more consistent stance and engage (once more) with postwork perspectives. Thus, degrowth could gain a better and more profound understanding of what kind of changes are required to overcome a deeply flawed social organisation of work. Related, postwork could encourage degrowth to reinvigorate its critical and radical potential, focused on the root causes of problems, unafraid of dissent and aimed at the common sense that sustains an unsustainable status quo – that which has always made degrowth a much-needed corrective in sustainability debates. Both degrowth and postwork have substantial critiques, proposals and perspectives in common and can be sources for mutual inspiration. Yet, as Gorz (1999) reminds us, the ‘place of work in everyone’s imagination and self-image and in his/her vision of a possible future is the central issue in a profoundly political conflict’ (p. 54) – a political conflict that even reaches into internal degrowth debates themselves.

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Kallis, G., Demaria, F., & D’Alisa, G. (2015). Introduction: Degrowth. In G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria & G. Kallis (Eds.), Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era (pp. 1–17). Routledge. Kallis, G., & March, H. (2015). Imaginaries of hope: The utopianism of degrowth. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(2), 360–368. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.973803 Kallis, G., Kostakis, V., Lange, S., Muraca, B., Paulson, S., & Schmelzer, M. (2018). Research on degrowth. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 43, 4.1–4.26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025941 Latouche, S. (2007). Décroissance, plein emploi et sortie de la société travailliste. Entropia, 2. https://entro pia-la-revue.org/spip.php?article154 [Accessed 30 October 2023]. Latouche, S. (2021). Travailler moins, travailler autrement, ou ne pas travailler du tout. Éditions Payot & Rivages. Liegey, V., & Nelson, A. (2020). Exploring degrowth: A critical guide. Pluto Press. Mair, S., Druckman, A. & Jackson, T. (2020). A tale of two utopias: Work in a post-growth world. Ecological Economics, 173, 106653. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106653 Mair, S., Druckman, A. & Jackson, T. (2019). Higher wages for sustainable development? Employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage in global apparel supply chains. Ecological Economics, 159, 11–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.01.007 Mastini, R., Kallis, G. & Hickel, J. (2021). A Green New Deal without growth? Ecological Economics, 179, 106832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106832 Monteith, W., Vicol, D.-O., & Williams, P. (Eds.) (2021). Beyond the Wage: Ordinary Work in Diverse Economies. Bristol University Press. Muraca, B. (2013). Décroissance: A project for a radical transformation of society. Environmental Values, 22(2), 147–169. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113X13581561725112 Parrique, T. (2019). The political economy of degrowth. [Doctoral dissertation, Université Clermont Auvergne, Stockholms universitet.] Paulsen, R. (2014). Empty labor: Idleness and workplace resistance. Cambridge University Press. Saave, A. & Muraca, B. (2021). Rethinking labour/work in a degrowth society. In N. Räthzel, D. Stevis & D. Uzzell (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of environmental labour studies (pp. 743–767). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71909-8_32 Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A. & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism. Verso. Sorman, A. H. & Giampietro, M. (2013). The energetic metabolism of societies and the degrowth paradigm: Analyzing biophysical constraints and realities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 38, 80–93. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.11.059 Spash, C. L. (2021). Apologists for growth: Passive revolutionaries in a passive revolution. Globalizations, 18(7), 1123–1148. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1824864 Srnicek, N. & Williams, A. (2015). Inventing the future: Postcapitalism and a world without work. Verso. Weeks, K. (2011). The problem with work: Feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries. Duke University Press. Weeks, K. (2020). Anti/postwork feminist politics and a case for basic income. tripleC, 18(2), 575–594.

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4 Cultural Political Economy and Degrowth Politics Abstract: This chapter develops a cultural political economy account of how we might think about the politics of degrowth. By cultural political economy, I refer to the articulation between classical themes in political economy (accumulation, class dynamics, etc.) and the production of meanings concerning the objects and infrastructures through which accumulation is materially organised (cars, housing, etc.). It draws in particular on Marshall Berman’s account of modernity, modernisation and modernism as a basis on which to think about degrowth politics. Berman shows powerfully how modernism as an ideological form and modernisation as a set of specific development projects generate powerful attachments, even at times becoming irresistible because of deep attachments towards the symbols of modernity – freedom, progress, equality – which modernisers are able to attach to their particular projects. Nevertheless, modernisation is experienced with a fundamental ambivalence because of its highly disruptive character. Like modernisation, degrowth initiatives and strategies can be expected to be experienced with deep ambivalence by many given these cultural attachments and the disruptive character that degrowth will have. Berman’s arguments are therefore a useful provocation to think more about how the progressive intrusion of degrowth ideas challenges established hegemonic norms and power relations and what we might expect to happen as this clash unfolds. Keywords: cultural political economy, modernism, Marshall Berman, ambivalence, Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses

Introduction ‘The vast majority of modern men and women do not want to resist modernity: they feel its excitement and believe in its promise, even when they find themselves in its way’ (Berman, 1982, p. 313). For modernity, read growth. The two are interchangeable in this context at least. This phrase concludes a remarkable passage of Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air, focused on the destruction of large swathes of New York City by Robert Moses’ colossal and brutal construction projects – freeways, bridges, tunnels, parkways and so on, deliberately designed to transform the city by destroying existing communities and the infrastructures that sustained them. As Moses himself put it, ‘when you operate in an overbuilt environment, you have to hack your Matthew Paterson, University of Manchester, UK https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-007

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way with a meat ax’ (as quoted in Berman, 1982, pp. 293–4). Berman hones in on what we might understand as the fundamental challenge of any strategy for degrowth: that growth has become so deeply embedded in normative, ontological and practical qualities of people’s lives that it feels irresistible. And this is the case even when, or perhaps in some cases especially because, its effects are brutal and violently destructive. We feel its promise, even when we are in its way. Or, as Berman puts it differently: ‘Moses was destroying our world, yet he seemed to be working in the name of values that we ourselves embraced’ (Berman, 1982, p. 295). Berman invokes Allen Ginsberg’s poetic account of the ancient Canaanite god condemned in the Hebrew bible – Moloch – to understand how we relate to Robert Moses and his extraordinary destructive projects. Moloch imposes great violence and demands great sacrifices, but it is precisely this that generates such deep commitment on the part of his subjects. ‘Moloch, who entered my soul early,’ is the line from Ginsberg’s Howl! that Berman repeats a number of times for effect (1982, pp.291, 311), to signify precisely the depth with which citizens of modern societies internalise the logics of modernity(growth), despite its violence, injustice and social/ecological destruction. But it is not just that we internalise its logics, we also enact them. That is, our daily lives are integral to the reproduction of modernity/growth and some sort of rational recognition of its many contradictions and its fundamental unsustainability is insufficient to shift us. ‘We fight back the tears, and step on the gas’ (Berman, 1982, p. 291). Why do I start this chapter with Berman’s classic book about modernity? Apart from it being one of my favourite books of all time, it strikes me that he has much to tell us about the politics of pursuing degrowth. Over the last decade, degrowth literature has moved considerably to recognise the political implications of degrowth arguments. Earlier generations of ecological economists (e.g., Daly, 1992; Victor, 2008; Jackson, 2009) were often rather politically naïve, framing growth as a managerial choice for governments and societies and missing both the structural logics (the way growth has become a structural imperative in capitalist societies) and the embedded power relations (the power of corporate actors threatened by degrowth initiatives to block such initiatives). Degrowth writers have more recently been clearer in acknowledging the logics of capitalism as a driver and constraint on degrowth (e.g., Kallis, 2018; Schmelzer et al., 2022; Chertkovskaya et al., 2019). There is now a robust set of arguments that emphasise the radical political implications of degrowth (e.g., Fournier 2008; Kish & Quilley, 2017; Buch-Hansen, 2018; Chertkovskaya et al., 2019; Heikkurinen et al., 2019; Hickel, 2020, 2021). To an important extent, these have entailed recovering the radical potential in the origins of degrowth as a proposition – by André Gorz in the 1970s – reviving a politicised and transformational understanding of degrowth from the relatively managerialist accounts of most ecological economists. My intention in this piece is to deploy Berman’s insights about modernity to make a modest contribution to this way of thinking about degrowth.

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The Cultural Embeddedness of Growth Berman’s account helps us understand two dimensions of the cultural embeddedness of growth. On the one hand, growth sustains and is sustained by a deeply embedded affective value system which is extraordinarily powerful. On the other hand, it lives through the daily material practices of millions of modernists across the globe. Another way to analytically understand this cultural embeddedness of growth is to see it reproduced through the interaction between the devices (Skyscanner, cheap flights), desires (to travel) and dissent (resistance to restrictions on our activities) (see Bulkeley et al., 2016). The notion of devices denotes both the specific objects (cars, washing machines) and their assemblages and infrastructures (automobility, clothing) which are the immediate ways our daily lives are structured and through which we are connected to environmental degradation. Desires is intended to capture both the meanings and attachments we have to these devices, but also the desires many have to reshape those objects in the pursuit of sustainability. Dissent then refers to the political mobilisation generated by this relationship between desires and devices. This mobilisation can be oriented to either disruption of or maintenance of the existing configuration of devices and desires.

In the Name of Values that We Ourselves Embrace To understand it with Berman as a deeply structuring affective value system goes beyond the Gramscian notion of ‘common sense’ as invoked for example by Kallis (2018, pp. 137–140). Common sense is Gramsci’s explanation for how ideology, in the Marxist sense, works: it operates by generating a settled sense of what the normal, reasonable responses to a question, dilemma or situation are. But with the notion of common sense there is an implication that there is a rational, if political, strategy for uncovering the veil over peoples’ eyes. Gramsci’s political response to common sense is a ‘war of position’ – a political struggle over meaning, to undermine common sense ideas. The aim of this is to enable the construction of counter-hegemonic coalitions and pursue a ‘war of movement’ once this ideological work has been done. This for example is the rhetorical logic of the opening to Chertkovskaya et al.’s excellent Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth (2019): they invoke Mark Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism (and extend it with the idea of growth realism), which, while it functions well as an empirical description of contemporary life – most people do not see any alternative to capitalism/ growth – the way it works as a critical device is by implying that the observation contains its solution (Barca et al., 2019, pp. 1–2). To show that alternatives to capitalism/ growth do in fact exist is then at least implicitly sufficient as a means to pursuing those alternatives: capitalist realism is a form of common sense that needs simply to be deconstructed (along with political action, clearly) in order to dislodge its hegemonic power. Similarly, in the same volume, Max Koch asks, ‘Given the fact that two hundred

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years of capitalist growth have produced next to disastrous ecological and social results, one may indeed wonder why this model is being upheld at all’ (Koch, 2019, p. 69). Berman’s argument (other ways of doing this are surely also available) deepens our understanding of the power of these hegemonic narratives, meaning that such rational strategies are unlikely to succeed, at least not without articulating them with attempts to construct alternative affectively powerful visions and values. Growth is thus not only common sense (no rational person would oppose growth). It is so deeply built into the normative structure of modern societies that its falsity cannot be ‘uncovered.’ It is multidimensional and culturally embedded, not only at the level of ideas but at a visceral level. It exists for example: in expectations that one generation has that its income will be higher than the previous one; in the professional expectations of travel; in the constant fetishisation of novel commodities and technologies; in the embracing of new possibilities for consumption; in the deep normativity of ‘development’ as the solution to global inequalities. All of these are myriad specific sites that draw us in to valuing growth whether consciously or not. How many young idealistic ecological activists are nevertheless tempted by Skyscanner and its constantly changing offers? André Gorz is useful because both he engaged in this sort of ideological critique of these commitments to specific consumption items – his ‘social ideology of the motor car’ being a classic of the genre, and because he was the originator of the term degrowth (Gorz, 1980; Leonardi, 2019). But Gorz’s analysis of automobiles is instructive more generally. First, automobiles are to be understood as ideological in the strong Marxist sense, thus risking denying the way in which they are precisely part of ‘the values we embraced’ in favour of a rationalist argument centred on showing people they have fallen foul of ‘false consciousness.’ Second, Gorz relies heavily on a positional goods argument – automobiles only have value precisely when only a few own them. Their value is conditional on rarity, both for the prosaic reason that the roads clog up when car ownership approaches universality, but also for the reason that the use-value of a car (for Gorz) is intrinsically about having one when others do not. As car ownership expands, the value of a car declines correspondingly. This is a common strategy for arguing against growth more generally by proponents of degrowth – growth no longer delivers welfare gains because expanding consumption destroys the value of that consumption (beyond Gorz’s polemics, the more formal origins of this general positional goods argument regarding growth is of course Hirsch, 1977). It remains a rationalist argument like the invocation of ‘common sense.’ In the end, Gorz’s argument suffers from the similar problem to that of common sense – it fails to account for how consumption items like cars become normatively valued for a range of reasons, not just as positional goods. To the extent that the luxury value of cars has become largely eliminated, such positional consumption has shifted to other objects and cars always had other use-values that remain for many car users (for more on this specific argument regarding cars, see Paterson, 2007, ch.5).

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We Fight Back the Tears and Step on the Gas But it is not only through our desires for growth that it is sustained culturally. It also does so through the myriad material practices in daily lives that are the ordinary, banal dimensions of a growth economy. Some of these are really obvious: driving, flying, cooking and eating, credit card purchases. Some are perhaps less obvious: voting behaviour, following a sports team, paying a mortgage or rent. These are intimately entwined with a growth-oriented world, through how they articulate with investment strategies of financiers, property developers, manufacturers, mining companies or others or how they lock-in growth through the incentive structures for politicians to promote growth-oriented policies. And they create path dependencies creating obstacles to pursuing a post-growth world: undermining a shift to shorter working weeks because we are locked into mortgage or rent payments; enhancing the power of growth coalitions such as those surrounding urban and suburban housing development or the commercial use of city centre space; or crowding out alternatives because of the ‘radical monopoly’ (Illich, 1974) of the car. It is perhaps no accident that many of these practices are also those that are most deeply enmeshed in the unsustainability of the contemporary world. They are linear activities from resource extraction to consumption and disposal that both require and sustain high and expanding levels of material throughput. This is the corollary of them being useful for a growth economy: the constant investment cycles that enable this expanding resource use. It is no accident therefore that this logic also drives many contemporary attempts to shift to sustainability. We can see for example how pursuing sustainability within capitalism readily becomes shaped, for example, into novel cycles of investment for new high-material-throughput items like electric vehicles and the myriad material flows that they demand and the relative sidelining, in most contexts at least, of both alternatives to the car as a mode of mobility and to the more radical idea that we might just move around less. The logic of this argument is that these intertwined affective and material dimensions of the cultural politics of growth and unsustainability are instructive for degrowth politics. This is both in terms of how the legitimacy of growth is sustained and therefore against which any degrowth strategies have to work hard, but also because degrowth strategies might have things to learn about seeking to promote objects, infrastructures, and practices around which these affective and material dimensions might be mobilised. In other words, which of the various sets of practices that are integral to degrowth and sustainability have the potential for to generate both powerful emotional attachments and socially important material qualities, that might sustain those initiatives politically over time?

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Culture and Political Economy But as Berman also implies, modernity (growth) is not only a cultural phenomenon but also a political-economic one and that these two are closely articulated. Pursuing these mutually sustaining sets of values and material practices needs also to work in the context of questions of power and contestation within contemporary capitalism. Crudely put, can proponents of degrowth not only find highly attractive sets of practices to articulate with degrowth, but also sustain them in the face of the political backlash from growth coalitions? Some of these will be cultural (people really attached to their cars, as most forcefully in the ‘coal rollers’ and other ‘petromasculinists’ opposing climate action in the US, see Daggett, 2018), but they will also be the simpler politics of large corporations defending their assets and investments against threats to their profitability. In Berman’s account of Robert Moses and the ‘expressway world,’ this is expressed in terms of modernism (a set of modernist cultural values) which interpellate us and to which we subscribe, but also a modernisation (a modernist/capitalist political economy). The latter entails a wide set of investments to generate capital accumulation, that have general dynamics like Harvey’s spatial fixes or Schumpeter’s creative destruction, but also involves particular forms of material infrastructure such as expressways, cars or bridges, through which development, as modernisation, is materially sustained. Berman is effectively describing a particular model of development – New Deal-era modernisation – that is heavily state-led through large infrastructure projects but which both creates jobs directly and creates enormous potential for associated private investment in housing, retail, construction, cars and the like. This model dominated much post-war Western development strategies and continues to dominate in many parts of the world. But even the shift to neoliberalism in many ways simply shifted the financial model of such infrastructure focused development – towards private sector or ‘public-private partnerships’ instead of the state directly engaging in construction. And in the last decade of course we have seen a return to industrial strategy even in many neoliberal strongholds, signalling a return to this more activist state-led growth strategy, focused often on infrastructure and occasionally branded as a ‘green industrial revolution.’ It is the combination of culture and political economy that explains its power, its sense of irresistibility. ‘To oppose them and their works was to oppose modernity itself, to fight history and progress, to be a Luddite, an escapist, afraid of life and adventure and change and growth’ (Berman, 1982, p. 313). Moses hints at more conventional forms of political resistance – ‘I’m just going to keep right on building. You do the best you can to stop it’ (Berman, 1982, p. 290). But because he was ‘working in the name of the values that we ourselves embraced’ (p. 295), he knew such resistance was doomed. We need therefore a concept of cultural political economy to understand growth politics and thus its implications for degrowth politics. There are various ways of constructing such a framework (Paterson, 2007, Best & Paterson, 2010, Jessop, 2010; Sum & Jessop, 2013). My version is relatively loose and open, consisting of a simple articulation of its

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two elements. The first element is a set of standard critical political economy arguments about the capitalist character of social life: wage labour, commodification, market competition, class conflict, imperial geopolitics, with the state as both ‘ideal collective capitalist’ and regulator of capitalism’s inherent social conflicts. All these features of capitalism interact to generate both the perceived possibility of, and the imperative for, the pursuit of endless capital accumulation. They also generate a series of ongoing contradictions such accumulation inevitably generates. The second part is that all of these elements entail the production and circulation material objects – in both workplaces and in consumption – that are central to this accumulation process but which themselves become objects of desire. In part this arises out of the strategic production of that desire so that capital accumulation can be legitimated in the face of its many injustices and degradations. In Henry Ford’s words: If they manage to adjust to exemplary machines, then their pay will go up, and the time will not be far when our very own workers will buy automobiles from us. . . . I’m not saying our workers will . . . govern the state. No, we can leave such ravings to the European socialists. But the workers will buy automobiles. (p. 46, quoted in Wolf, 1996, p. 72)

But to reduce the cultural values that then attach to these objects to the strategies of capital is overly reductive. As Berman shows, it is precisely because those values of progress, freedom, equality and the like, appear to many people as progressive that they attain power and can then be instrumentalised by capital. They are more than simply the ideological articulation of capital’s interests.

Ambivalence Berman also hints at the key chink in the armour of modernity/growth. The core of his argument overall is one about ambivalence and ambiguity. Modernity is a social form which creates spectacular violence, bureaucratic domination and constant disruption. But it is also one which creates enormous promise and emancipation. As Berman puts it: To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction. It is to be overpowered by the immense bureaucratic organizations that have the power to control and often to destroy all communities, values, lives; and yet to be undeterred in our determination to face these forces, to fight to change the world and make it our own. (Berman, 1982, p. 13)

The core of Berman’s argument is that as the nineteenth shifted into to the twentieth century broad swathes of European-American culture moved from a sense of modernity as fundamentally ambiguous – of both promise and disaster (as exemplified variously by Marx, Dostoyevsky, or Baudelaire) – to one where it was either to be regarded as an unambiguous triumph and linear irresistible force (e.g., the Italian Futurists, Le Corbusier, Robert Moses) or an unmitigated catastrophe (Adorno). As we see above in

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the quote from Max Koch, many of the articulations of the ecological crisis, including some degrowth advocates, may at least instinctively be on Adorno’s side. Berman’s overall aim is to recover the nineteenth-century sense of ambiguity and ambivalence of both promise and peril at the heart of modernity’s central qualities. The principal site he uses to illustrate and explore this, highly useful for thinking about degrowth politics, is in the urbanist Jane Jacobs’ (1961) response to the Moses’ led reconstruction of North American cities and the various alternative urban modernisms that arose out of the contradictions of his Le Corbusier-inspired projects. Jacobs articulated, in her magisterial Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), the problem of the one-dimensional visions of Le Corbusier and his followers, in favour of an alternative account of cities as lived realities where high modernist planning erases the sense of self, of community autonomy, of conviviality. But she also led urban social movements to both resist Moses’ like projects (most famously in the successful resistance to the ‘Spadina Expressway’ in her adopted home of Toronto) and to build alternative forms of urban life. Many of the material dimensions of Jacobs’ approach have resonated with urban ecological movements since then – a resistance to car-led development in favour of walking and cycling, an associated insistence on the need for daily services being available within short distances (most recently echoed in the push for ‘15-minute cities’), arguments for the value of public space for play, community events and political participation and so on. Many of the tenets of degrowth articulate well with this alternative vision of urban life. But the overall point of the connection is that it shows how the potential for alternatives are contained within modernity’s own contradictory logics – they are not anti-modernist but alter-modernist in character, contra left ecomodernist critiques of degrowth (Huber, 2021). Berman’s distinction between between modernity as a broad social form, modernisation as a set of social-economic processes unfolding and modernism as an ideological complex around the former two, is useful here. Degrowth, like Jacobs, can be usefully read as fundamentally challenging the latter of these fundamentally and the specifics of how modernisation unfolds, but not the core of modernity as a social form. Socialist ecomodernists like Huber, like their liberal counterparts such as the authors of the ecomodernist manifesto (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015), seem to me to conflate these distinctions in their critiques of degrowth. Many cities have been restructured since the late 1960s around the sorts of principles we find in Jacobs’ book. They contain the seeds, by analogy, with how we might think about pursuing degrowth – identifying the core tensions and ambivalences about the dominant forms within growth agendas. It is worth in this context exploring this by taking Kallis’ account (2018, p.128) of some core policy proposals to pursue degrowth. These are: 1. Citizen debt audit 2. Work-sharing 3. Basic and maximum income 4. Green tax reform

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Stop subsidies and public investment for polluting activities Support the social and solidarity economy Social use of vacant buildings and houses Reduce and restrict advertising Establish environmental limits Abolish GDP1

Some of these are narrowly about the biophysical problems of growth (number 9 in particular). But most can be understood to arise out of or at least articulate with ways in which growth has generated broad social ambivalence. One (7) is explicitly at the urban scale and resonates directly with Jacobs’ concerns but most of the others (1, 2, 3, 6, especially) have particular resonance for the quality of urban daily life and are focused on reconstructing social and economic systems around more collectivist forms of life that systemically reduce consumption and work, recognising the gains that modern infrastructures and technologies have brought (alongside their obvious environmentally and socially damaging impacts). The rest are perhaps a little more technocratic (tax reform, economic accounting systems), but nevertheless can be framed in terms of ambivalence. For example, with green tax reform, the promotion of this by Green parties or environmental economists is often in terms of ‘don’t tax goods, tax bads.’ Arguing to stop subsidies for polluting activities is an even easier sell here. But it is worth recognising – contra Koch above – that in fact many contemporary citizens would indeed be ambivalent about removing such subsidies in practice or engaging in serious green tax reform. There is indeed periodic resistance to such taxes, occasionally articulated explicitly as anti-ecological backlash politics, but often more reflecting more complex questions especially that environmental taxes can articulate well with neoliberal agendas that intensify inequalities in the name of environmental action (the gilets jaunes protests in France exemplify this dilemma). Regarding subsidies, the most notable of these remaining are ones that make fossil-fuelled mobility possible and affordable (oil and gas production subsidies, publicly funded road building) as well as other oil uses viable (cooking oil subsidies are widespread across the Global South) and ones that make meat and dairy consumption cheap (mostly in practice subsidies to animal feed like corn and soya). Riots are not uncommon against the removal of kerosene subsidies in the Global South and there have been widespread direct-action protests against fuel taxes at various points in time, as for example in the fuel protests in the UK (with echoes across Europe) in 2000 (Doherty et al., 2003), or indeed in current protests over high gas prices associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 These are Kallis’ own proposals. He also gives ones by Herman Daly, Florent Marcellesi and Serge Latouche.

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Nevertheless, ambivalence about the ‘gains’ of modernity/growth are the starting point for thinking about how to promote these degrowth-oriented initiatives.

Making Degrowth Irresistible But it is one thing to create political space to generate support for degrowth as an approach. It is another to make such initiatives irresistible. One lesson from Berman is about how we might create openings within a growth-dominated society in order to push beyond growth. But another equally important lesson is about the value of explicitly seeking to make degrowth feel irresistible. This is particularly important since, in many ways, the pursuit of degrowth will feel to many as if, like with Moses’ freeways, they ‘are in its way.’ Any form of the radical transition that is entailed in degrowth – or even for that matter any form of decarbonisation simply to meet the climate crisis specifically (even if one thinks that is possible within a growth-oriented society) – will be spectacularly disruptive to established patterns of daily life, social habits and structure, livelihoods and the meanings of those activities and social relations. This is the case for core systems of provision across societies – from housing, transport, food, energy – all of which we can expect resistance both from established incumbent industries (property developers, car manufacturers, agribusiness and supermarkets, oil companies) and the broad social value of the accumulation they generate, and from many people for whom large single family homes, cars, meat or a warm fire have been objects and infrastructures around which the meanings of their lives have been constructed. We need therefore to have visions and strategies powerful enough that people – including the proponents of degrowth themselves! – will ‘believe in its promise’ despite that disruption. The lessons of Moses in this respect are particularly problematic in two ways for pursuing degrowth. One is that Moses carried out his visions in a highly autocratic, anti-democratic manner. By contrast, the visions of degrowthers are usually embedded in a participative or radical democratic politics. But how such radical disruptive transformations can be pursued in this radically democratic manner is far from obvious. The other is that Moses’ modernism was pursued predominantly through large-scale infrastructure projects that both symbolised his high modernist vision and at the same time dramatically physically reconstructed cities like New York. Infrastructure is clearly similarly important to degrowth – ambitious bike-oriented transport systems and ‘complete streets,’ co-housing, urban farms and like, frequently come up as central parts of a degrowth-oriented vision. Some of these are just about promoting specific practices that are low environmental impact (walking and cycling) while others have the more transformative set of social innovations promoting reduced working hours and what Kallis calls the ‘social and solidarity economy.’ Even beyond degrowth, to the world for example of ‘climate imaginaries,’ these alternative urban visions have become widespread,

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along with a few key examples of cities that have already been transformed in this way (with Amsterdam and Copenhagen perhaps as poster-children for these transitions) and various specific interventions that have these qualities – ‘incredible edibles’ initiatives growing food for free consumption on waste ground, community-owned renewable energy initiatives and so on. Some broad principles we can find in degrowth ideas – Gorz’s account’s focus on autonomy and self-management perhaps (as emphasised by Leonardi, 2019) – might well work to underpin such visions. Others, such as Mies’ subsistence perspective, seem to me less persuasive from this point of view (as discussed by Gregoratti & Raphael, 2019). The challenge is to make such visions irresistible. I don’t pretend to know how to do that and perhaps there is no blueprint for such strategies to be effective, but it does seem to me the useful question to ask. It also seems to me that it entails working with the sense of cultural political economy I have drawn on Berman to develop. That is, it entails developing powerful imaginaries that work from widespread cultural ambivalence about (i.e., not simple hostility to) modern life and articulate those with specific innovations that feed peoples’ dissatisfaction and desires for something different, that then become realised through novel forms of social practice and relation, but at the same time involves a set of material interventions that generate concrete benefits to specific groups, in the analogous way that Moses’ development projects generated accumulation possibilities for property developers, construction companies and so on. Doing so without falling into a simpler logic of ‘green capitalism’ seems to me a particular challenge, since there are many powerful groups seeking simply to capitalise on ecological crises for accumulation purposes.

Conclusions As scholars working on degrowth have increasingly accepted the need to engage degrowth as an explicitly political project – entailing understanding the state, power relations, conflict, coalition building, distributive justice and radical social/political change – there is of course a danger of reinventing the wheel. There is a widespread set of debates in Green political thought which has long thought about the implications of Green positions, premised on limits to growth as a key plan, for political strategy (Trainer, 1985; Wall, 1990; Eckersley, 2004; Barry, 2012). There is much more to be mined in thinking about the politics of degrowth from these debates. To take just one, the literature generated out of Robyn Eckersley’s notion of the Green state (2004) would be an important starting point (e.g., Meadowcroft, 2005; Duit et al., 2016; Paterson, 2016; Bailey, 2018). In this chapter, however, I have sought to recover some related ideas by using Marshall Berman’s account of modernity as a starting point for thinking about the challenges and opportunities for pursuing degrowth politically.

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References Asafu-Adjaye, J., Blomqvist, L., Brand, S., Brook, B., Defries, R., Ellis, E., Foreman, C., Keith, D., Lewis, M., Lynas, M., Nordhaus, T., Pielke Jr, R., Pritzker, R., Roy, J., Sagoff, M., Shellenberger, M., Stone, R., & Teague, P. (2015). An Ecomodernist Manifesto. www.ecomodernism.org/s/An-Ecomodernist-Manifesto. pdf [Accessed: 13 February 2023]. Bailey, D. (2018). Re-thinking the fiscal and monetary political economy of the green state. New Political Economy, 25(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526267 Barca, S., Chertkovskaya, E., & Paulsson, A. (2019). Introduction: The end of political economy as we knew it? From growth realism to nomadic utopianism. In E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, & S. Barca (Eds.), Towards a political economy of degrowth (pp. 1–18). Rowman & Littlefield International. Barry, J. (2012). The politics of actually existing unsustainability: Human flourishing in a climate-changed, carbon constrained world. Oxford University Press. Berman, M. (1982). All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity. Verso. Best, J., & Paterson, M. (2010). Cultural political economy. Routledge. Buch-Hansen, H. (2018). The prerequisites for a degrowth paradigm Shift: Insights from critical political economy. Ecological Economics, 146, 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.10.021 Bulkeley, H., Paterson, M., & Stripple, J. (2016). Towards a cultural politics of climate change: Devices, desires and dissent. Cambridge University Press. Chertkovskaya, E., Paulsson, A., & Barca, S. (2019). Towards a political economy of degrowth. Rowman & Littlefield. Daggett, C. (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil fuels and authoritarian Desire. Millennium, 47(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817 Daly, H. (1992). Steady-state economics, 2nd edition. Earthscan. Doherty, B., Paterson, M., Plows, A., & Wall, D. (2003). Explaining the fuel protests. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 5(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-856X.00093 Duit, A., Feindt, P. H., & Meadowcroft, J. (2016). Greening Leviathan: The rise of the environmental state? Environmental Politics, 25(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2015.1085218 Eckersley, R. (2004). The green state: Rethinking democracy and sovereignty. MIT Press. Fournier, V. (2008). Escaping from the economy: The politics of degrowth. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 28(11/12), 528–545. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330810915233 Gorz, A. (1980). Ecology as politics. Pluto. Gregoratti, C., & Raphael, R. (2019). The historical roots of a feminist “degrowth”: Maria Mies’s and Marilyn Waring’s critiques of growth. In E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, & S. Barca (Eds.), Towards a political economy of degrowth (pp. 83–98). Rowman & Littlefield International. Heikkurinen, P., Lozanoska, J., & Tosi, P. (2019). Activities of degrowth and political change. Journal of Cleaner Production, 211, 555–565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.119 Hickel, J. (2020). What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification. Globalizations, 18(7), 1105–1111 https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222 Hickel, J. (2021). The anti-colonial politics of degrowth. Political Geography, 88, 102404. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.polgeo.2021.102404 Hirsch, F. (1977). Social limits to growth. Routledge. Huber, M. T. (2021). The case for socialist modernism. Political Geography, 87, 102352. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.polgeo.2021.102352 Illich, I. (1974). Energy and equity. Calder & Boyars. Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth: Economics for a finite planet. Routledge. Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. Vintage. Jessop, B. (2010). Cultural political economy and critical policy studies. Critical Policy Studies, 3(3–4), 336–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171003619741

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Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth. Agenda Publishing. Kish, K. & Quilley, S. (2017). Wicked dilemmas of scale and complexity in the politics of degrowth. Ecological Economics, 142, 306–317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.008 Koch, M. (2019). Growth and degrowth in Marx’s critique of political economy. In E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, & S. Barca (Eds.), Towards a political economy of degrowth (pp. 69–82). Rowman & Littlefield International. Leonardi, E. (2019). The topicality of André Gorz’s political ecology: Rethinking écologie et liberté (1977) to (re)connect Marxism and degrowth. In E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, & S. Barca (Eds.), Towards a political economy of degrowth (pp. 39–54). Rowman & Littlefield International. Meadowcroft, J. (2005). From welfare state to ecostate. In J. and E. Barry (Eds.), The state and the global ecological crisis (pp. 3–23). MIT Press. Paterson, M. (2007). Automobile politics: Ecology and cultural political economy. Cambridge University Press. Paterson, M. (2016). Political economy of greening the state. In T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. M. Meyer & D. Schlosberg (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of environmental political theory (pp. 475–490). Oxford University Press. Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A. & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism. Verso Books. Sum, N.-L. & Jessop, B. (2013). Towards a cultural political economy. Edward. Trainer, F. E. (1985). Abandon affluence! Zed. Victor, P. A. (2008). Managing without growth: Slower by design, not disaster. Edward Elgar Publishing. Wall, D. (1990). Getting there: Steps to a green society. Green Print. Wolf, W. (1996). Car mania: A critical history of transport. Pluto.

Milena Büchs, Max Koch and Jayeon Lee

5 Sustainable Welfare: Decoupling Welfare from Growth and Prioritising Needs Satisfaction for All Abstract: Welfare capitalism has developed in the context of rapidly expanding, fossil fuel-driven industrial economies. Faced with the urgent need for systematic changes of economic systems so that they stay within planetary limits, decoupling welfare from economic growth is an important task. This chapter introduces the concept of sustainable welfare, referring to welfare systems that prioritise the satisfaction of human needs within planetary boundaries. Rather than aligning with the growth imperative through income protection schemes for the socio-economically marginalised and investments in human capital equipped for globalised and competitive economies, sustainable welfare states would prioritise eco-social policies, aiming at basic needs satisfaction for all, limiting excessive consumption behaviours and restricting income and wealth inequalities that have been exacerbated in recent decades. The chapter discusses the ways in which the mutual dependency between welfare systems and economic growth can be decreased by addressing the work and welfare nexus, shifting funding sources for welfare systems, strengthening preventive functions of welfare and redefining the chief goal of welfare systems as sustainable needs satisfaction for all. The chapter further discusses how the governance of this transition process to sustainable welfare can be envisioned, where multi-level governance models and deliberative processes will play a crucial role. Keywords: welfare state, economic growth, human needs, post-growth, redistribution, inequality, capitalism, political economy

Introduction ‘Sustainable welfare’ can be defined as welfare or social policy systems that prioritise the satisfaction of human needs within planetary boundaries over economic growth (Büchs, 2021b; Koch, 2022a). Some publications have defined the term ‘sustainable welfare’ more broadly as the combination of social and ecological goals or policies without reference to economic growth (e.g., Fritz et al., 2021; Lindellee et al., 2021). Most authors, however, explicitly connect ‘sustainable welfare’ with degrowth or postMilena Büchs, University of Leeds, UK Max Koch, Lund University, Sweden Jayeon Lee, University of Gothenburg, Sweden https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-008

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growth perspectives that are sceptical about the compatibility of economic growth and the achievement of ecological targets (Büchs, 2021b; Hirvilammi, 2020; Koch, 2022a). Discussing welfare systems in the context of degrowth or post-growth raises several complex questions. The first question that this chapter discusses concerns the relationship between welfare systems and economic growth. Here, it is often assumed that the functioning of welfare systems depends on economic growth (Corlet Walker et al., 2021). At the same time, it needs to be acknowledged that welfare systems are designed to support economic growth and that they thus contribute to the environmental and social problems associated with growth-based economies (Büchs, 2021b). After outlining the degrowth position and the relationship between economic growth and welfare systems, this chapter discusses how the mutual dependency between welfare systems and economic growth can be addressed and reduced. The second question that this chapter addresses relates to process and governance. Through which mechanisms and institutions could a sustainable welfare system be designed, implemented and legitimised? Here we outline proposals related to multi-level governance, roles of the state and deliberative democratic processes.

Degrowth and Sustainable Welfare The degrowth perspective (e.g., Schneider et al., 2010) argues that a reduction of material and energy throughput in economies of the Global North is likely to be necessary to avoid the transgression of planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015). Degrowth supporters hence question the ‘green growth’ position according to which minimising environmental impacts is compatible with, or even relies on, continued economic growth (Ekins & Zenghelis, 2021), pointing to studies which demonstrate that absolute decoupling of GDP growth and environmental impacts has not been achieved at the global level (Haberl et al., 2020). While absolute decoupling has occurred in several countries, it has not done so at the pace required for meeting ecological targets (Haberl et al., 2020). The future of growth in the Global North is also uncertain for other reasons, such as a deceleration of technological innovation, reduction of the working-age population, slowing global population growth (Gordon, 2016; Vollset et al., 2020), as well as possible long-term challenges to growth from the global COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Based on the precautionary principle, it would be prudent for societies to develop strategies for coping with low or no growth in the future. These arguments about the undesirability and uncertainty of future growth have profound implications for welfare systems. Welfare systems in the post-war period have co-evolved with growth-based capitalist economic systems into capitalistic welfare states, creating a mutual dependency (Büchs, 2021b). On the one hand, welfare systems

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are commonly designed to support economic growth and stabilise the economy. In general terms, welfare systems contribute to the legitimisation of growth-based capitalism by keeping the rise of inequality, poverty and social exclusion in check (Gough, 1979; O’Connor, 1973; Offe, 1984). Welfare systems also support labour productivity by improving the education, skills and health of the population. Pensions, sickness and unemployment benefits support consumer demand among groups who cannot participate in the labour market, especially during economic crises. Industrial relations which regulate employment conditions and wage levels support social peace and hence economic stability. Government strategies for achieving economic growth have changed considerably over time. In recent decades, the growth-orientation of welfare states has been articulated in the adoption of ‘social investment’ approaches which focus on employability and improvements in ‘human capital’ (Hassel & Palier, 2020). The growth-orientation of welfare states remains a key factor for policy formulation. At the same time, it is often argued that welfare systems depend on economic growth (Bailey, 2015; Büchs, 2021b; Corlet Walker et al., 2021). During economic crises, unemployment usually increases, undermining the revenue base for welfare states due to falling incomes, consumption and social insurance contributions, while demand for welfare spending increases. This often leads to counter-cyclical patterns of welfare spending. While this increased demand for welfare spending during times of economic crisis can be financed through deficit spending, future economic growth is then required for governments to service the debt and interest (Bailey, 2015). In addition, countries across the world are currently experiencing demographic changes that involve increasing life expectancy and falling fertility rates. These demographic trends generate ‘ageing societies’ and an increased demand for pensions, health and social care (Rouzet et al., 2019). Without decoupling welfare from growth, economic growth is deemed necessary to finance the increasing welfare demand while the working-age population decreases. These are all valid concerns that raise the question: how could welfare systems be made less dependent on economic growth, and how could they be designed such that they do not serve the growth imperative? Degrowth and sustainable welfare scholars have developed several responses to these questions, which we will now discuss. In general terms, degrowth proponents have argued that degrowth economies would be organised very differently to current growth-based capitalist economies (Schneider et al., 2010). This implies that degrowth – the intentional shrinking of the material and energy throughput to the economy – would not be equivalent to ‘economic crisis’ as we know it within growth-based capitalist systems (Schneider et al., 2010). Proposals for addressing the mutual dependency of welfare states and growth include changing the relationship between work/employment and welfare, redefining the sources of welfare funding and a new emphasis on fair distribution, needs satisfaction and prevention.

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Addressing the Mutual Dependency between Welfare and Growth Work and Welfare Many degrowth proponents advocate a change to the role of work, and its relationship with welfare, within the economy. Current growth-based welfare and economic systems rely on high levels of labour market participation and paid employment. Degrowth scholars have responded to this concern by proposing several measures that could keep employment levels stable despite shrinking levels of material and energy throughput to the economy, and that could decouple welfare systems from employment and growth. These measures include a reduction of working time and redistribution of paid employment, abandoning the goal of ever-increasing labour productivity and a de-coupling of welfare and needs satisfaction from paid employment (Büchs, 2021a; Gunderson, 2019). Some studies argue that employment levels could be kept stable despite low or negative growth through working time reduction and a decline of labour productivity growth, especially in a context of low substitutability of capital for labour (Jackson & Victor, 2011; Jackson & Victor, 2016; Mair et al., 2020). In addition, social policy scholars have proposed that the work-welfare nexus would need to be decoupled through the provision of universal benefits or services to ensure that everyone has access to welfare payments and services regardless of their employment status (Bohnenberger, 2020; Büchs, 2021a). Proposals to decouple the (paid) work-welfare nexus also feature in feminist economics debates, which highlight that much of socially valuable care and reproductive work remains unpaid even though it makes a vital contribution to capitalist accumulation (Dukelow & Murphy, 2022; Lawhon & McCreary, 2020). People (still mostly women) who are predominantly active in the informal economy also do not accrue eligibility for welfare payments or services. Since this informal work makes an important contribution to ‘social reproduction’ and societal well-being, feminists argue that care and reproductive work needs to be at the core of sustainable welfare approaches (Dukelow & Murphy, 2022). Decoupling eligibility for income support and basic services from formal labour market status would be an important part of such a development.

Financing Sustainable Welfare Sustainable welfare scholars have also responded to concerns that the financing of welfare systems depends on economic growth. Proposals for addressing this issue include redesigning the sources of welfare funding, repurposing state revenues and public money creation.

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As explained above, welfare spending is currently mostly funded through social insurance contributions from employers and employees or from taxes on income or consumption. All of these sources of funding are highly dependent on economic growth as revenue levels shrink when employment, income and consumption levels fall, which usually happens at the same time as demand for welfare spending increases. Funding for social policy purposes could hence be made more resilient if it drew more strongly on tax sources that are less dependent on economic growth. Taxes on wealth, for instance financial assets, property, land, inheritance, natural resources, etc. fall into this category. In contrast to income and consumption, which are flows, assets are stocks that are less affected by economic growth. The market value of assets can change, but taxes on assets could include a fixed amount related to the size of the asset (e.g., a fixed amount depending on the size of a property or piece of land or related to the number of shares held in an investment portfolio) that does not change depending on the value of the asset, thus stabilising tax revenues in the context of decreasing GDP. Caps on wealth (and income), which could be linked to redistributive policies, are also often referred to in the de-/post-growth literature (BuchHansen & Koch, 2019). Taxes on pollution or emission trading schemes are other hotly discussed topics in the literature. Both are regarded as market-based instruments for curbing emissions and other pollution. Taxes set a defined price per volume of pollution, while emission trading schemes set sector- or economy-wide caps on emissions and distribute emission permits which are then traded among market participants. Taxes create price certainty but uncertainty about the level of emission or pollution reduction. The opposite is the case for trading schemes, which create certainty about the level of emission or pollution reduction but uncertainty about the price of permits (Daly & Farley, 2011). Distributional implications of tax and trading schemes depend on their design. Taxes on, or price increases of, necessities such as domestic energy usually have regressive impacts, burdening low-income households more than highincome households (Büchs et al., 2021; Owen & Barrett, 2020). Progressive distributional impacts have only been observed for taxes on ‘luxuries’ such as air travel because richer people remain far more likely to participate in air travel and to fly more frequently (Büchs & Mattioli, 2022). Distributional impacts from emission trading schemes are harder to assess because the design of schemes differs widely. For instance, if free emission permits are distributed to high emitters (so-called ‘grandfathering’), trading schemes have regressive impacts too (Dirix et al., 2015). If permits are distributed on an equal per capita basis, distributional impacts tend to be progressive (Burgess, 2016). However, utilising taxes and trading schemes as revenues for sustainable welfare spending has limitations because revenues will decline over time if these schemes successfully reduce pollution (Speck, 2017). Another option to support sustainable welfare spending could be to repurpose government spending that currently supports high-carbon sectors. Governments around the world provided explicit and implicit fossil fuel subsidies worth around six percent of GDP in 2017 (International Monetary Fund, 2022). This figure does not include govern-

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ment spending on high-carbon infrastructure such as road building, airport expansions, etc. but does include some of the cost caused by climate change damage. For comparison, OECD countries spent an average of 6.8% of GDP on old age pensions in the same year.1 The transition to net-zero will require governments to end expenditure on high-carbon sectors. This spending could instead be used to support sustainable welfare policies and the green economy. There is likely to be conflict over the repurposing of high-carbon government spending, but whatever it will be spent on instead should seek to combine social and ecological objectives. Post-growth debates about monetary systems are also relevant for the question of how sustainable welfare could be financed without growth. Currently, most money is created by private banks and financial institutions by issuing debt. Debt-based monetary systems are seen as a driver of economic growth because a growing economy is required to service the debt and interest in the future (Mellor, 2015). At the same time, neoliberal economists and policymakers often argue that government deficits should be kept within strict limits to avoid inflation. Degrowth proponents often challenge both of these points in line with heterodox monetary theories. These theories argue, first, that money creation should be democratised and taken into the public sphere, i.e., issued and spent into the economy by governments instead of being issued as debt; and second, that public money creation does not necessarily lead to inflation if the spending that it facilitates can be absorbed within society (Ingham, 2020; Kelton, 2020).

Redistribution, Needs Satisfaction, Prevention This third section offers suggestions for approaches that could both make welfare systems less dependent on economic growth and for redesigning them so that they do not promote growth and associated environmental and social problems. This includes a prioritisation of social and ecological goals over economic growth, a focus on needs satisfaction and sufficiency and a reorganisation of the economy to reduce the need for welfare spending. Sustainable welfare approaches would prioritise the achievement of social and ecological objectives over economic growth in the design of all policies. Welfare systems would therefore be re-oriented from a focus on supporting economic growth to ensuring that welfare systems support a decrease of material and energy throughput to the economy, as well as achieving a fairer distribution of resources and needs satisfaction for everyone. Some authors warn that low or negative levels of growth could increase levels of inequality. For instance, Piketty (2014) argues that all else being

 Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Social Expenditure database, available from https://stats.oecd.org/.

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equal, capital tends to accumulate and become more concentrated over time, leading to increasing inequality. Inequality rises more quickly when economic growth rates are lower than the rate of return on capital (Piketty, 2014). However, the de- and postgrowth literature has consistently emphasised that redistribution and the achievement of social objectives would need to lie at the heart of degrowth strategies (Büchs & Koch, 2019;). This is where degrowth fundamentally differs from economic crises in the existing growth-focused context where decreasing GDP often goes hand in hand with increases in unemployment and austerity policies. Modelling by Jackson and Victor (2016) has demonstrated that income inequality can be stabilised or even reduced in the absence of growth if the substitutability of capital for labour is low. Progressive taxation can make an additional contribution to greater income equality in the context of low substitutability of capital for labour (Jackson and Victor, 2016). It should be noted that some scholars in the field have argued that once social and ecological objectives are prioritised, we could stay agnostic about the impact on GDP growth (Raworth, 2017; van den Bergh & Kallis, 2012). However, based on the arguments outlined above regarding the lack of evidence for absolute decoupling of GDP growth and environmental impacts at required levels and pace (Haberl et al., 2020), it looks likely that GDP would shrink in such a scenario. The second theme in this section focuses on notions of needs and sufficiency. The sustainable welfare literature has been strongly influenced by and incorporates notions of basic human needs and sufficiency, building on work by Doyal and Gough (1991), Max-Neef (1991), and Fuchs (2020), among others. There is some debate about the extent to which basic human needs are objective and universal or socially constructed and variable. Doyal and Gough (1991) and Max-Neef (1991) have defined basic human needs as objective and universal, postulating that certain needs exist in all places and throughout history. For instance, the need for ‘minimally impaired social participation’ which is the ultimate need within Doyal and Gough’s framework, underpinned by physical health and ‘autonomy of agency’; or needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity and freedom in Max-Neef’s (1991) framework. According to Doyal and Gough (1991) and Max-Neef (1991), needs are universal and objective at this abstract level, while needs satisfiers – the concrete ways in which needs can be satisfied – differ from locality to locality and throughout history. Other scholars disagree with the notion that needs (beyond those that are required for sheer survival) are universal and argue instead that needs are ‘socially constructed,’ in the sense that they are shaped by dominant social discourses, knowledge, social norms, institutions, technologies, etc. (Rinkinen et al., 2021, p. 21). From this perspective, it could for example be argued that feudal societies would not have identified ‘minimally impaired social participation’ as the primary human need, demonstrating that Doyal and Gough’s definition is culturally shaped. Max-Neef has acknowledged that needs can change over time even at the generic level, e.g., they state that needs for identity and freedom developed later in history than other needs (1991, p. 27). The relativity of needs

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becomes even clearer when one focuses on needs satisfiers. Systems of provision often shape needs and related social practices and energy use (Brand-Correa et al., 2020). For instance, infrastructures in many contemporary cities privilege car travel over cycling and walking while investments into public transport remain insufficient, making car ownership a necessity (Brand-Correa et al., 2020). This discussion highlights that human needs approaches are normative approaches. They aim to define a set of needs as social rights that everyone in society should have access to and they argue that needs can be distinguished from wants and preferences (Gough, 2015). Standard economics approaches define welfare and well-being as preference satisfaction. Gough argues here that preferences and wants are more subjective and individualistic than needs (satisfiers), often shaped by producer interests and advertising, and that needs are insatiable, supporting a consumer culture which has led to a rapid increase in consumption, economic growth and environmental impacts (Gough, 2015). The focus on needs is hence a call for sufficiency, or what is ‘enough’ for people to be healthy and well. It is a call for societies to allocate resources in the most efficient and ecologically sustainable way so that people’s needs can be fulfilled now and in the future while staying within planetary boundaries. Other scholars who build on notions of need and capabilities have proposed ‘consumption corridors’ (Fuchs, 2020) and minimum and maximum income policies (Daly & Farley, 2011) which have featured in the sustainable welfare literature. The ‘consumption corridor’ approach proposes to set minimum levels of consumption that would enable everyone in society to fulfil their needs, as well as maximum levels of consumption which should not be surpassed so that humanity can stay within planetary boundaries (Fuchs, 2020). Furthermore, proposals have been made in the sustainable welfare literature to set minimum and maximum levels of income and/or wealth (e.g., Daly & Farley, 2011; Koch, 2022a). A focus on needs and sufficiency would help to make welfare systems less reliant on growth because growth would not be required once people’s needs are satisfied. At the same time, a focus on needs and sufficiency would constitute a redefinition of the current goal and function of welfare systems to support economic growth. The third theme in this section is about the idea of reorganising the economy such that the need for welfare spending decreases in the first place, making welfare systems more compatible with degrowth or post-growth. The current globally dominant form of the economy is capitalism, where capitalism is characterised by privately owned means of production and commodified labour, competition, the imperative to accumulate and reinvest profit to increase productivity, an imperative for the economy to grow, and exploitation of paid and unpaid labour, nature and countries of the Global South. Capitalist economic systems generate a range of social problems that require state intervention and welfare spending to stabilise the economic system and reduce the potential for social conflict and unrest. These social problems include inequality, economic insecurity, and health and environmental problems.

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Without intervention, inequality has a tendency to increase in capitalist systems as the accumulation of capital becomes more concentrated over time (Piketty, 2014). Wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States have increased over the last few decades (Piketty, 2014). Income inequality within countries is at a historic high today, and even though income inequality between countries has slightly decreased since the 2008 financial crisis as low-income countries have been catching up, it is still vastly higher compared to the 1820s when measurements started (Chancel et al., 2022). Wealth inequalities are even more pronounced than income inequalities and income and wealth at the very top have become more and more concentrated over time (Chancel et al., 2022). Inequality can generate a range of issues, for instance lower levels of health and education (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009) as well as social conflict and instability. Most governments therefore put redistributive measures in place to reduce inequality and analysis shows that these measures do indeed decrease inequality to an extent (Chancel et al., 2022). In general terms, higher levels of inequality require higher levels of intervention, but there is no clear relationship between levels of inequality and redistributive policies adopted across different countries. Economic growth also tends to increase economic insecurity which requires welfare state intervention. Increases in productivity and technological change are among the drivers of economic growth. Coupled with rising outsourcing of manufacturing and service jobs from richer to lower income countries, economic growth has thus been associated with increasing job insecurity and precarious working conditions, as well as increasing pressure for workers to continually update their skills or even retrain to remain ‘employable.’ Politically, this has coincided with a shift from ‘passive’ to ‘activating’ labour market policies, i.e., a shift away from providing unemployment compensation to putting greater responsibility on employees and job seekers to remain employable (van Berkel & Hornemann Møller, 2002). These trends could be one factor behind an increase in government expenditure on education which has been faster than the rise in GDP in per capita terms between 1960 and 2017.2 Public health care expenditure per person has also been increasing faster than per capita GDP since 1960.3 Possible reasons for this pattern include increasing cost of and demand for health care. Demand for health care has increased due to a rising share of older people in the population, growing numbers of people suffering from chronic diseases, as well as increasing environmental impacts on people’s health. The increase in the relative cost of health care is likely to be at least partly linked to economic growth. Growth has generated productivity increases in many sectors, espe-

 If indexed to 1960, average GDP per capita in the OECD has risen by a factor of 4.1, while government spending per person (under the age of 20) on education has risen by a factor of 11.6 (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1985, 2022), calculations by Milena Büchs.  Public health care spending per person (of the whole population) has increased by a factor of 13.2 between 1960 and 2017 (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1985, 2022), calculations by Milena Büchs.

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cially manufacturing. However, it is more difficult to achieve productivity gains in service sectors like health care because they rely to a large extent on face-to-face interaction, leading to what has been called ‘Baumol’s cost disease’ (Corlet Walker et al., 2021). Profit-driven health care investments have also brought about a host of new and expensive drugs and health care technologies. While this development has undoubtedly helped to prolong and save many lives, health spending above a certain level is poorly correlated with increases in life expectancy and it can be associated with overtreatment (Borowy & Aillon, 2017). Higher levels of GDP (but not necessarily higher growth of GDP) tend to be associated with higher life expectancies. However, increases in life spans are also associated with an increase in the number of years that people suffer from chronic diseases or disabilities (Kyu et al., 2018). This leads to increasing health care costs per person. Some authors argue that some profit-driven economic sectors may have contributed to the increase in chronic conditions and diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. For instance, the ‘systems of provision’ and ‘commercial determinants of health’ literature argues that consumption tends to be driven by supply, not the other way around as often assumed in mainstream economics (Bayliss & Fine, 2020; Fine et al., 2018; Kickbusch et al., 2016). According to this perspective, increasing levels of heart disease, diabetes and obesity can partly be explained by an increasing supply of cheap but unhealthy products such as food items with high sugar and fat contents. These trends may have contributed to an increase in unhealthy eating and insufficient exercise which are linked to chronic diseases and associated health care cost. According to the latest global burden of disease study, high blood pressure, tobacco use, high levels of blood sugar and obesity are now among the top risk factors for mortality worldwide (Murray et al., 2020). Another factor for the rise in health care cost per person is likely to be increasing environmental impacts on people’s health. Rachel Carson (2015 [1962]) was one of the first to warn about the risks for human health associated with the rising use of pesticides and other chemicals and toxins. Pollution is now regarded as the prime cause of environment-related deaths (Fuller et al., 2022). It is responsible for nine million excess deaths each year, and for one in six deaths worldwide (Fuller et al., 2022). Air pollution through microparticles is the strongest drivers of these excess deaths, causing respiratory, health and other diseases such as cancers (Fuller et al., 2022). Human exposure to toxins and nanoparticles in the environment has also increased rapidly over the last few decades (United Nations Environment Programme, 2019). While small doses of individual substances might be classed as safe for human health, it is often unclear how these substances interact and how they affect human health (United Nations Environment Programme, 2019). Climate change impacts have been linked to rising numbers of excess deaths, for instance from heat waves, severe weather events and the spread of communicable diseases (IPCC, 2022). The three themes discussed in this section are examples for ways in which growth-oriented, capitalist systems can contribute to problems which then require increased state intervention, redistribution and social spending. Redesigning economic

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systems such that they are not driven by the profit motive and economic growth and are based on a more equal distribution of resources and power, could therefore reduce the need for welfare system intervention and spending in the first place and reduce welfare system dependency on economic growth.

Governance of Sustainable Welfare The final section of this chapter discusses questions related to the governance of sustainable welfare. Given that sustainable welfare scholars argue that a more fundamental reorganisation of economic systems is required to support sustainable welfare, what is their vision for ways in which the design and implementation of sustainable welfare should be governed? Proposals that we will discuss here relate to multi-level governance, the role of the state and deliberative processes, and the democratisation of the economy itself. In the degrowth literature, there is currently no consensus around questions of governance. A review of degrowth policy proposals found that while many degrowth proponents advocate a decentralisation of decision-making and a localisation of economies, the majority of concrete degrowth policy proposals would require top-down intervention (Cosme et al., 2017). In this chapter we argue that multi-level governance approaches will most likely be required in degrowth economies and sustainable welfare systems. Multi-level governance systems distribute and coordinate decisionmaking across different levels and/or to non-governmental actors, depending on where each decision-making role is best placed (Hooghe & Marks, 2003). Multi-level governance is likely to be relevant for degrowth or post-growth economic systems too: higher-level frameworks will be required to set ecological and social targets and to facilitate the (re-)distribution of resources to reduce regional and social inequalities. An example for the European context would be the introduction of caps on wealth and/or income, which would best be carried out at the EU level to minimise capital flight across member states (Buch-Hansen and Koch, 2019). At the same time, this will need to be combined with decision-making at lower levels about more concrete actions to achieve environmental and social targets, by actors with more direct information about local needs and circumstances. To continue with the example of income/wealth caps, the European level could define a spectrum within which local maximum incomes may oscillate. While some heterodox economists conclude from the fact that states have coevolved with growth-based capitalism that degrowth transformation strategies must be designed outside the state apparatus (Sutterlütti & Meretz, 2018), other post-growth proponents have argued that the state can play an important role within this transition (Koch, 2020, 2022b). Since higher-level coordination of ecological and social objectives, legal frameworks and (re-)distributive decisions remain important in a post-

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growth context, this chapter supports the view that the state (at various scales) is likely to remain an important actor in the transition to degrowth and sustainable welfare. However, democratic accountability of the state and responsiveness to civil society input are key tenets of this position (Koch, 2022b). Strengthening deliberative democratic processes could play an important role in supporting sustainable welfare (Büchs & Koch, 2019; Lindellee et al., 2021). Deliberative democracy approaches start from the assumption that people’s preferences are not fixed, but that preferences can be influenced through public, reasoned deliberation (Willis et al., 2022). Deliberative forums that bring together people with different convictions and interests could therefore help to build support for the transition towards degrowth and sustainable welfare. Such forums could also play an important role for citizens to be involved in the definition of local, context-specific needs and needs satisfiers and the implementation of policies that seek to achieve social objectives while adhering to planetary boundaries (Lindellee et al., 2021). As an illustration, a series of deliberative forums focusing on sustainable needs satisfaction were conducted in Sweden during 2020 where participants expressed considerable endorsement of the eco-social policy proposals as discussed in the previous section. The participants proposed basic income, more egalitarian access to basic services by constraining markets, sufficiency measures such as maximum income, as well as democratising working life and reducing inequalities for instance through global wealth tax which would lead to better health and welfare outcomes (Koch et al., 2021). More widely, the economic system as a whole would need to be democratised. As proposed by foundational economy scholars, a country’s constitution should define the rights as well as social and environmental duties of corporations, especially those providing goods and services that address basic needs (Foundational Economy Collective et al., 2018; Johal et al., 2016). In addition, publicly negotiated social licences could define more concrete rights and social and environmental obligations of specific corporations, tailored to the goods and services they provide (Foundational Economy Collective et al., 2018). Such steps would deprioritise profit maximisation and instead put social and ecological aims at the heart of corporate decision-making. Decision-making within companies could also be organised along more democratic and cooperative forms in which workers and citizens play a greater role in defining company objectives and internal decision-making (Gunderson, 2019).

Conclusions To conclude, we identify three areas for further research in order to concretise possible trajectories for decoupling welfare systems from economic growth, as outlined in the chapter. First, programmatic features of sustainable welfare systems ought to be investigated both theoretically and empirically, for instance regarding the relationship be-

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tween cash and in-kind welfare provision and the structure of welfare provisioning systems involving different constellations of actors such as the public sector, private and non-governmental or non-profit sector. Second, in orchestrating the transition to sustainable welfare systems the question of division of labour between different governance levels (transnational, national, regional and local) is another important question that needs further research. This is because decoupling of welfare from growth would involve redefining some of the core policy regimes of the current global economy, with implications for regulatory institutions at different levels (e.g., taxation of capital income and assets, labour market policy and social security programmes and healthcare provision, to mention only a few). Lastly, in line with our argument about anchoring the transition to sustainable welfare systems in deliberative processes, still another research avenue could explore the potential of research-led participatory process in deliberating sustainable needs satisfaction for all involving wider citizenry and possible upscaling of such practices.

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Part II: Degrowth in Practice

This second part gathers pieces that reflect in one way or another on the challenges of implementing degrowth’s propositions in practice. Nathan Barlow, Merle Schulken and Christina Plank open the part by asking how degrowth will be implemented and by whom. A primary question, here, is that of how degrowth can step beyond what the authors consider the tradition’s current strategy of dispelling growth’s myths and towards the difficult work of building alliances and coalitions with other movements for socio-ecological justice. This overview of debates surrounding degrowth strategy is followed by two chapters that address different sides of the debate. Nick Fitzpatrick’s analysis centres on state-level policy frameworks, whereas Sabrina Chakori and Shane Hopkinson argue that community tool libraries are an instance of community-level ‘bottom up’ degrowth. Next, Artemis Theodorou shifts registers by considering how degrowth can transform architectural practice. Modern agrifood buildings, Theodorou argues, are designed and built in ways that are divorced from local cultural and ecological conditions but which seek to maximise capital accumulation. This productivist orientation puts quantity over quality. A degrowth architecture, meanwhile, must reverse this order of prioritisation. While still providing abundant food for all, Theodorou shows that a degrowth architecture must begin from the very cultural and ecological specificities that modern growth-based architecture tends to ignore. Harry Holmes closes the section by bringing degrowth and Marxism together to ask how decent housing can be secured for all within ecological limits. Through an investigation of housing struggles in Newham, London, Great Britain, Holmes suggests an answer lies in Marxism’s understanding of housing systems embeddedness within, and reproduction of, class relations. Lauren Eastwood and Kai Heron

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-009

Nathan Barlow, Merle Schulken and Christina Plank

6 How and Who? The Debate About a Strategy for Degrowth Abstract: Degrowth is increasingly grappling with the question of how to bring about social-ecological transformation. Degrowth researchers and activists have long described and engaged in a variety of actions ranging from building bottom-up alternatives over developing policy proposals to participating in blockades. But only recently has degrowth explicitly investigated why, when, how and by whom such and other actions should be undertaken to effectively bring about urgently needed systemic change – and what role the degrowth movement itself might play in this. This is the discussion of strategy which this chapter reviews and advances. It suggests that understanding how an organisation can best contribute to systemic change in a given context involves both analytical and organisational considerations that must be undertaken together. Further, analytical considerations should seek to combine constructivist and materialist perspectives on how transformations occur. Such an analysis may lead degrowth scholars and activists to move beyond their current dominant strategy of dispelling growth myths and facilitating alternative policy dialogues and practices and lead them to become more directly politically involved. This in turn would imply the need for a more transparent internal structure and an intentional approach to building alliances with other movements. Keywords: degrowth, social-ecological transformation, strategy, theory of change, social movement, organising

Introduction Modern societies are plagued by multiple, interrelated social and ecological crises (Brand et al., 2021; Gills & Morgan, 2020). Across academia and policy publications calls for a transformation to jointly address these and other crises are becoming increasingly frequent (IPCC, 2022). Interpretations of what exactly is meant by ‘transformation’ differ greatly (Brand, 2021; Feola, 2015; Fisher et al., 2022; Gillard et al., 2016; Horcea-Milcu et al., 2020). However, there is one vision of transformation that represents a deep and radical social-ecological transformation to achieve societal wellbeing and justice worldwide within planetary boundaries. That vision is degrowth.

Nathan Barlow, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria Merle Schulken, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA Christina Plank, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-010

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In our eyes, degrowth presents a convincing frame for thinking through and discussing what a truly sustainable and socially just system could look like. It offers a utopian vision of an alternative society, a vision that is constantly adapted as discussions about degrowth reach new spheres of society (Kallis & March, 2015). Degrowth further offers a critical lens for understanding why strategies of awareness-raising and calling on policymakers to make needed reforms have thus far been unsuccessful in securing transformative change (D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020). For example, by demonstrating how the stability of capitalist social relations including the capitalist state in its current form depends on growth, which in turn constrains environmental policy (Cahen-Fourot, 2022). However, what is still missing in degrowth is an answer to the question of how exactly to get from our current unsustainable mode of production and consumption to a degrowth future. This is the question of how to bring about social-ecological transformation at the scale and speed necessary. It is the question of strategy. Our chapter endeavours to give an overview of the strategy debate in degrowth scholarship and activism, while also advancing this discussion. Drawing on our experience as editors of the collected volume Degrowth and Strategy: How to bring about social-ecological transformation, we argue that strategy for transformation can and must be discussed deliberately and investigated scientifically within the degrowth movement along with allied movements and organisations (Barlow et al., 2022). Only by thinking and speaking clearly about our strategies can we choose the right actions, structure our organisations and combine different actions and strategic approaches effectively. Further, a group with few organisational capacities is unlikely to act strategically. Therefore, degrowth must become better organised both internally and in its relationship with allied movements in order to be able to carry out strategic actions. From the perspective of research, this combination of analytical and organisational considerations means that transformation scholars and social movement researchers must come together to understand how strategies in practice work and how they could be improved to become more effective. From the perspective of organising, this means putting resources, time, capacity and intentionality into the structures and processes necessary for translating strategic thinking into strategic action. Our chapter proceeds as follows. First, we summarise degrowth’s discussion of strategy so far and suggest a definition of strategy. Second, we outline some frameworks for discussing and researching degrowth strategies grounded in materialist and constructivist philosophies of science and related theories about how social transformations occur. Third, we introduce considerations about how the degrowth movement could change its organisational structure so that it can collectively strategise and act strategically and pose the question what that means for degrowth’s relation to other movements. In the final section we suggest bringing together analytical and organisational considerations in degrowth strategy going forward.

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Degrowth and Strategy – The Debate and Definitions The Debate so Far The need to further engage with strategy by, for and within the degrowth movement was already a topic at the closing of the 2010 Barcelona degrowth conference (Degrowth Declaration Barcelona, 2010). It later re-surfaced more visibly at the 2018 Malmö Degrowth Conference (Editorial Team, 2018), after which members of the degrowth movement explicitly criticised what they called the movement’s ‘strategic indeterminism’ (Herbert et al., 2018). As a sidenote for those less familiar with degrowth: Conferences are a key gathering point and forum for many degrowth scholars and activists. The first conference took place in Paris in 2008, with around a dozen since then. Aside from two,1 all degrowth conferences have been in Europe. Conferences are one of the few spaces for the disparate degrowth community to gather and thus an excellent space for reflection about the degrowth community’s current foci, challenges and areas to put more attention. Conferences are also one of the few truly collective undertakings of the degrowth community. As we will argue later in this chapter, holding conferences is one of the dominant strategies of the degrowth movement so far – next to research and research communication. By the Malmö conference, a set of related degrowth visions of social-ecological transformation had emerged, laid out among other places in a few popular books (Hickel, 2020; Kallis, 2018; Kallis et al., 2020). One prominent way transformations were to occur was through the bottom-up development and spreading of alternative forms of organising in various spheres of life, from agriculture to care (Demaria et al., 2013). Real-world examples of such organisational forms could be found in small-scale initiatives around the world, sometimes referred to as ‘nowtopias’ (Carlsson, 2015). In parallel, other degrowthers were concentrating on developing public policy proposals that were to bring about equitable degrowth from the macroeconomic level. These proposals include among other things working time reduction, universal basic services and maximum and minimum incomes (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). These proposals are sometimes referred to as ‘non-reformist reforms’ – reforms that alleviate suffering in the here and now while also opening the door for deeper system change. Finally, degrowth research documented oppositional activism (like blocking a planned airport expansion) as a third from of degrowth action. Oppositional activism was to contribute to transformation by slowing down further destruction and creating room for alternative organisations to blossom (Demaria et al., 2013). What remained unclear was how degrowth believed that these sorts of actions could achieve the necessary support and scale to  Montreal (2012) and Mexico City (2018), for a full list see https://degrowth.info/en/conferences.

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succeed in bringing about systemic, emancipatory social-ecological transformation. In what contexts should which type of action be prioritised? And what should be the role of the degrowth movement in supporting and coordinating these various actions in a way that aims towards actually overcoming capitalism and growth? In other words, degrowth was thinking about different types of strategic action, but not explicitly about strategy. The need for good frameworks to discuss strategy was further reinforced by the threat of internal splits in the movement as beliefs about strategy were discussed implicitly and the movement’s organisation remained informal. While an academic discussion of the issue was missing, degrowth activists still held a variety of implicit political beliefs about how best to achieve change (Eversberg & Schmelzer, 2018). In Malmö these latent differences led to a heated panel discussion about the potential and limits of the state in a transformation (Editorial Team, 2018). Further, there were suggestions that degrowth’s strategic plurality as outlined above suffered from a naïve romanticism about how different types of strategic actions would magically fit together into a mosaic of action that would bring about transformation (Barlow & Herbert, 2020; Herbert et al., 2018). There were also concerns of how to organise the interaction between degrowth (as both an idea and a nascent movement) and other actors (Burkhart et al., 2020). Finally, and closely related, there were increasing calls for the rapidly growing scholarly and activist degrowth community to find more structured and transparent ways to organise itself (Asara, 2020; Barlow & Herbert, 2020; Bardi et al., 2022). In the last couple of years there has been much scholarly activity concerned with strategies for achieving social-ecological transformation and with how degrowth as a movement should organise itself. Degrowth.info organised a blog series concerned exclusively with strategy (Barlow, 2019). Degrowth Vienna organised an international degrowth conference dedicated to the question of degrowth and strategy in 2020 (Asara, 2020). And, growing out of that experience, a team of activists and scholars, including the three of us, edited a collected volume about the topic (Barlow et al., 2022) and proposed a definition of strategy for degrowth (Schulken et al., 2022). Scholars have further worked on the question of how to go about conceptualising the role of the state (D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020), considering what transition studies can offer to degrowth strategising (Vandeventer et al., 2019; Khmara & Kronenberg, 2020), taking seriously the significant barriers to a degrowth transformation (Buch-Hansen, 2018), including more institutional analysis (Joutsenvirta, 2016; Foramitti, 2020; Büchs & Koch, 2019), rigorously analysing the conjuncture for degrowth action (Schoppek & Krams, 2021), considering the role of planning and planners (Ruiz-Alejos & Prats, 2022; Smith et al., 2021), sketching a political economy of degrowth (Chertkovskaya et al., 2019), flagging the dangers of co-optation (Trantas, 2021) and introducing a philosophy of science to support broader questions about theories of change (Buch-Hansen & Nesterova, 2021). The need for a deeper consideration of political strategy in degrowth

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has been reaffirmed in debates between degrowth and competing visions for how to resolve ecological crises (e.g., Suzelis, 2022).

Defining Strategy In the book that we co-edited, we suggest that to discuss and research strategies, degrowth first needs a common definition of what a strategy is (Schulken et al., 2022). In the introduction chapter of that publication, we therefore articulate a comprehensive definition. For this chapter we limit ourselves to a briefer version. We understand strategies as thought constructs that detail how an actor intends to bring about systemic change towards a desired end state. When applied in practice, a strategy serves as a flexible mental map that links an analysis of the status quo and the position of the strategising actor within it to a vision of a desirable end. It thereby details different ways of achieving (intermediate) goals on the journey towards that envisioned future as well as certain means (i.e., concrete actions) to potentially be employed along these ways. Ways refer to different pathways through which the transformation from the status quo to the desired end may come about. These pathways can be distinguished from one another, for example, by the relations they envision between the strategising actor and the structures they intend to change. Means, in turn, are concrete actions that actors may undertake when pursuing a strategy (Schulken et al., 2022). Secondly, we argue in this handbook chapter that discussing and researching strategy always needs to combine analytical and organisational considerations (Maney et al., 2012), while acknowledging their distinctions. Analytical strategic considerations are concerned with analysing the status quo, delineating different ways and means for engaging with the status quo in a transformative manner and evaluating which ways and means are most effective for a given actor in a given context. Organisational strategic considerations are concerned with internal organisational structure, with mobilisation and movement-building efforts and with the coordination of actions between allied groups. Choices about alliance building with other social movements, for example, can be improved if there is awareness about what strategies oneself and potential allies are pursuing. Conversely, organisational matters are foundational to analytical strategic considerations. Conducting a strategic analysis can only be done if there are internal capacities for this. And prioritising certain strategies over others requires a good understanding of potential allies and opponents. For research this means that social movement researchers looking at organisational considerations must collaborate with transformation scholars evaluating analytical considerations to understand what strategies a given actor could follow.

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Deliberating on and Researching Degrowth and Strategy Analytical Strategic Considerations Analytical strategic considerations investigate through what ways and means an actor can contribute to systemic change in a given context. From the perspective of degrowth research, there are in principle different approaches to addressing this question, rooted in different philosophies of science linked to different conceptions about how transformation occurs. Broadly speaking, there are on the one hand more structuralist or materialist and on the other hand more constructivist researchers within degrowth. This conceptual plurality is a key attribute of degrowth and is also present in our book. Rather than trying to resolve contradictions between different schools of thought, we believe that degrowth should recognise the respective strengths of its different traditions and fruitfully combine them.

Materialist Approaches and Wright’s Framework A materialist approach to analytical strategic considerations might, for example, differentiate different ways by how the strategising actor relates to the class-based capitalist mode of production and how their actions seek to overcome it. One materialist framework for delineating different ways for bringing about transformative change that has been enjoying growing popularity within degrowth is based on the Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright (Wright, 2010, 2019). In our book, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya critically engages with Wright’s work to design a strategic canvas fit for degrowth strategising (Chertkovskaya, 2022) (see Table 6.1). Wright identifies three modes of transformation towards a post-capitalist future: interstitial, symbiotic and ruptural (Wright, 2010). Their framework is materialist in the sense that these three modes delineate different ways to change the production and distribution structures of a capitalist society towards a post-capitalist society. Further, the three modes are differentiated by what relation between the working class and the capitalist class they entail. The three modes of transformation make up the three rows of Table 6.1 and will be discussed first. Wright then distinguishes between two strategic logics: reducing harm and transcending structures, which are shown in the two columns and will be discussed second (Wright, 2019). Taken together, the strategic canvas, presented by Chertkovskaya based on Wright, features six ways of contributing to transformation.

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Table 6.1: A strategic canvas for degrowth, adapted from Wright (2019, pp. 122, 124). Strategic logics Modes of Transformation

Reducing harms

Transcending structures

Interstitial transformations involve building new forms of social empowerment on the margins of capitalist society, usually outside of spaces dominated by those in power.

Resisting E.g., a climate justice demonstration

Escaping / Building alternatives E.g., running an ecovillage without broader political engagement / building a network with others

Symbiotic transformations are aimed at changing existing institutional forms and deepening popular social empowerment within the current system so as to ultimately transform it.

Taming E.g., a policy that establishes absolute caps on national CO emissions

Dismantling E.g., a policy that turns big companies into cooperatives in the long-term

Ruptural transformations seek a sharp confrontation or break with existing institutions and social structures (these can be short-term or done in a particular place).

Halting E.g., a disobedience action

Smashing E.g., a factory occupation by workers

Wright’s three modes of transformation are the following: Interstitial transformations: work through building new forms of social organisation on the margins of capitalist society, usually outside of spaces dominated by those in power. Do not require compromise with the ruling class. Symbiotic transformations: seek to change existing institutions and ultimately overcome the current system by strengthening the voices of transformative actors within them. May require compromise with the ruling class. Ruptural transformations: seek a direct confrontation or break with existing institutions and social structures, taking over existing institutions and turning them into post-capitalist structures. Do not require class compromise. For Wright, these three modes of transformation are closely associated with the anarchist, social democratic and revolutionary socialist traditions respectively. Like Wright, Chertkovskaya argues that to achieve social-ecological transformation, a skillful combination and coordination between these three modes of transformation is needed. Rather than debating which mode of transformation is right, our discussions should focus on which, or which combination, has the most potential in each context. And we should aim to form alliances with organisations that don’t only adhere to our own mode(s) of transformation. For example, blocking a coal extraction site (ruptural) may facilitate symbiotic transformation by increasing the political cost of non-action by the government, thus paving the way for eco-social policies (symbiotic). It may also raise

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the operating costs for coal extraction firms, which in turn creates space for alternative modes of energy production that were grown in the niches (interstitial). Finally, the action of blocking the coal site may itself provide an experience with alternative forms of organising for participants that potentially creates lasting change. Degrowth scholars have argued for such plurality and mixing before, but what we will later argue for is a more intentional strategic mix that is based on coordination, acknowledgement of incompatibilities and underpinned by both an analytical and an organisational process. Chertkovskaya (2022) highlights some insights about these modes of transformation in relation to degrowth. They further introduce two strategic logics – reducing harms and transcending structures – in relation to the three modes of transformation described above and sketch out their meaning for degrowth research and activism. First, interstitial transformations are currently the core of degrowth practices. For Chertkovskaya, ‘building alternatives’ based on degrowth principles does not merely ‘escape’ capitalism in the individualistic way but has the potential to create an alternative system parallel to capitalist society. Second, symbiotic transformations can help expand the horizon for radical possibilities, though degrowth actors must watch out that these actions are not co-opted. That’s why they differentiate the two logics of taming and dismantling capitalism with the latter being the main aim for degrowthers. Third, temporally and geographically limited ruptures are crucial for enabling radical change by taking power and should thus feature more prominently in degrowth thinking. Here, the logic of halting capitalism underlines the importance of temporal or small-scale ruptural transformations which can open room for interstitial strategies. In the same direction goes the logic of smashing capitalism which can transform growth-oriented, capitalist organisations to post-growth, democratic ones. In our book, we have attempted to give materialist considerations a more prominent place than usual for degrowth by working with Wright’s framework of anticapitalist politics and featuring contributions by Ulrich Brand and Max Koch (Barlow et al., 2022). We believe that degrowth strategising must understand how market competition combined with a class structure governing the ownership of the means of production creates underlying tendencies like economic growth or social inequality that characterise capitalist societies – and how the capitalist state is implicated in this. Grasping the idea of capitalist totality then shows, for example, that the state is by no means a neutral actor that will implement degrowth policies like a maximum income as soon as there are electoral majorities in favour of such proposals. Implementing degrowth policies or scaling-up alternative forms of organising to a critical level that will disrupt capital accumulation is also not merely a matter of changing people’s minds. Instead, adopting a materialist understanding of politics directs degrowth’s attention towards the question of how to build the material power needed to implement a new, post-capitalist mode of production that no longer depends on economic growth. In particular, degrowth must make clear how its ideas are in the interest of the (global) working class, where the potential for compromise with certain factions of capital exists and where strategies must make do without

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class compromise. Next, it must investigate where in the current production and distribution systems people can mobilise to put pressure on capital and the state to either fight for a better class compromise (e.g., in the form of eco-social policies) or directly force new ownership structures (e.g., turning capitalist firms into socially owned entities) and where there is space to circumvent the current system and build alternative production structures in parallel to it. Engaging more with materialist understandings of capitalism and class politics could also potentially facilitate clearer communication with actors like trade unions or Green New Deal proponents (e.g., Huber, 2022).

Constructivist Approaches We are not aware of any clear framework comparable to Wright’s framework that details what constructivist approaches to analytical strategic considerations might look like. That said, a lot of degrowth research and activism so far has been informed by this perspective and there were several contributions to our book coming from this tradition that we can draw on. From a constructivist perspective, a central ‘strategy’ of degrowth so far has been to deconstruct the idea that economic growth is necessary for human flourishing, benefits the majority of people or (especially in high-income countries) is compatible with the global achievement of good living standards within planetary boundaries (most recently Schmelzer et al., 2022). Degrowth has done this through actions like conducting research, popular education and writing and holding degrowth conferences. From a materialist perspective, it might be argued that this work of deconstructing the growth ideology dislodges one of the central arguments used to defend capitalism: ‘capitalism is unequal, but it is efficient,’ ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’ Removing these blindfolds, degrowth as a ‘missile word’ may then open the eyes of the global working class to its collective interest in emancipating itself from an economic system geared to maintaining excessive consumption for the few and facilitate new alliances (Ariès, 2005). Degrowth also extensively investigates hierarchies of oppression and discrimination that capitalism and colonialism have created within the oppressed classes and interrogates how to build alliances while working through guilt and reversing past structures of oppression and ecological burden-shifting (Paulson, 2022; Mailhot & Perkins, 2022). From a materialist perspective these, again, are crucial foundations for an intersectional and international working-class movement. But constructivist perspectives also transcend and self-critically reflect about materialist perspectives on strategy. Some forms of historical materialism argue that system change only occurs if the mode of production proposed by the class challenging the old mode of production is more materially productive than the one before (e.g., Cohen, 1978). Indeed, the original Wright framework is based on a vision of class struggle where transformation is only successful if the classes fighting for change see material

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gains compared to their current situation – at least in the long run (Wright, 2010; Bardi et al., 2021). While most people worldwide would undoubtedly benefit materially from degrowth proposals, a key postulate of degrowth is that infinite growth of material and energy use is ecologically not sustainable. Therefore, a transformation must not only challenge the capitalist growth-dependent mode of production but must also overcome modern, masculinist, Western notions of progress – be they capitalist or socialist – that rely on growing biophysical throughput (Chertkovskaya & Paulsson, 2016; Kothari et al., 2019). In short, degrowth envisions a transformation towards a post-capitalist but at the same time ecologically sustainable and emancipatory society. This, many scholars believe, requires the cultivation of radically different subjectivities, social relations and understandings of human-nature relations than the currently dominant ones. Furthermore, many degrowth researchers are mindful that potential allied movements may not be primarily motivated by ecological concerns or by the desire to fight for their common material interest with other working-class people. Rather, the constructivist approach to research and activism remains open to learning from the very movements it is studying and interacting with about what their worldviews and objectives are (Paulson, 2022b). It selects potential allies by shared procedural values like participatory democracy, conviviality and sufficiency rather than by shared goals. Emancipation processes (in the plural) towards a more just future are expected to come about through entanglements (i.e., cross-fertilisation and mutual support) between different emancipatory movements with different goals – degrowth being only one of them (Paulson, 2022; Burkhart et al., 2020). In an effort to understand and foster such open-ended social-ecological transformations, degrowth researchers open up to other epistemologies and ontologies. With their research, they seek to spread new ways of understanding the world and increase public awareness about alternative modes of production and consumption already existing today. Research is interwoven with practice, inviting participants from a variety of cultural backgrounds to shape a ‘pluriverse’ of ideas about what sort of organising practices might make up degrowth futures in different contexts (Kothari et al., 2019). Much of degrowth research and activism so far has prioritised process over outcomes, plurality over strategy (Paulson, 2022b). By prefiguratively living the change it wishes to see in the world, it spreads ideas, subjectivities and practices hoping that this will spark spontaneous transformations and acts of resistance throughout society (Paulson, 2022). This form of transformation is seen to be most inclusive and durable and as prefigurative of an emancipatory degrowth society. While degrowth’s commitment to process and plurality is one of its great appeals, in our book we invited contributors to more clearly articulate their vision of transformation in terms of a separation between means and ends. While a careful selection of means is important, so is the need to become more effective in achieving ends (Parker, 2021). And, as argued earlier, we have posited that a careful study of capitalist society should serve as a major reference framework for explaining what structural processes constrain our actions, how material power may be built in the face of well-

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organised capitalist opposition and what organisational features must be abandoned in a post-capitalist world so as not to set in motion the tendencies that shape societies today. While we have not been able to produce a conclusive answer as to how materialist and constructivist perspectives can be brought together, we hope to have laid some groundwork for future dialogue.

Attempts to Bring Together Constructivist Approaches and Wright’s Framework While Wright’s framework originates in a materialist research tradition, some degrowthers have attempted to appropriate it for degrowth’s ends – in part by skipping over its class-based underpinnings. Constructivist perspectives on transformation have in some instances been included in the framework by broadening the purpose of interstitial strategies. For example, as Giorgos Kallis and Giacomo D’Alisa argue, interstitial strategies not only construct a new mode of production in the interstices of capitalism. Rather, alternative ideas and values developed during participation in prefigurative practices facilitate mobilising for non-reformist reforms (implemented through symbiotic strategies) and prepare popular support for ruptural strategies (D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020). Both strategies then make a further spread of interstitial strategies possible. In this sense, interstitial strategies are not just about structural, but also about cultural change that makes possible further structural change. Other proposals to merge constructivist perspectives and Wright’s framework have attempted to elevate a strategy of communication and organising as a fourth element of Wright’s trilogy of anti-capitalist strategies or have mixed it with the ruptural strategy (Burkhart et al., 2022, Schmelzer et al., 2022). For example, Matthias Schmelzer and colleagues replace the ruptural strategy with ‘building counter-hegemony’ (2022). Loosely drawing on Antonio Gramsci, this strategy consists of spreading new ideas and practices through interstitial, ruptural and symbiotic strategies and more generally through communication work. Practices like holding degrowth conferences, citizen forums, popular education and various artistic forms of expression – anything that broadens people’s sphere of imagination and supports the idea that a different world is possible may thus be strategic if it contributes to building a shared sense of resistance and mobilisation. Gramscian ideas have also been described by Brand (2022) and Koch (2022) in the context of refining materialist conceptions of the capitalist state. Other authors in turn express caution about using Wright too rigidly or even about using it at all for its over-simplification (e.g., Brand, 2022). Some authors of the more applied chapters in our book argue that the framework is sometimes difficult to apply in practice. Most organisations engage in a variety of modes of transformation simultaneously and sometimes it is only possible to determine which mode a strategy engaged in after it has played out (Aigner et al., 2022). This is because the question of which strategies should be employed in each context is the result of an interaction

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between actors and their environments (including opponents) and ideas sparked by one action may well take on a life of their own. Further, the radicalisation of demands made by a larger mass of people only ever becomes possible during the struggle itself when people become aware of the power that they can wield through collective action. For example, the successful referendum to socialise housing stock held by large real estate investment firms in Berlin (ruptural) was the result of years of mobilisation around a rent cap that was struck down by the German constitutional court (a more reformist strategy) (Clotworthy & Spatzier, 2022). Instead of agonising about the correct way to choose at the outset, mobilisation around a shared grievance often comes first and strategic considerations arise within and are constrained by that context.

Organisational Strategic Considerations As just explained, strategising can only occur in the context of organising, which means that organisational considerations are fundamentally tied up with analytical considerations. Organisational strategic considerations thereby apply both to allied movements and to degrowth itself. Degrowth is more than just an idea; it is also a nascent social movement or at minimum a semi-organised network of activist-scholars (Asara, 2022; Akbulut et al., 2019). Thus, while researching and thinking through strategies for a transformation in line with degrowth is key, there is also the potential for the loose network of degrowth activist-scholars to enact their own strategy/strategies for helping to realise said transformation. This discussion has blossomed since the Vienna Degrowth Conference in 2020, but clear pathways forward are still lacking or vague. This is relevant both for the movement’s internal organisational structure and its relation to the outside. These two dimensions of the organisational considerations for the degrowth’s movement’s own strategy will be explored in the following paragraphs. First, the degrowth movement’s internal structure is currently characterised by a loose organisational structure. This risks obscuring informal hierarchies (Asara, 2020) and inhibits intentional decision-making. A more transparent division of labour could make visible hierarchies and deciding if/when to mandate them (Rilovic et al., 2022). One idea for how to address this challenge of internal organising is a Degrowth International, which would function as a body of regional representatives (with a rotating representative mechanism) for discussing the degrowth movement’s strategic direction, increasing coordination and cooperation, as well as possibly deciding on necessary actions (Rilovic et al., 2022). Recently, the Degrowth Assembly convened in Vienna (June 2022) for the third time (previously in Malmö and the Hague). The closing statement of the Vienna assembly is revealing as it does not name strategy but is clear that one would be needed:

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There was a consensus that in order to achieve [its] goals, in the near future it will be fundamental to better structure our network (with some coordination bodies) and to clarify our proposals . . . [it] should not to be a hierarchical, solid structure, but an informal and decentralized network . . . with more clarity on structure and functioning (principles, methodology, roles, etc.) (Degrowth.info, n.d.)

Here, the tension within degrowth organising is revealed, on the one hand the desire for a better structure, with coordination and clarity, but on the other hand the shunning of any hierarchy, ‘solid’ structures, and centralisation. This will likely be a key point in the discussion of degrowth’s internal strategy going forward, how to achieve better coordination, clearer structures and more effective organising towards its goals while staying ‘informal’ and loose (i.e., non-solid). Secondly, degrowth’s relation to external actors is key for any organisational considerations because it is a highly academic community, with limited organising capacity, despite many identifying as ‘activist-scholars’ (Eversberg & Schmelzer, 2018). Therefore, the relationship between degrowth as an idea and a nascent movement to other groups is crucial. The excellent book Degrowth in Movement(s) (Burkhart et al., 2020) explored this exact question through a number of in-depth interviews with various social movements and actors for social-ecological transformation. They found that degrowth’s key ideas were often present in these allied groups’ messaging and principles. Many had heard of degrowth as a concept and found its key ideas useful, but few used the exact language of degrowth in their messaging and rhetoric. The authors argue that degrowth should not aspire to become a mass movement and instead realise its usefulness as a concept in service of other actors and their understandings of the social-ecological crises. But what actors should degrowth engage with and what might it look if degrowthers become more directly politically involved? To give a concrete example, very recently, increased interest in degrowth has been raised not only by social movements but by actors from political parties. With the energy crisis on its way, interest towards social-ecological approaches seems to be increasing within some European political institutional settings. This raises the question for degrowth as a movement but also for degrowth researchers how to engage with symbiotic strategies which have so far not been the focus of degrowth conceptions of a transformation. This would imply a shift away from public education as the main strategy and towards a more active political involvement, which would be the outcome of strategic considerations. As we have argued above, strategic choices should be informed by a careful analysis of existing trends within capitalism and the material conditions and possibilities for resistance (as well as creation) that they create for various groups in society and resulting effects on public policy – at the local, national and international level. This analysis should be combined with an understanding of the various life-worlds of the social groups caught up in ongoing capitalist transformation processes in order to identify the most promising interventions. Unfortunately, at the moment, degrowth lacks formal structures and mechanisms to relate to outside actors, instead this is done on an ad hoc basis with individuals and

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regional groups speaking in the name of degrowth (or the degrowth movement) with mixed results. For example, the spontaneously organised statement at the Vienna Degrowth Conference relating to Black Lives Matter or the open letter calling for a degrowth response to the COVID crisis (Degrowth New Roots Collective, 2020).2 Related, recently one of us was asked on a panel if degrowth should have a leader or spokesperson, to which we responded that such people already exist in the degrowth community but only informally and not decided on through any process. This has consequences for the representation of degrowth in terms of class, gender and race, which may be reproduced through the process of those feeling most comfortable in society also being those most comfortable as spokespeople representing the movement. On the other hand, there are examples of such intentional outreach and relating to other movements being done in a more organised and structured way, e.g., the network Feminism(s) and Degrowth Alliance (2020). Taken together, while there are promising developments that show degrowth is increasingly considering how to better organise internally and act/relate externally, it remains to be seen what will be achieved. Resources within the degrowth community still primarily flow to academic spaces that can organise large research proposals (and funding) and create employment at institutes (Kallis, 2022). In contrast, there are scant resources going towards bettering degrowth’s internal organising and its external relation to other actors. Taking the question of strategy more seriously may help to prioritise the important work of developing a strategy for degrowth as a nascent movement, and support it with the necessary structures, mechanisms and resources. This would notably require buy-in from the whole spectrum of degrowth actors, including leading academics that have become the face of the degrowth discourse with uneven participation in the movement’s organising.

Conclusion: Bringing Together the Analytical and the Organisational What can we learn now from bringing together conceptual frameworks for thinking about different strategies and internal and external organisational matters of the degrowth movement? Degrowth must think about both dimensions of strategy in general and in relation to itself: Strategy is an analytical concept that is key for understanding how an actor given their context can contribute to systemic transformation. Two perspectives from which to approach a strategic analysis for social-ecological transformation

 Some of us were part of both of these processes and feel comfortable to flag their spontaneous nature, good intentions but also lack of a clear mandate while simultaneously deciding to speak in the name of degrowth.

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include a materialist and a constructivist lens. Degrowth as a movement may wish to move beyond its current strategy of public education dispelling green growth myths, making visible alternative forms of organising and proposing a mix of strategies as the recipe for change. Instead, it may wish to get more involved politically itself, targeting its research and communication work and co-developing strategies for specific contexts with others. Gaining a richer understanding of strategy may then have implications for degrowth’s internal/external organising: to strategise, the movement must organise and its organisation must in turn serve its strategies. Thus, we argue that degrowth activists and scholars should be intentional, critical and reflective when thinking about the many ways that strategy can influence degrowth thinking and acting. This implies the following three points: first, taking a position on strategies for degrowth that departs from strategic indeterminism is necessary to overcome a blind faith in a myriad of strategies magically fitting together. Second, providing more space and resources to the organisational side of degrowth would create a space where strategies can be debated, articulated, decided upon, implemented and coordinated. Third, incorporating considerations of how to achieve degrowth enriches not only the scientific debate but also uplifts degrowth as a discipline interested in changing the world, not merely describing and analysing it. Taking these three points together, there are two next steps for the degrowth community of researchers and activists. The degrowth research community should work towards articulating a strategic assemblage (Barlow, 2022) for degrowth that captures the broader analytical question of what strategies make sense for transformation, how they may or may not interrelate and where the nascent degrowth movement fits into this broader struggle of an emancipatory social-ecological transformation. And related, the nascent degrowth movement should become better organised internally which would avoid informal hierarchies, improve coordination and provide the basis for better external relations.

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7 Translating Degrowth: From Policy Proposals to Praxis Abstract: Degrowth – the social appropriation of the means and conditions of (re)production and execution of democratic, participatory, ecological planning – is slowly making ripples in decision-making processes. But there is a problem: degrowth policy proposals remain scattered throughout the literature, making it difficult for people to pinpoint what changes are advocated, why they are deemed necessary and how they could unfold. Building upon a recent systematic mapping and thematic synthesis of degrowth literature (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022), this chapter summarises the policy proposals that degrowth advocates put forward as solutions to the social-ecological crises. Keywords: degrowth, policies, policy making, power, praxis, proposals, transition Degrowth is on the rise: since the early 2000s, an increasing number of academics and activists have been organising their activities around what became known as ‘degrowth’ (for an overview, see Kallis et al., 2018 and Schmelzer et al., 2022). Building upon previous critiques of growth-based societies (Schmelzer, 2016), degrowth has evolved into a complex concept, adding multiple layers to its environmental core. For Parrique (2019, pp. 171–234), degrowth carries three denotations: (1) degrowth as decline of environmental pressures; (2) degrowth as emancipation from undesirable ideologies, like extractivism, neoliberalism and consumerism; and (3) degrowth as utopian destinations, societies grounded in autonomy, sufficiency and care. However, as the concept evolved to be multifaceted, so too did its policy proposals, often making it difficult to interpret what aligns with degrowth and how it could unfold. Complex problems require holistic solutions, especially given the elasticity of capitalism to dismiss, co-opt and crush visions that challenge its supremacy (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009). For degrowth, constructing alternative visions has two stages: first, by merging critiques of destructive ideologies such as capitalism (Feola, 2019), colonialism (Hickel, 2021), patriarchy (Hanaček et al., 2020), productivism (Kallis, 2019) and utilitarianism (Romano, 2019); and secondly, using this knowledge to design societies that are caring (Dengler and Lang, 2022), just (Muraca, 2012), convivial (Vetter, 2017), happy (Fanning et al., 2021) and participatory (Brand et al., 2021). The realisation of which requires a deep understanding of how social change occurs.

Nick Fitzpatrick, CENSE - Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research & CHANGE - Institute for Global Change and Sustainability, Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, NOVA School of Science & Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, 2829-516, Caparica, Portugal https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-011

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Interestingly, the rise of degrowth has brought with it a strong interest for policy proposals. For advocates, this means offering up potential solutions that challenge capitalism’s internal dynamics of permanently expanding material throughput, markets, profit and capital. However, given such a herculean task, it becomes clear that degrowth is evolving and must deal with its theoretical and practical contradictions (Spash, 2020; Spash, 2021). One such way to do so is by seeing degrowth as a holistic perspective that carries the potential to shift economic paradigms rather than individual policy interventions employed to tame capitalism. In other words, degrowth is composed of organically interconnected diversities ranging from reformist policies to revolutionary class struggle. Within the policy space of the degrowth movement exists a plethora of policy proposals. Yet to date, there has been little research demonstrating what degrowth looks like when considering all of their policy proposals, instead of being studied in isolation, parallel or competition. Initial steps towards this systems thinking approach have involved collecting degrowth policy proposals. The first analysis was conducted by Cosme et al. (2017) who put forward three broad policy goals for degrowth following after reviewing 128 academic articles published in English between 2007 and 2014. Findings concluded three overarching goals: (1) reducing the environmental impact of human activities; (2) redistributing income and wealth within and between countries; and (3) promoting the transition from a materialistic to a convivial, participatory society. The second inventory was conducted by Parrique (2019, pp. 844–850) in his PhD dissertation, The Political Economy of Degrowth. Parrique expanded upon Cosme et al. (2017) by adding various academic and political policy agendas (Parrique 2019, Appendix 494–497), culminating in 232 policy proposals (60 goals, 32 objectives, 140 instruments) split into 19 themes. The latest inventory was conducted by Fitzpatrick et al. (2022) through a systematic mapping and thematic analysis of the degrowth literature between 2005 to 2020 in multiple languages and publication types. The study identified 530 proposals (50 goals, 100 objectives, 380 instruments), enabling readers to link and track degrowth policy proposal developments over time and space. This chapter builds upon these inventories by outlining degrowth policy proposals and asking whether the history of social change points toward formal policy channels as a favourable means to achieve social-ecological transformation.

Cultural Education Any alternative to patriarchal capitalism must be grounded in values of autonomy, sufficiency and care (Parrique, 2019). Practicing critical emancipatory education is one such alternative, which involves moving away from competitive memorisation and to-

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wards meaningful learning environments that teach us how to (un)learn, reflect and embody the change we want to see in the world (Freire, 1970). Examples of this include critical and pluralist pedagogues such as heterodox economics, eco-spirituality, experiential learning and permaculture, amongst others (Puggioni, 2017; Kaufmann et al., 2019). It is well known that current economic structures promote ecologically destructive lifestyles through the promotion of individualism and productivism. But this is not an inherent quality of human nature, rather we are a collective species that is (re)shaped by the world around us (Graeber and Wengrow, 2021). Furthermore, traditional narrow religious notions of only valuing those who work hard has morphed into a deep-rooted stigma in the current economic paradigm (Barro, 2004). Countering such dominant narratives requires nurturing cultures of sufficiency that are grounded in care, conviviality and the conscious choice of minimising material and energy use (Dengler & Lang, 2022). Following the principles of social freedom – defined as the right not to live at others’ expense – living degrowth involves a diverse range of interrelated practices that expand relational goods like local culture, friendship, eroticism and trust. For Brossman and Islar (2020), this encompasses five spheres: (1) rethinking society, (2) acting politically, (3) creating alternatives, (4) fostering connections and (5) unveiling the self. At its core, living degrowth involves adopting an emancipatory ecological class consciousness (Barca, 2019). A concept that speaks to anyone who sells their labour and does not control the means and conditions of (re)production – the working class – recognising that ecological breakdown is the latest form of violent class warfare. Over 3,000 examples of which are present in the Environmental Justice Atlas, an online database and interactive map that documents ecological conflicts and spaces of resistance by local communities (Temper et al., 2015). A struggle which should oppose all forms of domination, be it ableism, ageism, classism, colonialism, colourism, heterosexism, lookism, racism, sexism, etc. (Barca, 2015). Only then will values shift to recognise that humans are neither separate, nor superior, from non-humans or nature. Everything is delicately and intricately interconnected. This type of worldview – ecocentrism – has also been actively practiced for millennia by Indigenous land defenders and subsistence communities around the world (Garnett et al., 2018). So, it appears the narrative is coming full circle, acting in support of the struggle to restore and preserve Indigenous and local knowledge systems, as opposed to asserting (white male) supremacy, is fundamental to allowing a diverse range of worldviews to thrive and flourish in degrowth futures.

Energy and Environment The exploitation of resources – especially fossil fuels – fans the flames of socialecological crises. For degrowth, the obvious answer is to reduce environmental pres-

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sures now. To do so, degrowth advocates support the implementation of multi-scalar (declining) caps on resource use, emissions and pollution. Gone will be neoclassical climate policy based on dubious carbon markets and voluntary climate pledges (Buller, 2022). Implementing multi-scalar policies necessitates weaving together local, regional, national and international perspectives. This is especially pertinent for the wealthiest people of the world who are the furthest away from ecological sustainability yet must also negotiate reducing their ecological impacts in the area of 75–90% (United Nations Environment Programme, 2022). But there is no silver bullet to ecological sustainability. Rather, declining caps on resource use, emissions and pollution must be complemented by reforms like extraction and carbon taxes that assist in scaling back material and energy use. Moratoria on resource extraction and mega infrastructure projects like energy plants, dams, incinerators, roads, highways, airports and high-speed trains are also needed to avoid locking in high-carbon futures (Seto et al., 2016). This includes opposing the annexation of resources by corporations and governments (e.g., eviction of the Indigenous Maasai peoples in Tanzania for trophy hunting and conservation) as well as preventing the climate mitigation agenda being grounded in speculative negative emission technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture, utilisation and storage (Anderson & Peters, 2016; Hickel, 2019; Palmer & Carton, 2021). For most people, it is obvious that reducing environmental pressures involves stopping fossil fuels. However, currently our governments are approving fossil fuel projects that would lead to around 240% more coal, 71% more gas, and 57% more oil than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C (Stockholm Environment Institute et al., 2021). Addressing major inconsistencies between policy and practice to achieve the Paris Agreement requires nothing less than a paradigm shift. A shift that degrowth offers through categorically ruling out new fossil extraction (Kühne et al., 2022), revoking existing licences (Trout et al., 2022) and actively phasing-out existing fossil infrastructure ahead of schedule (Welsby et al., 2021) – all of which are rarely mentioned in decision-making arenas. Furthermore, the caps involved in this shift must be designed in light of historical responsibility (Hickel et al., 2022) and abolish trillions in fossil fuel subsidies within a couple of years (Parry et al., 2021). Both moves that could help prevent governments from granting permission to corporations to extract fossil fuels altogether. But merely halting the frontiers of extractivism is not enough. Addressing ecological overshoot, of which we have been in for over 50 years, requires phasing-out existing fossil fuels and their associated infrastructure like high-carbon transport (Mattioli et al., 2020) and industrial agriculture (Shiva, 2001). A phase-out that needs to extend to other harmful energy sources like nuclear, large-scale biomass and hydropower as communities reorient themselves toward satisfying human needs with low energy use (Vogel et al., 2021). A shift that would witness the institutionalisation of convivial, renewable energy systems. Furthermore, given the widespread disinformation campaigns and historical inability of the energy sector to transform, this will require or-

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ganising from civil society and social movements on an unprecedented scale, even demanding the expropriation of fossil assets and capital to begin early phase-out programs. Now that we have covered the prerequisite part of the story – reducing environmental pressures and stopping fossil fuels – we must elaborate on the need to simultaneously be building just and equitable low energy futures. At its core, this involves practicing energy democracy. A concept that pairs renewable energy transition with efforts to democratise the (re)production and use of energy. Examples here include building, managing and repairing convivial, community-owned renewable systems; decentralising energy systems, including the promotion of off-grid solutions and expanding energy-related decision-making to local communities. But merely adding women and solar panels is not enough (Bell et al., 2020). Transformation energy systems requires favouring eco-sufficiency measures like repaying ecological (Warlenius et al., 2015) and embodied debt (Salleh, 2009), retrofitting existing buildings and progressive taxation structures for industrial energy consumption. This comes in contrast to eco-efficiency, which has historically more than cancelled out its efficiency gains by increasing scale and, as a result, material and energy use. It is no wonder that progrowth sustainability visions fall back on technological fairy tales that defy the laws of thermodynamics (Carton, 2020). Furthermore, this fresh approach acknowledges that degrowth’s vision of decarbonisation extends beyond narrow technical or carbon visions and instead represents a chance to (re)distribute economic power and political influence towards ecologically egalitarian ends. Achieving sustainability requires a more holistic shift in how we see and interact in the world. A world where non-humans are given equal footing to humans in their surroundings through legislating the rights of nature and creating resource sanctuaries that restore and preserve biological and epistemological diversity. A world where a stable demography is reached through the education, empowerment and liberation of women to control their reproductive rights, including actively opposing short-sided pro-natalist policies and attacks on women’s rights (Martínez-Alier, 2012). Doing so involves reconceptualising the concepts of nature, sexual division of labour, family and productivity (Meis, 1986/2014) to a world where our entire framing of social-ecological issues recognises and acts based on gender-, class- and cultural-specific lenses. As the most acute contradictions of capitalism occur at the margins where capitalist societies confront and silence their non-capitalist counterparts (Barca, 2020). Indeed, degrowth by definition is a decolonial perspective focused on social and material outcomes that lead to global environmental justice.

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Finance Whilst neoclassical political economy is the driving ideology serving the powerful, it is capital and its subsequent accumulation (often represented by capitalisation) that is a symbolic representation of power in the global economy (Nitzan & Bichler, 2009). As such, degrowth should not underestimate the power of political and economic elites, who will not give up power voluntarily. This is why predatory profit-seeking activities and capital accumulation require neutralising, even by abolishing money (Nelson, 2022). The first goal for degrowth is economic democracy. Economic democracy is a system whereby democracy is extended by the shared ownership and decision-making over the power and resources in communities. Concretely, it shifts decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate shareholders to workers and local communities. As opposed to profit and self-interest, economic democracy is grounded in real values of cooperation and reciprocity. Examples here include separating money from debt obligations by implementing full reserve banking; placing the power of money creation under public control to address purchasing power, reducing growth pressures and wealth concentration; as well as closing tax havens and taxing financial transactions to reduce the predatory flow of profit-seeking capital. All in the name of dismantling banking and financial institutions into smaller, cooperative, notfor-profit (or accumulating) entities as already demonstrated by the over 85,000 existing credit unions and ethical banks around the world. The second financial goal for degrowth focuses on the proliferation of ethical and non-accumulating forms of finance (Parrique, 2019, pp. 631–665). Through activities such as the creation of local and regional currencies to provide monetary plurality, time-based systems of labour to diversify away from wage labour and the promotion and proliferation of reciprocity networks and trading systems for the majority as opposed to the self-interested profit-making of a few, local communities can start to (re) build ecological sustainable and socially equitable futures. A task that, if successfully implemented by the majority, would see the current banking and financial system replaced with self-managed credit unions, cooperative banks, public debt-free money, divestment of destructive industries and corresponding ethical investments that serve the planet and people.

Food Access to safe and healthy food is an individual right and collective responsibility. Given its political nature, the function of food goes beyond material sustenance, often containing deep connections to the social and cultural aspects of our lives. As such, food provisioning plays a fundamental role in degrowth visions to transform our every-

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day practices and realities into sustainable societies (Nelson & Edwards, 2022). Here, degrowth focuses its efforts on how food is produced, distributed and consumed. Fundamentally speaking, the way we produce food signifies our relationship with the land. Given the destructive effects of industrial agriculture, degrowth advocates the nurturing of more sustainable forms of farming, which includes promoting nonmechanised, subsistence organic farming, peasant agroecology, small farms and permaculture. In addition to varying the mode of production, degrowth seeks to turn sidewalks, backyards and unused land/roads into community gardens and food forests. These alternatives focus on the principles of health, ecology, fairness and care by avoiding soil erosion and chemical fertilisers, reusing inputs through composting and (re)developing a kinship means of production. The second focus is practicing food sovereignty. As defined by the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. In other words, local communities should be able to shape their own food systems in harmony with their natures-cultures. For degrowth, this involves redistributing (often stolen) land to landless workers, small farmers and peasants whilst at the same time struggling against the private appropriation of seeds and actively developing seed commons. Given over one-third of all food produced in the world for human consumption is wasted every year, developing more localised networks, cooperatives and nonmarket exchange systems (e.g., swap, barter, farmers markets, local stores, etc) to guarantee the equitable distribution of food is degrowth in action. Finally, degrowth seeks to change the way that food is consumed, because the way we consume food influences how it is cultivated, produced and distributed (Bodirsky et al., 2022). Altering this requires embracing the ideas of the Slow Food movement. A grassroots organisation that promotes local food cultures and traditional cooking in an attempt to counteract fast-paced lifestyles that subliminally make us neglect where our food comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. Additionally, degrowth advocates propose reducing meat and dairy consumption, eating local, seasonal food, transitioning to plant-based diets, institutionalising organic plant-based food in public institutions (e.g., schools), ending food waste and providing practical courses.

Geopolitics and Governance Current political processes and institutions are captured by elite interests (Táíwò, 2022). Their interests run contrary and pose major barriers to the type of democratic discussions and decision-making process needed to achieve ecological sustainability and social equity. It is also why the most fundamental goal is the (re)emergence of

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radical ecological democracy: a system whereby everyone shares the rights, ownership and power over decisions affecting their communities (Kothari, 2014). As the preferences of the average citizens in representative democracies appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero impact upon public policy (Gilens and Page, 2014), degrowth favours forms of direct and participatory democracy that promote accountability, cooperation and inclusiveness (Asara et al., 2013). Examples of which include citizen assemblies or deliberative forums where citizens gather to discuss meeting basic needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use; the application of voting, debate and participatory decision-making systems implemented in workplaces; participatory budgeting that allows residents to identify, discuss and prioritise public spending, giving them power to make decisions that affect their livelihoods; voluntary working bee committees; and other various forms of direct democracy that liberate people through equitable decision-making power. Alongside radical ecological democracy, degrowth calls for a theory of radical abundance (Hickel, 2019). A theory focused on dismantling hierarchies and reclaiming the commons. In other words, switching from private to public provisioning systems, thus shifting the main priority from profit-making to directly fulfilling (non)human needs. Examples of this include local democratic ownership of essential infrastructure like banking, energy, education, healthcare, local government, telecommunications, transport, waste and water. Such a shift guarantees people’s access to critical services, especially when combined with universal basic services, protecting them from market speculation whilst simultaneously reducing material and energy use. But the goal of decentralising decision-making does not end there. Many existing institutions are imperialist power hoarders that need reforming or abolishing. The most blatant violation being the indefensible social and environmental impact of military spending. In 2021, global military spending exceeded USD 2 trillion for the first time, 38% from the United States alone (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2021). Globally, the global footprint of militaries accounts for between 1–5% of greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, national militaries are often the largest institutional emitter in their respective countries yet are not mandated to or rarely release their full emissions. Recent calculations highlight that the United States military is the largest institutional emitter on the planet, bigger than 140 countries (Belcher et al., 2019). The implications of such findings necessitate that degrowth must be more vocal in its opposition to any and all military or police spending, especially if spending or military alliances are seeking to be expanded. This extends to denouncing all forms of warfare and not simply those that are close to home because it is convenient. One such plan for how it could be reduced involves halving military spending over the next decade and immediately redirecting this money to meet ecological needs (Lin and Burton, 2020). Much like fossil fuels, the only way to green the military is for it to be phased-out. There are also many other processes and institutions that facilitate capital expansion. For degrowth, this involves capping or banning political donations, banning fos-

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sil fuel lobbyists from climate negotiations (similar to how tobacco lobbyists are excluded from health-related discussions), closing the revolving door between politics and business, balancing the power of finance ministries to its counterparts and most importantly democratising international institutions like the United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Indicators There is one number that is obsessed over by corporations and governments alike: gross domestic product (GDP). However, for a plethora of reasons, GDP is not fit for purpose and must be abandoned as a measure of social progress (for an overview, see Parrique, 2019, pp. 46–76). Whilst recognising that the diversity of social realities cannot be reduced to a single number, degrowth argues to displace economic obsessions (e.g., GDP, profits, income, inflation, purchasing power) with an interconnected set of social-ecological indicators (e.g., ecological and material footprint, biodiversity loss, global warming, deforestation, pollution, happiness, health, inequality, political participation, leisure time, etc). For degrowth, this entails supporting initiatives like the Genuine Progress Indicator (5 indicators), Gross National Happiness from Bhutan (33 indicators) or the Well-being Budgets adopted by Iceland (39 indicators), New Zealand (65 indicators) or Scotland (81 indicators). Whilst remaining critical to any indicators still underpinned by neoclassical (environmental) economics and proposing alternatives where appropriate.

Inequality In a degrowth economy, redistributive mechanisms are key. This is because the levels (Piketty, 2013) and effects (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2022) of inequality are structural inhibitors for sustainability transformations. To do so, first degrowth seeks to redistribute land, labour, capital and resources within and between countries. This will require wealth-based taxation structures with the support of a mixture of the following policies in various orders, timing and contexts: maximum income/wealth caps; highly progressive income/wealth/consumption taxes (e.g., 100% income tax above maximum needs satisfaction); maximum income ratios between the lowest and highest paid; taxing, capping and/ or abolishing inheritance (e.g., cap inheritance at €1 million, which equates to a work free monthly salary of $1,000 birth to death); cancellation of odious debt (e.g., IMF or student loans), reparations for ecological debt (including biopiracy, carbon, corporate and waste debt); returning stolen land to its Indigenous caretakers as part of the reconciliation process; cracking down on tax havens and anti-corruption; adopting a global minimum corporate tax and living wage; land redistribution (e.g., rent-to-buy programs, expropriation

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of large or absentee landholders); progressive cap-and-dividend schemes and transforming private to public pension systems. Secondly, degrowth focuses on guaranteeing the universal provision of fundamental needs. This includes calling for various forms of universal basic incomes (e.g., transition income, unconditional basic income, unconditional minimum income, basic income, citizens income, unconditional autonomy allowance, basic vouchers), public services (e.g., education, electricity, healthcare, housing, public transport, water) and equitable access to physical, mental health and social services (e.g., physiologists, psychologists, family counsellors). Finally, degrowth demands transformative justice. This involves being explicitly being anti-imperialist and anti-racist, implementing restorative justice measures (e.g., victim assistance, community service, victim-offender mediation), promoting alternatives to incarceration (e.g., rehabilitation and social programs), guaranteeing free legal services for all as well as fundamentally redefining the principles of discrimination and equality embedded in existing human rights law.

Production to Consumption A significant reduction in and redistribution of production and consumption is not negotiable. The first and more transformative goal involves stopping overproduction. The second and more obvious to the naked eye is dismantling the cathedral of consumerism. Beginning with overproduction, the first measure is to restrict, tax and ban goods and services that are ecologically intensive and contribute little to collective well-being. Here, this includes things such as advertising, beef, flying, pesticides, private jets, SUVs and weapons (Hickel, 2019). Even the capitalist mode of production itself: private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation, and the market-based mechanisms of wage-based labour and general commodification, have to go. This necessitates socialising the means (and conditions) of (re)production in order to implement a democratic, participatory, ecological planning (Löwy et al., 2022). More concretely, it involves transitioning to not-for-profit models (not to be confused with non-profits) such as cooperatives, self-production, smaller organisations and commons-based peer production (Hinton, 2021). All of which stress the important role that relocalising activities play in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing local resilience. Now, this is the upstream part of the story, but just like a river, the downstream is equally important. Fundamentally, this involves adopting lifestyles of sufficiency by both, the adoption of which involves two components: discouraging luxury consumption and encouraging voluntary simplicity. First, discouraging luxury consumption is acted upon through boycotts, divestment, sanctions and highly progressive taxation of ecologically destructive activities such as speculative profiteering, flying, multiple

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landholdings, private jets, luxury yachts and cars. Second, voluntary simplicity requires reconfiguring infrastructure to promote active (cycling, walking) and public (trains, trams, trolleybus, bus, ferries) transport, co-housing, shared utilities, repair cafes, decommodified hobbies and relational goods such as friendship, love and care. To limit the desire to overconsume, advertising must be limited. This comes as the advertising industry, owned and represented by capitalists, spends at least USD 600 billion in advertising each year reminding us of things we should buy (Saatchi, 2007). An unfathomable figure that continues to spiral out of control given capitalism’s need to permanently expand production and subsequent consumption, maximisation of profit, and accumulation of capital as power (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009). Finally, but no less important, comes the issue of reducing waste. Criminalising food waste and planned obsolescence, mandating environmental impact assessments and long-term warranties and guaranteeing the right to repair by companies or through the use of open workshops, tool libraries and repair cafes are all part of this broader picture of producing and distributing based on needs not wants, planet not profit.

Science and Technology The purpose of innovation should be to meet the basic needs of all, not provide profits and power for a few. For this reason, the degrowth agenda focuses on practicing two strategies: technological sovereignty and convivial tools. Technological sovereignty refers to the ability to develop and control technological capabilities that respect social and ecological limits. Actions embodying this goal include banning potentially dangerous geoengineering practices and biogenetics, holding citizen audits to decide whether or not to introduce each new technology, restructuring social media from private to a common or public good, repurposing military facilities to produce sustainable and socially useful products and dismantling patent monopolies (Kerschner et al., 2018). Tools are intrinsic to our social relationships. For this reason, they should encourage participation, trust and solidarity as opposed to power hoarding, distrust and division. Borrowing from Illich (1973, p.34), ‘convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of [their] vision. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them, and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others.’ Practicing degrowth here refers to learning how to build and repair the tools we use in our everyday lives such as fixing bicycles in bike kitchens, sewing our clothes, joining a local currency/credit union or learning how to practise agroecology or permaculture.

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Tourism Whilst tourism may be important for cultural exchange, it must be limited for social and ecological reasons. First and foremost, this will involve targeting fossil fuel-based travel, especially private (e.g., jets, yachts) and long-distance (e.g., flights, SUVs) travel through strict regulation. This comes as air traffic is the most unequal mode of transport. Today, only 1% of the world’s population causes 50% of commercial aviation emissions, whilst more than 80% of the world’s population has never set foot in an aeroplane (Boeing, 2017; Gössling and Humpe, 2020). If aviation were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter, between Japan and Germany. This is without even considering that tourism infrastructure extends far beyond travel. With additional measures such as implementing moratoria on tourism developments, setting visitation quotas for sensitive sites (e.g., world heritage sites) and reducing motorised shipping activities, which includes letting the mega-cruise ship industry sink, are prerequisites to achieving degrowth. Addressing overtourism necessitates that slow and local are the future of tourism. In this context, degrowthers should nurture and support grassroots movements that oppose tourism growth. Examples here include ABTS (Assemblea de Barris per un Turisme Sostenible – Assembly of Neighbourhoods for Sustainable Tourism) and SET (Red de ciudades del Sur de Europa ante la Turistizacion – Network of Southern European Cities against Touristification) who provide key principles and measures guaranteeing the ‘right to live’ over the ‘right to travel’ (Perkumienė and Pranskūnienė, 2019). A position that goes against the United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s plans to enshrine tourism into a human right, as this will only favour the minority who can afford it. Sure, for the top ten percent (especially top one) this will be difficult given their thirst for privilege and dopamine, but unlearning their ‘well deserved’ holidays, shopping sprees or business trips is necessary because basing tourism off one’s ability to pay is a social and ecological disaster. Such changes fit the narrative of rethinking tourism. From socialising the means and conditions of tourism (re)production through local not-for-profit, cooperative ownership models, to redefining the legal definition of tourism and reforming or scrapping the Office for International Migration and World Tourism Organisation so that they favour residents’ rights and the environment over the short-term needs of wealthy tourists (Andriotis, 2018; Fletcher et al., 2019). As such, degrowth should expand its repertoire of offering alternative visions of what life could/was like prior to tourism dependency. Visions focused on local ownership, active and public transportation and respecting regional ecological carrying capacities will become the new norm.

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Trade Similar to tourism, trade is best summed up by two goals: limiting long-distance trade and rethinking trade. For degrowth, this involves reducing unnecessary intra-industry trade, which represents roughly half of world trade (Daly, 1995). To give a concrete example, it makes little ecological sense for the Majority World to develop import dependencies for food, when in fact many of the nations grow enough to guarantee food sovereignty for their populations. As such, advocating for this policy proposal goes hand in hand with anti-imperialist struggles against the white man’s ‘comparative advantage’ (Hickel, 2021). A loaded term that must be renegotiated alongside key trade and intellectual property rights agreements. Examples here include agricultural subsidies linked to the World Trade Organization, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) or leaving the Energy Charter Treaty. The last of which is used by fossil fuel companies to sue governments over the loss of future profits, a concept known as Investor State-Dispute Settlements (ISDS). In short, allowing large private companies to sue elected governments if they attempt to address climate breakdown.

Urban Planning This section speaks to the question of how to make vast suburban landscapes ecologically sustainable and socially equitable (Alexander and Gleeson, 2018). Creating lifestyles of sufficiency for degrowth focuses on four key areas: land, housing, mobility and planning. First, through instruments such as expropriating vacant buildings and large landholdings (e.g., In 2021, Berliners voted to expropriate over 200,000 privately owned apartments from big property developers to stop housing speculation and provide social housing), progressive property taxes (e.g. via floor space and number of), rents caps and controls, rent-to-buy programs, as well as extending social housing, degrowth aspires to guarantee people access to land they need to (re)produce themselves. Secondly, degrowth seeks to guarantee decent, affordable homes for everyone by protecting another basic need another basic need from commodification and speculation – housing. This involves promoting collective housing arrangements like ecovillages, eco-cohousing, housing cooperatives or squatting. These alternatives promote community and use significantly less resources and energy through small, energy-positive housing combined with common facilities like gardens, kitchens, childcare and transport (Trainer, 2019). Just mobility focuses on reducing our reliance on fossil fuel-based transport in an equitable manner. This involves reducing high-carbon and speed transport (e.g., private jets, luxury yachts, planes, cars, cruise ships, high-speed trains) and its associated infrastructure (e.g., airports, highways, roads, ports) through numerous disincentives such as exponential flight taxes, lower speed limits, car free zones and moratoria. At the same time, investments in active and public modes of transport are crucial. For exam-

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ple, repurposing roads into areas for cycling, walking, scootering and rollerblading; public transport options like buses, light rail and trams; and edible food corridors. Finally, degrowth advocates for democratic planning that is socially useful and ecologically sensitive. This carries the goals of reducing the level of urban built environment, retrofitting existing buildings, increasing social-ecological standards for new buildings and transitioning to smaller cities as promoted by the Transition Towns and Cittaslow movements. Proposals here invoke a wide range of options from capping the number and size of dwellings, limiting urban sprawl whilst preventing gentrification, controlling the development of holiday homes and banning single detached homes or development on productive agricultural land.

Work At the forefront of the degrowth agenda is discussions of reconceptualising work. This is because wage labour is the area of people’s lives that they often spend most of their waking hours during adulthood. It follows that work is usually the primary source of exploitation for most people in society, as they are simultaneously alienated from the products of their labour and exploited by capitalists who appropriate their value creation. Both of which have devastating effects for our attitude to work, behaviour, health consequences (e.g., burnout), changes in (re)productivity, as well as side effects like risk taking and alcohol consumption (Chiaburu, et al., 2014). One such way for degrowth to socially appropriate the means (and conditions) of (re)production is through reducing time in paid wage labour. Examples include socially beneficial and ecological sustainable work-time reductions. Here, a number of design options are available from stepped reductions in working weeks (e.g. 35hrs → 28hrs → 21hrs), shorter working days (e.g. four or six hour days), less days (e.g. Monday or Fridays off, one or two days paid work per week), protecting reproductive hours (e.g. banning work from 21:00–06:00 unless vital for social and ecological reasons, gender-sensitive job sharing) and simply shortening the working week. But work-time reductions need to be complemented with policies that focus on reallocating productivity gains into working less, ensuring rights to part-time, preretirement transition strategies and a gender-sensitive redistribution of paid work through limiting working hours, increasing holidays as well as increasing and balancing maternity and paternity leave. All of which carry the explicit goal of reducing unemployment, whilst creating more fair, secure and meaningful jobs. The degrowth community also calls for the redistribution of (re)productive activities in society. Shifting away from narrowly defined societal roles by various economic and religious narratives, moving towards valuing (not only monetarily) care and volunteer work that shares reproductive and undesirable activities between classes, ethnicities and genders.

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Figure 7.1: Iceberg model of degrowth policy proposals - core policy instruments on top (in descending order of citation frequency), and themed policy goals below (random position). Inspired by Diverse Economies (also in Fitzpatrick et al., 2022).

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As for the remaining jobs, they will switch their focus to meeting basic needs in publicly funded and community-run (re)training programs for transitioning workers out of destructive industries such as fossil fuels, mining, weapons, cars and livestock to focus on ecosystem restoration, organic food production, convivial renewable energy systems, low or no energy innovations and retrofitting existing housing.

Conclusion This chapter opened by arguing that degrowth as a concept has evolved to be multifaceted, alongside its policy proposals, making it difficult to distinguish the what, why and how of degrowth. Whilst charting a policy research agenda is beyond the scope of this chapter, it begins to ponder questions of what does a degrowth policy assessment look like? For example, when combining the top ten policy proposals – universal basic incomes, work-time reductions, job guarantees with a living wage, maximum income caps, declining caps on resource use and emissions, non-profit cooperatives, holding deliberative forums, reclaiming the commons, establishing ecovillages and housing cooperatives – what does degrowth (food systems, tourism, etc) look like? And how does degrowth differ from independent studies about these policies from people who are not interested in degrowth? Furthermore, as degrowth seeks to contribute to the mosaic of alternatives originating from the bottom-left, the movement must create space for critical reflection and nuanced debates about how to organise and strategise because different theories have different assumptions and methods to achieve social change.

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United Nations Environment Programme (2022). Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window — Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies. Nairobi. https://www.unep.org/emissionsgap-report-2022 [Accessed: 4 February 2023] Vetter, A. (2018). The matrix of convivial technology–assessing technologies for degrowth. Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, 1778–1786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.195 Vogel, J., Steinberger, J. K., O’Neill, D. W., Lamb, W. F., & Krishnakumar, J. (2021). Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning. Global Environmental Change, 69, 102287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021. 102287 Warlenius, R., Pierce, G. & Ramasar, V. (2015). Reversing the arrow of arrears: The concept of “ecological debt” and its value for environmental justice. Global Environmental Change, 30, 21–30. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.10.014 Welsby, D., Price, J., Pye, S., & Ekins, P. (2021). Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 C world. Nature, 597(7875), 230–234. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03821-8 Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2022). From inequality to sustainability. EARTH4ALL: Deep-Dive Paper, 1, 1–14. https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Earth4All_Deep_Dive_Wilkinson_Pick ett.pdf

Sabrina Chakori and Shane Hopkinson

8 Living in Abundance: Tool Libraries for Convivial Degrowth Abstract: Degrowth implies a planned contraction of energy and resource demands as a path towards social justice and ecological sustainability. There is a growing literature on the theoretical aspects of degrowth, however, this chapter uses the rise of tool libraries as part of the degrowth movement to shed light on pathways challenging the alienated and fetishised social relations that lie at the heart of the social and ecological degradation of the Capitalocene. The insights learnt from founding and managing the Brisbane Tool Library (Australia) are presented from an academic and activist perspective. Based on principles and practices of resource use reduction, sharing, conviviality and solidarity, the Brisbane Tool Library can be considered a small-scale laboratory for a reorientation of society towards degrowth. Since 2017, the Brisbane Tool Library, a not-for-profit horizontally managed organisation, has been stimulating sharing and reuse of thousands of items, reducing resource consumption and waste. By prioritising access over private ownership, tool libraries point at ways to live in abundance without the need to own everything. Tool libraries represent a form of commoning, commons understood not as the resource pool (the tools in this case) but as the networks of human relationships whose agreed rules enable the common use of resources. Degrowth challenges the idea that a ‘good life’ needs to be based on endless growth and mass consumption, a reduction in the quantity of things does not have to mean a reduction in the quality of life. Finally, barriers and opportunities in fostering the tool libraries movement and similar sharing hubs will be identified. Keywords: degrowth, tool libraries, commons, sharing economy, circular economy, sustainability

Introduction The most basic paradox of our times, the times that we call modern and the mode of social organization we call capitalist, is that, no matter how many resources we consume, we never seem to have enough. (Hoeschele, 2016, p. 1)

Sabrina Chakori, The University of Queensland; Brisbane Tool Library, Australia Shane Hopkinson, Adjunct Researcher, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Science at Central Queensland University, Australia https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-012

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Brisbane Tool Library (BTL) was Queensland’s first library of things. Its first few years have been dedicated just to the co-development of the organisation, navigating the various barriers that new and unexplored organisations find on the pathway. This theorisation of BTL’s work has come as a second phase of Sabrina’s involvement within the organisation. This chapter, as with other similar studies (Hale, 2008; Udall, 2019), is a creative and critically reflexive endeavour by academic-activists on their own project with a view to both reflecting and informing broader movements for social change. Dr Sabrina Chakori founded the BTL and Dr Shane Hopkinson has been involved as a member and then as a contributor to a critical analysis of the project as it evolved. This type of participant-observation research represents a form of reflexivity that can deepen our understanding ethnographically. This chapter is a composition of degrowth’s theoretical background mixed with insights gained from BTL’s day-today practice over the last six years. The chapter begins by outlining a set of concepts about the causes and dynamics of the growth-driven capital and its ecological effects. This has been most clearly summed up in the notion of ‘metabolic rift’ – in which processes of capital accumulation have created a rift between society and the rest of nature such that material and energy flows from nature are no longer able to reproduce themselves (Foster, 1999, 2000; Moore, 2000). The impacts of this metabolic rift are well-documented (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2020; IPCC, 2022; Keyßer & Lenzen, 2021). The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that ‘humaninduced’ climate change has caused negative impacts on nature and people (IPCC, 2022). The label ‘Anthropocene’ for this era has been used to flag the impact humans (i.e., Anthropos or Humankind) are having (Spangenberg, 2014; United Nations Environment Programme, 2021). This chapter uses the term ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore, 2017), or the ‘Age of Capital’ which captures the fact that humans do not live on the planet as abstract individuals or groups (as ‘Anthropos’), but in very specific sets of social relations. The world is dominated by capitalist commodity production, aimed not at meeting people’s needs but simply ‘money making money’ resulting in profit which is reinvested with the aim of further capital accumulation (Moore, 2017). This process of the accumulation of capital is referred to as economic ‘growth’ and lies at the heart of the social and ecological crisis (Moore, 2017; Stavrides, 2016; Parrique, 2019). The second section of the chapter outlines the degrowth concepts that BTL is based on, trying to catalyse a shift away from the growth-driven capitalist system. Degrowth scenarios are relatively low-risk for a feasible transition to a sustainable economy in which rising global temperatures remain under 1.5C (Keyßer & Lenzen, 2021). It is a multidimensional concept that aims at ‘an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long-term’ (Schneider et al., 2010, p. 512). In 2017, pushed by the urgent need to tackle the unsustainability of the current growth-driven economy, and committed to a grassroots democratic form of organisation, the BTL was founded as an application of degrowth principles. BTL, which is a

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‘library of things’ from which people borrow items, is used in this chapter as a case study. Aside from the immediate benefits to members of sharing and reusing items, BTL is a laboratory for exploring concepts such as commoning, horizontal decisionmaking, de-alienation and community empowerment. It is organising around these concepts that will begin the work of challenging the relentless commodification of everyday life.

A Critique of Productivism and Consumerism: The Creation of Alienation Before exploring the work done by the BTL, it is necessary to briefly provide an overview of the causes and dynamics of the current growth-driven productivist and consumerist system. The tendency is to think that there is no alternative to the growth-driven capitalist system, however it is important to remember that it is a relatively new social invention (Büchs & Koch, 2019) and that, for most of world history, humans focused on meeting their needs directly and sharing resources (e.g., the land and food) in multifarious commons systems (Hickel, 2020). In the current system, however, production and consumption are used to constantly expand the economy. In 1867 Marx opened his magnum opus Kapital (Marx, 1867) with the statement that, in capitalist society, material wealth appears as an ‘immense heap of commodities.’ Commodities, he said, have two sides. Things are bought because they are useful – they meet some need or want – it is this usefulness that is the material content of wealth in any society. Throughout history, humans have worked to fashion tools to forage or grow food to meet their needs, but this is not how society functions in the Capitalocene. Commodities in capitalist society also have a second kind of value: exchange-value. A ‘thing’ may have to be useful at some level for people to buy it, but its value in capitalism lies in its exchangeability for other things – usually for money. Owners of capital put their money into making commodities to make more profit. The global economy produces, not primarily to fulfil human needs (usevalues), but to produce commodities whose primary ‘use’ lies in their exchangeability (exchange-value) for a profit ad infinitum (Ellwood, 2016). It is because of this never-ending cycle of ‘money making money’ that the economic system of capitalism recognises no limits to accumulation. The growth-driven capitalist system has turned everything into a commodity – including one’s own labour which is exchanged for money in the form of wages. It seems natural to exchange labour time for money and to use that money to buy things. It tends to be taken for granted that the things produced at work do not belong to the workers who made them. This was not true for most of human history and for it to emerge required a long process of political struggle. People were separated from their tools or land (their means of producing their subsistence) and forced to work for capital, which extracts value from them as it does with any commodity. This day-to-day work is not something used to meet needs, meeting needs requires selling this capacity

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to work for so many hours a day in exchange for a wage. Marx called this process of separating people from the means of production alienation, the land and tools once held in common to sustain ourselves is privatised. Nature is no longer a commons but is seen as a ‘resource’ for production. Its use as a source of ‘free’ inputs to production or as a sink in which to dump waste products – the pollution of sea, air and land – and is simply an extension of its capitalist system of ‘money making money.’ As Jason Moore (2014) explains, the Capitalocene represents the end of ‘cheap nature’ in which food, energy and raw materials can no longer be treated as ‘free’ or dumped back into the natural world. Money becomes an end in itself (especially its ‘growth’) and humans collectively a mere means to the end of capitalist expansion. Work ceases to be an expression of ourselves as free and creative beings, but simply the means of acquiring money to buy necessities. These processes have been exacerbated since the Second World War (WWII). By 1945 the development of logistics and mass production and other processes developed by war-time planners made it possible to produce almost anything at any price. In a needs-based system this would have been a boon for humanity, but in a money-based one it has proved to be a disaster. Because making ‘too many goods’ for exchange will undercut profits, there is no point in being able to mass produce things if it becomes harder to sell them for a profit. So, the post-war boom gave rise to what is now called ‘the great acceleration’ (Steffen et al., 2015). The new technologies of TV and radio, as well as methods of propaganda developed in WWII were mobilised to increase consumption. Mass advertising in print and other media gained increasing reach. Techniques like inbuilt obsolescence or creating ‘new’ models of old products were developed to create a ‘mass’ market for new mass production (Guiltinan, 2009). Gorz (1994, p. 44) points out that ‘what appears, from the ecological point of view, as a waste and destruction of resources is perceived from the economic point of view as a source of growth: competition between enterprises speeds up innovation, and the volume of sales and velocity of capital circulation increase as a result of obsolescence and the more rapid renewal of products.’ This section has outlined how the ecological crisis has its roots not just in abstract ‘Man’ (an ‘Anthropos’) but in a very specific set of social and economic dynamics – the system’s ‘need’ for capital accumulation unrelated to human needs requires it to pursue ‘endless growth’ on a finite planet. Faced with such an immense problem, the founders of BTL were attracted to degrowth concepts that took on the issue of ‘growth’ directly by developing an alternative way of doing the ‘economy.’ As explained in the rest of the chapter, they sought to develop a project that would respond to the community and the environment’s needs by sharing tools, reducing waste by reusing and so on, but also to provide opportunities for less alienating ways of interacting. This is not just at the individual level, but leveraging the tools as a resource for commoning, bringing people together at the community level to participate in a degrowth lifestyle.

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Degrowth and Tool Libraries The Brisbane Tool Library: Case Study Introduction BTL is a not-for-profit organisation. Not-for-profit structures align better with degrowth aims and practices, as social and ecological outcomes are prioritised over profit (Hinton, 2020). BTL is a ‘library of things’ that offers to the community an inventory of objects that can be borrowed (Figure 8.1). BTL collects the items of the inventory from Brisbane’s Recovery Centres (which are the local recycling and landfill stations) and also receives them from the community via private donations. Collaboration with Brisbane City Council enables a regular pick up of items, in particular power tools, from these centres. The items are then cleaned, tested (i.e., electrically tested and tagged as per Queensland’s legislation), photographed and added to the online inventory that is accessible to the general public (see brisbanetoollibrary.org).

Figure 8.1: A volunteer introducing a visitor to BTL’s inventory. Source: Sabrina Chakori private collection.

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The BTL generates a revenue via memberships, people are asked to contribute a small amount in order to borrow the items of the inventory, via workshops fees, small personal donations and some grants. Memberships range from AUD 30 – AUD 110 (USD 22 – USD 78) to keep them affordable for the general population. A membership provides access to thousands of items, some of which are worth a few hundred dollars. For the price of one power tool, people can access a rich and diverse inventory made up of hand and power tools, camping gear, sports equipment, games and kitchen appliances. All the monetary donations and grants received are not tax deductible to donors. BTL’s committees over time have chosen to receive donations, but without having a charitable status that would enable people to deduct the donation from taxes, because BTL’s team believes that taxes are fundamental to redistribute wealth and to provide public services. While the revenue acquired enables BTL to provide a service to the community, this remains very limited and BTL’s operations are possible only because BTL’s team is entirely composed of volunteers. Weekly, the number of volunteers range approximately from five to 15. More than a hundred people have volunteered for this initiative since 2017. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the value of voluntary work in Australia was estimated at AUD 43 billion in 2006. In 2014, 5.8 million people (31% of Australian adults) participated in voluntary work over the previous year, contributing 743 million hours to the community (ABS, 2015). Nevertheless, in the long run, the goal of BTL remains to create paid positions to support its ongoing operations. Employment should be meaningful for the individual and the collective. Often tool libraries are understood as community hubs that contribute to waste reduction, and this is certainly a worthwhile end in itself, but as the most preferred prevention stages diagram (Figure 8.2) shows these are ‘low-level’ strategies. At BTL the emphasis is on higher-level strategies of reducing and refusing production (Figure 8.2),

Reduce and Refuse Most preferred

Prevention Reuse and Refill Recycle Recover Disposal (managed) Disposal (unmanaged) and Contamination

Least preferred

Figure 8.2: Waste hierarchy (Chakori, 2022).

Waste management

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avoiding the creation of products in first place – reducing therefore the use of natural resources and labour required for the production of the items. BTL efforts are directed towards these pre-consumer stages because simply managing post-consumer waste translates into being part of the system and dependent on the discards of capitalism. BTL works at shifting the conversation and activity towards degrowth concepts like reducing productivism and consumerism, by focusing on the root problem and not only on post-consumer issues (waste management stages, Figure 8.2).

Brisbane Tool Library: Tools for Degrowth Degrowth is required to bring both consumption and production within planetary boundaries while maintaining human livelihood (Nørgård, 2013). It is urgent to plan a downscaling of the economic metabolism, required to reduce the flow of energy and materials in production and consumption (Gomiero, 2018; Schneider et al., 2010). Fundamentally, degrowth will require a different set of values and objectives from those that nurture economic growth, such as endless accumulation and exchanges in monetary terms (Sekulova et al., 2013). In the capitalist growth-driven system, profitable forms of scarcity are created which benefit the owners of capital (Hoeschele, 2016). Conventional economics takes the stance that there are always competing interests because everything in the world is scarce because human needs are, supposedly, infinite and some allocation mechanism is required (Euler, 2018). As Euler (2018) stated, the assumption of universal scarcity needs to be rejected as they are societally produced (not physical) limits. Tool libraries could be considered part of a movement that rejects this artificially created scarcity. They prioritise access (of tools and other objects) over ownership, use-value over exchange-value. By providing access and overcoming the need to ‘own’ every object in order to use it, tool libraries reduce the demand for production and consumption of objects, reducing the demand for natural resources because objects can be borrowed and shared. In this way consumption is constrained, but without reducing use-rights, without reproducing artificial scarcity or requiring ‘sacrifice’ on the part of members (Chakori & Hopkinson, 2021). Moreover, enabling access over ownership tool libraries could also play a role of redistribution of opportunities, enabling a reduction of inequalities in cities (Chakori & Hopkinson, 2021). The objects of the BTL are de-commodified and thus able to become shared resources used to meet collective needs. Figure 8.3 presents a photo of members borrowing from BTL. Since 2017, BTL has been building an internal culture in which simplicity and frugality are key values that members and volunteers are proud of. Simplicity and frugality substitute for acquisition and rivalry. This is part of enabling a shift away from the consumerist ethos of having more goods as key to happiness towards a philosophy of ‘just enough is plenty’ (Alexander, 2012). There is a risk of using terms such as ‘voluntary simplicity’ in a society addicted to growth. Capitalism calls for all sorts

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Figure 8.3: Community member borrowing items at the BTL. Source: Sabrina Chakori.

of ‘sacrifices’ to make the economy grow, while degrowth activists seek to show that the required lifestyle changes can result in an increased quality of life. BTL offers people a way to reduce consumption while being able to access more tools than they could otherwise – one does not have to sacrifice for the greater good, one participates in it. Studies show how voluntarily reducing material and energy consumption can increase personal quality of life, benefit the planet and create communitarian and humanitarian gains (Alexander, 2012; Jackson, 2005). Consumerist ideals, adopted by the global consumer class, do not always lead to fulfilled lives (Alexander, 2012). By encouraging people to borrow, BTL promotes a culture of sufficiency. A sufficiency-driven society would be based on needs-oriented production and needs-based consumption (Assadourian, 2010). Sufficiency, which is a core objective in a degrowth society, is embodied in a planned contraction of the economy, which is generated by reorganising social relations. Much of this is captured using Ariel Salleh’s (2009) notion of eco-sufficiency. This concept is already embodied globally in the sorts of labour that are not valued under capitalism (most often not paid) but is performed by the majority of workers in the world– Indigenous, peasant and care-giving workers (often women). These workers demonstrate a ‘metabolic fit’ (p. 22) between focusing on human needs and sustaining biological growth – helping to repair the above-mentioned metabolic rift. Members who choose to join the organi-

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sation and to exercise their use-rights without the need to purchase the items participate in a similar metabolic fit. Eco-sufficiency at a macro level is manifest at a micro level in BTL’s degrowth culture as voluntary simplicity. Degrowth is about unlocking other experiences, of different pleasures, from more sustainable practices. In fact, by reducing the need to purchase everything, without diminishing the use-rights, it is possible to exchange some consumption for more free time (Jackson, 2005). A release of labour time could lead to various societal benefits, such as a reduction in gender inequalities (Salleh, 2009). Instead of working harder and longer it may become possible to reduce working hours. It should be recognised that the concept of ‘voluntary simplicity’ is not only a personal choice. Social, economic and political structures constrain people choices, making the adoption of some lifestyles easier or more difficult (e.g., stimulating over-consumption of goods and under-consumption of leisure) (Alexander, 2012). As Alexander (2012) explains, in modern societies people are locked in in high-consumption and energy-intensive lifestyles and often people and organisations are inhibited from adopting more sustainable pathways. Nevertheless, organisations such as BTL can play a small, but important, role in starting a conversation about collective responses to achieving sustainable consumption, trying to reduce and overcome some of society’s structural barriers to change. In addition to providing access and promoting use-rights over individual ownership, BTL stimulates repairing activities to expand and maximise the use phase of the items. By repairing, and by organising workshops to upskill the community to make and repair items (i.e., Figure 8.4 shows an example of a BTL’s workshop), BTL helps maintaining the items in circulation, reducing the need for new resources. The benefits of repair and reuse go beyond the environmental gains, they can be political acts that draw on parts of the culture which include ethics and practices that resist capitalist values (Udall, 2019). Sharing and repairing represent a countermovement against a growth-driven society. They challenge the alienation and capitalist mechanisms, such as the planned obsolescence, mentioned in section one. These actions are voluntary and involve learning new skills, creativity as an end in itself. They involve working together, not competing with others and maintaining the resources for common use. As Callahan (2019, p. 2) writes, repairing communities point to ‘the political possibilities of a renewed spirit of self-reliance animated by social, collective, processes of creative DIY (Do-It-Yourself) problem solving.’ Repairing is in a sense a form of resistance to the dominant culture. However, resistance is not enough. Repairing translates into always remaining a step behind the current growth-driven system, managing its discards, minimising its impacts. Repairing movements rarely call capitalism into question as a system of social relations. Its modes of production for-profit and commodity circulation, unconnected to human or environmental needs, remain unquestioned (Callahan, 2019; Graham & Thrift, 2007). For this reason, while BTL runs community driven repairing events they are not simply an end in themselves (as are repair cafes). In BTL they are secondary in the sense of being part of finding better ways to work together with others to manage

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Figure 8.4: Workshops: Making DIY beeswax wraps. Source: Sabrina Chakori.

common resources to join with other common-ers to reduce material consumption in absolute terms. Tool libraries are initiatives that contribute to breaking out of the scarcity mentality and lack of resources by providing access and therefore a form of abundance to local communities. Abundance is nurtured by the recreation of the commons. The commons are a social structure required to overcome the unsustainable growthdriven economy. It is important to understand that ‘commons’ are not a ‘thing’ or a set of tools. They may take many forms, but they result from human action – systems of social relations and social norms about desired social interaction in relation to some common resource. Tool libraries are not about tools, they are movements of people. According to Perkins (2019, p. 185), contemporary commoning movements are allies in degrowth because they ‘arise in opposition to crushing centralization and globalization, income and power concentration and destruction of local communities; they are fundamentally democratic and relationship-based; their stance is critical of “sustainable development”, counter- hegemonic, and anti-capitalist.’ BTL members are ‘commoners’ whose voluntary activities serve to create the tool library as a form of commoning. Responsibility, intended as the act of being accountable for the resources within one’s power, is the key binding link between the tool library’s members and volunteers. On one hand, responsibility is shared with the members, that by bor-

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rowing they accept the role of custodian of the resources and thus to use them and return them in good order. On the other hand, responsibility empowers the volunteers to take care of each other’s and of the tool library’s inventory. While a management committee is elected for legal purposes, practically, at the BTL responsibility and trust are nourished through the exploration of horizontal forms of decisionmaking (loosely termed ‘anarchist’ (Reedy, 2014)). This requires the active creation of non-hierarchical relations in which all volunteers are empowered. At BTL horizontalism is enacted with annual general assemblies, monthly volunteers’ forums, weekly in-person and online discussions, decision-making by consensus and the management is ramified in groups (‘bubbles’) that have their own internal processes, decisional power and leaders, which report the decisions of the ‘bubble’ members. Figure 8.5 captures a volunteers’ forum at BTL. The literature presents some of the challenges that can occur in horizonal-decision-making (Reedy, 2014), such as paralysis, ‘inefficiencies’ of longer processes or lack of consensus and BTL does not lack challenges in this sense. However, as described by Stavrides (2016), commoning is all about the relations between commoners which change over time and are porous as people learn and practice democratic processes. More research is required to analyse the internal processes of BTL. Nevertheless, by cultivating responsibility, care and the collective trust of the group, new forms of interaction and normative structures can emerge,

Figure 8.5: Volunteers’ forum at the BTL (July 2021). Source: Sabrina Chakori.

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fostering more democratic ways of living. Commoning cannot exist without responsibility and trust. Responsibility and trust can emerge, be practiced and improved by the act of commoning itself. The tools borrowed become therefore a vehicle to build shared responsibility and trust within the community.

Challenges Many aspects of current capitalist societies inhibit the transition to sustainable degrowth practices. First of all, commons-driven initiatives, such as BTL, are often amalgamated with other sharing and circular economy models, which are different in nature and purpose. This is particularly true for sharing and circular economy concepts that have become synonyms with ‘green’ growth that prioritises profit-driven technocratic solutions, rather than systemic change (Genovese & Pansera, 2021; Valenzuela & Böhm, 2017). There are a growing number of online sharing platforms where the owners, to increase profits, extract a rent from the users without recreating the commons (Chakori & Hopkinson, 2021). Projects like BTL recreate the commons, the challenge is that ideas of ‘sharing’ and ‘circular models’ continue to be co-opted by capitalism. As Harvey (2011, p. 105) aptly puts it, ‘the common is not, therefore, something extant once upon a time that has since been lost, but something that, like the urban commons, is continuously being produced. The problem is that it is just as continuously being enclosed and appropriated by capital in its commodified and monetary form.’ Thus, the enclosure of the commons is a repeating process in capitalism, De Angelis (2009, p. 8) reinforces this notion by emphasising that people do reconstitute commons anew, and they do it all the time. These commons help to reweave the social fabric threatened by previous phases of deep commodification and at the same time provide potential new ground for the next phase of enclosures,

adding that it is important to emphasize not only that enclosures happen all the time, but also that there is constant commoning. People again and again try to create and access the resources in a way that is different from the modalities of the market, which is the standard way for capital to access resources. (p. 8)

Remaining on enclosure-led challenges, Brisbane (in particular the West End suburb, where BTL started), as with many other cities, suffers from gentrification (Walters & McCrea, 2014), which makes it hard for a library of things, or any other not-for-profit organisation, to find a free or affordable rental space to operate from. Contrary to the predatory sharing economy platforms, to recreate the commons BTL has always aimed to have a physical space in the city. Nevertheless, BTL is capable of offering the services to the community because it entered a partnership with the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), which provides a rent-free space which enables the project to

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exist. This partnership shows how a state institution can successfully collaborate and create opportunities for social and sustainability innovation. SLQ offers also a public maker space (i.e., Fabrication Lab, The Edge), which aligns with BTL’s values as it fosters creativity, experimentation and most of all community. BTL shares the ground floor with Fabrication Lab. Generally, policies and urban design plans should seriously pursue the creation and protection of more rent-free community hubs where people can explore and experience social relations and organisations that are not canalised into the growth-driven consumerist society. A discussion on how to safeguard and fight for these spaces is not included in this chapter, but it is urgent to reclaim cities for people and ‘not-for-profit’ organisations. Practical constraints also exist at the level of day-to-day operations, especially when relying on ethical methods. This commitment adds a layer of complexity to decisions as mundane as which website to use to host the library or what digital tools to use to promote BTL. These decisions have to be made consciously and in consultation with each other. For example, BTL never ordered branded t-shirts for the volunteers, but instead chose to have reusable one-size aprons that can be shared by the volunteers working the shift. Instead of ordering branded t-shirts, second-hand ones have been bought and the logos printed in-house. However, BTL does rely on some ‘forprofit’ social media platforms for its marketing and communication, though somewhat reluctantly. BTL relies on ‘free’ accounts and does not buy any advertising. Finally, in addition to the above-mentioned challenges, the BTL, as many other organisations, suffered from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, beyond the forced closure periods during Queensland’s lockdowns, the pandemic impacted the way of sharing. Members who were able to walk-in, select and borrow any item before the pandemic had to adjust to a new way of operating, by pre-booking the items via the online members’ portal and just picking them up from the tool library. This process aimed at reducing the spread of the virus, reducing contact with tools and volunteers and allowed more time for the cleaning of the objects. However, this ‘take-away’ mode of operating changed the dynamics of the borrowing process as people spent less time at the library. The importance of having a physical space in the city has always been to recreate a community hub where people could share time and chats. Under these circumstances, the act of sharing started to acquire a negative and dangerous connotation. Knowing that there is an increased risk of pandemics (Greger, 2007; Wu et al., 2017) and that will mean an increased need to share more resources in order to respect the ecological boundaries of the planet, sharing mechanisms will be threatened again and different degrowth organisational management will need to be put in place. Nevertheless, from an organisational and financial point of view, BTL survived the hardest moments of the pandemic, just to be hit in February 2022 by the floods. Climate change increases the risk of more frequent extreme climate and weather events (e.g., floods) (Seneviratne et al., 2012). This flood event severely impacted the building and BTL’s inventory (as shown in Figures 8.6a and b), forcing the closure of the organisation for several months. These examples highlight that, in addi-

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tion to the existing constraints of the capitalist system, degrowth organisations, such as BTL, will face more extreme weather and other crises, which makes the transition to a degrowth society a tortuous (but not impossible) journey.

(a)

(b) Figures 8.6a and b: Brisbane floods (February 2022). Source: Sabrina Chakori.

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Conclusion The growth-driven system is causing a social and environmental crisis of worldhistorical importance. It is clear that the crisis requires a social movement that is equal to the times but as yet it is hard to see the outlines of such a movement. What such a society would look like is hard to know, nevertheless, what is clear enough is that the capitalist focus on endless growth is not sustainable. The current system compels working at alienated labour to pay for more consumer goods. Thus, in order to respect planetary boundaries, it is important to decolonise the dominant productivist imaginaries (Nelson & Edwards, 2020), thinking about new forms of economy and society. Tool libraries remain local projects with a limited material impact, but this chapter has argued that they do provide some insight (and some warnings) into the process of mending the alienations of capitalism. Tool libraries provide a material basis for a set of practices in commoning and are potential cultural catalysers able to promote a set of degrowth concepts and values which build conviviality and responsibility, simplicity and sharing as central aspects of life over acquisition and competition. The BTL demonstrates how a focus on use-rights can create a culture of abundance, beyond the need for private ownership of each item. The BTL is a project rich in community, where people can experience alternative socio-economic relationships. External factors, such as the constrains described in the last part of the chapter, limit the speed of progress and prosperity of tool libraries. Nevertheless, the BTL remains in a stubborn survival. This tool library, as many other similar degrowthdriven projects, can be considered niche innovation pockets which efforts expand the boundaries of practical degrowth possibilities.

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Artemis Theodorou

9 Materialising Degrowth Agrifood Architecture with Earth Abstract: Agrifood buildings present a vital element of contemporary food systems, critical to food security globally. Presently, most are built in ways that make them climatically indifferent to local conditions and the food or animals they are destined for. This signals a dangerous vulnerability as they can only function at the mercy of energy-guzzling climate control systems to artificially regulate the indoor environment needed to carry out agriculture and food-related practices. Typical of most modern development, this infrastructural unviability is yet another symptom of the rampant quest for profit and growth which has disregarded the passive ways in which buildings can perform. In this chapter, building materiality is brought to the forefront as a tangible basis for rethinking these buildings’ make up, character and modus operandi. Earth as a building material demonstrates opportunities for engaging with all in a degrowth fashion. Understanding the properties of this material and its influence on people, animals, food and culture, we can see that it has a lot to offer. From passively regulating interior climate and generating processes, to administering sustainable food governances, shaping social imaginaries and contributing to well-being, earth is presented here as a promising material for realising architectures within the degrowth agrifood systems. Keywords: agricultural infrastructure, mud building, low-tech materials, bioclimatic design, HVAC, passive climate control, nonhuman-centred architecture

Introduction A big part of agriculture takes place in buildings. From flour mills, breweries, drying rooms, cold rooms to apiaries, chicken coops and more, we are stunned to realise that our food, directly and indirectly, very often needs human-made spaces. Housing fundamental animal husbandry and food-related practices, agrifood buildings constitute an essential piece of food systems and have a leading role in ensuring food security for the vast majority. As important as they may ultimately be to our survival, they are, in face of energy and ecological crises, utterly vulnerable. This vulnerability, originating from the deeply unsustainable contemporary agriculture and building meth-

Artemis Theodorou, architect with a postgraduate degree of specialisation in earthen architecture from the International Centre on Earthen Architecture (CRAterre) based within the National School of Architecture of Grenoble (ENSAG) https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-013

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ods which have made these buildings’ integrity and processes gravely dependent on fossil-fuelled energy, is rarely ever raised in our conversations about food security. Although the agrifood sector is increasingly discussed in degrowth research (Guerrero et al., 2023), its infrastructural dimensions are yet to be explored. These dimensions are many and diverse, however, this chapter argues that building materiality is an especially important one to consider. Degrowth studies on the built environment have mostly been limited to urbanistic realms (e.g., city planning and spatial commons). Little attention has been given to the physical realities of architecture and specifically to its materiality. This is not surprising when we consider that the discourse is lacking input from the non-scholar architectural practice which, feeding off the economy of development, has been an integral part of the growth machine (Plotnikova, 2020). Non-politicised and compelled by green growth, the practice is majoritively seeking sustainability through technocratic, short-lived and counterintuitively still, energy-guzzling solutions: e.g., alternative energy sources, thicker plastic insulations and more efficient high-tech heating and air-conditioning systems. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that building materials, beyond their mammoth role in materialising our built environment, have important impacts on energy consumption, culture and well-being. Once examined, these can offer significantly comprehensive understandings about architectures rooted in the dominant growth paradigm and opportunities for the degrowth alternatives. Of course, there is no onesize-fits-all degrowth approach to building materiality. However, in a post-carbon society with no capacity for the energy-intensive practices commonly present today during the material extraction, transportation, processing, construction and demolition phases, one thing is certain: building materiality will be, across the board, principally natural and local. Among the most known and predominantly available natural building materials, such as stone, wood, crop fibre (e.g., straw) and grass (e.g., bamboo), earth, argued here, stands out for its distinct congruence with degrowth and suitability with people, animals and food. Earth is loaded with an array of tangible and intangible virtues which, in the historical agrifood context, had deep technical, territorial and sociocultural implications. These are profoundly understudied and, ever since the Great Acceleration, they have been simply ignored by the growth-propelled emphasis on standardisation, speed, productivity and profit, present in both the agriculture and construction industries. Through the vision of an architect, this work aims to bring these virtues and implications back to surface as intrinsically relevant to the discourse of degrowth-based agrifood system transformations, contributing in this way to its conversations and spatialphysical manifestations.

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The Materiality of Growth Building Materials Conventional building materials – chiefly cement composites, fired bricks, steel, asphalt, rubber and plastic – are so reliant on the copious amount of fossil energy so cheaply and readily available that it would be hard to imagine these materials without it. Deeply embedded within modern life and backed by extraordinarily strong lobbies, they monopolise the Western building industry and, through imperialist practices, are largely counted in the now ultra-globalised social imaginaries of ‘development’ and ‘growth,’ erasing with them millennial-old building savoir faire. This is perhaps best illustrated in the many all-too-familiar cases worldwide where, since the rise of modernism, it has become an extremely common practice to disguise the exterior wall surfaces of vernacular buildings – often made of local natural materials – with cement plaster, a practice of modernisation that has proven particularly detrimental to the structural and cultural integrity of these buildings (Figures 9.1a and b).

Figure 9.1a and b: Century-old earthen building with severe pathologies due to moisture accumulation attributed to the cement plaster which covers its exterior walls since its ‘modernisation’ in the second half of the 20th century. Nicosia, Cyprus.

From massive raw material extraction and heavy energy consumption to health hazards and political corruption, most conventional building materials come with a high environmental and societal cost that is widely, and wildly, overlooked in the name of ‘progress.’ Let’s take for example the most used building material: concrete. Concrete is composed of cement, sand, larger aggregates (gravel and crushed stone) and water and is, based on most metrics, an environmental fiasco of a material. The mining of limestone and production of clinker for the fabrication of cement, which is the binder component of concrete, has been responsible for at least seven percent of global CO2

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emissions (Ali, Saidur & Hossain, 2011), more than double that accounted for from the aviation industry, which is estimated to be around three percent (Ritchie, 2020). The extraction of sand is largely done illegally, destroying waterfronts and ecosystems at an unfathomable scale (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 2014). The aggregate washing and water used in concrete’s fabrication is responsible for nine percent of global industrial water withdrawals (Miller, Horvath & Monteiro, 2018). What is more, this material is extremely energy-intensive, not only in the phase of production, but also in the phases of transportation, demolition and – although rare – recycling. Not to mention, its repair requires a great deal of demolition, waste and added expert intervention. That said, concrete’s immense large-scale infrastructural value is not to be dismissed. Yet, considering its extensive application in virtually all built elements, it is inarguably used reflexively and excessively. No wonder concrete accounts for the most of human-made mass on the planet and the secondmost used substance after water (Jappe, 2020). It is, as referred to by The Guardian, ‘the most destructive material on earth’(Watts, 2019). Concrete, and most conventional building materials for that matter, are not exclusively problematic in and of themselves. Building materials are parts of assemblies that make up built spaces, to assess a material thus, one should look at it through this spatial context. In forming spaces and in working as screens from weather conditions materials come alive, they react to the outside conditions and then interact between themselves, performing in ways that can alter accordingly the temperature, humidity and overall air quality within a space. Conventional building materials are most typically underperforming: they do not sufficiently react and worse, react unfavourably to outdoor conditions, therefore inducing unhealthy indoor conditions that are regularly too hot or too cold and too humid or too dry. This underperformance is greatly exacerbated in architectural compositions with orientations, formal gestures, openings and dimensions that do not take into account parameters such as Sun path, local geography and seasonal climatic behaviours. The climatic unease generated in such spaces has been dominating the architectural experience in the West since the 1950s with the start of the Great Acceleration, when the International Style within architectural modernism was picking up. This emerging need to cope with uncomfortable spaces and satisfy an unquenchable consumerism gave rise to the air-conditioning industry (Barber, 2020). Ever since, desired indoor conditions are overarchingly brought about artificially through the use of mechanical heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment.

Climate Control Technologies Remedies to the inadequacies of the modern interior promoted by the highly normative culture of building legislation, HVAC systems have become an intrinsic part of the present-day architectural practice. They are so prodigiously adopted that they are re-

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sponsible for about half of energy consumption in European households (Eurostat, 2022) and for a significant proportion in other, non-residential, building types. The toll of HVAC system use is not only energetic, but also deeply sociocultural and physiological, as it has re-written the narrative of architecture and our experience of space. In a fully conditioned space – a space that is cooled or heated – walls are not more than impermeable demarcating lines, strictly bounding the inside from the outside and in a way turning a building into a means of ‘sealing off’ our lives. Yet, in a society with no time to waste in the inconsistency, unpredictability and discomfort (Barber, 2019) of the ‘savage’ outside, HVAC systems are by and large accepted as an unquestioned necessity. Naturally, this deliberate slicing up of our relationship with what’s ‘out there’ is compatible with the Western dualistic theory of being, one in which humans are seen as separate from nature, and even superior to it (Hickel, 2020). Through this relational ontology, HVAC use, as orchestrated by the contemporary building logic, is remarkably emblematic of a cultural fetish for divisions, borders and ‘gadgeted’ control (Barber, 2020). This dualistic climatic chasm is perhaps more discernibly highlighted in the use of refrigerators. Similar to HVAC systems, refrigerators are also relatively new climate control devices that, through consumer modernity, are now taken for granted in our building interiors and everyday lives. Refrigerators’ impact on our narratives and perceptions of food is thought to be colossal as it has forced upon us an abstract idea, that has now become a necessity, of ‘freshness’ (Freidberg, 2010). With it, it has come to ignore the energy required to sustain freshness, neglect the historical methods and innovations of food preservation and depreciate food that is not ‘fresh.’

The Agrifood Building Infrastructure of Growth A direct analogy to modern industrial agriculture, the majority of modern agrifood buildings are a type of large-scale monoculture (Figures 9.2a and b). Indistinguishable from non-agrifood industrial buildings, they are also regarded as ‘warehouses’ or ‘factories’. The design of these buildings is largely left unchallenged; undecorated, highly standardised, globally institutionalised and mass-produced, these structures can be erected within days. They are simply planned to accommodate large and rapid material input and product output and be wide enough and sealed enough to shelter monstrous machines. Territorially, they are ghostly absent. Usually located within industrial zones, which are typically hidden behind highways on the outskirts of cities, they represent something society is perhaps not exactly proud of. Strictly unadorned, disconnected from the social fabric and devoid of any cultural significance, this is not ‘real’ architecture, many architects would argue. In terms of materiality, contemporary agrifood buildings are commonly composed of steel or reinforced concrete frame structure and enclosed with thin composite panels (sandwich panels), most often made of plastic foam sandwiched by aluminium sheets,

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Figure 9.2a: Frozen foods facility. Limassol District, Cyprus.

Figure 9.2b: Fruit storage warehouse. Limassol District, Cyprus.

materials with very high embodied energy – energy required in manufacturing a material – and relatively short lifespan. Unconcerned with the food or the animals they are destined for, and like most contemporary architectures, indifferent and unacclimated to the local conditions, weather-tight, thinly skinned and open-planned, these buildings

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can only function and perform at the mercy of gigantic refrigeration and HVAC devices to artificially control the interior conditions needed to carry out the agrifood practices. The ways that these buildings are planned, built and operated, indicate that they as well are part of capitalism’s scheme of planned obsolescence. Short-lived and energetically inept, they are yet another symptom of the efficiency trap and excessive output that is driven by rampant consumerism, in order to facilitate super-productivist practices in the name of profit and growth.

The Agrifood Building Infrastructure of Degrowth Bridging architecture, agriculture and food in accordance with degrowth means reimagining the agrifood infrastructure as a threshold between a truly sustainable, just and well-being oriented construction and agrifood ecosystem. Such an undertaking consists of grappling with the infrastructural realities generated through scarcity in powered energy and applying, in a comprehensive manner, degrowth principles throughout. This comes down to challenging common perspectives on: innovation and the degree to which technology is pertinent, the nature of post-carbon labour, industrial scale and socio-territorial organisation, the way we perceive agrifood buildings and, lastly, the way we eat. In other words, we are called on to re-imagine this infrastructure through rethinking: our absolute dependence on complex and power-generated technologies, especially the ones related to climate control systems, which are energy-guzzling and are becoming too expensive and complex to run and repair; the practice of both construction and food production, which are inevitably transitioning towards being more physically intensive; autonomy, planning and food’s place in our commons, which is vital in our conversations on food governance (McGreevy et al., 2022); agrifood buildings as architectures, which is necessary in reflecting their incontestable importance; and our relationship to food, which, at its present state, perfectly encapsulates a moral and physiological malaise from being completely out of sync with the natural world (Steel, 2021). The degrowth agrifood architectures therefore are planned for, designed and built in ways that are deeply aware of these technical, territorial, political and sociocultural entanglements. As abstract as these entanglements may seem, they can indeed manifest materially: through the architecture’s very own materiality.

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The Case for Earth A Degrowth Building Material Earth – otherwise referred to as ‘mud,’ ‘loam’ and colloquially as ‘dirt,’ despite being anything but dirty – is a building material almost no one in the West (architects and engineers included) ever hears of today. It is the material the dwellings of about a fifth of the world’s population – eight to 10 percent in the Global North and 20–25% in the Global South (Marsh, Kulshreshtha, 2021) – are currently made of, which makes its present obscurity particularly baffling. It is one of the oldest building materials and has dominated a significant part of the built environment on a global scale since the neolithic era. Although not available everywhere, it is a material that is markedly and extensively abundant in most places as it covers most of Earth’s land surface. Not to be confused with the topsoil, which is the organic thin layer at surface level that is extremely precious for the survival of plants, animals and humans alike, earth used for construction is found in the often much thicker and largely inorganic stratum directly under it, called ‘subsoil.’ Its composition – constituted of stone, gravel, sand, silt and clay – varies from place to place, so much so that its properties can differ substantially within just a few metres. Its boundless diversity makes earth a material that is hyper-local. Extensively available and most commonly found within a building’s own site or at a close proximity, earth has most typically been considered as part of our commons and therefore, free. A material so ample, accessible and heterogeneous however, is a material that is substantially unable to be commodified – i.e., fit in a patented recipe and be monopolised through scarcity. Unfit to respond to the demands and the aesthetics of the capitalist market, its domination came to a harsh end after World War II, when it was replaced by concrete and steel, which were then taking off as the absolute embodiments of geopolitical strength and economic growth. Within the following decades, earth construction almost completely ceased to be practiced in the Global North and largely in the Global South. In effect, it has been so sweepingly forgotten that presently earth is not legislatively recognised as a valid building material in most countries. Apart from its use by the few alternative ecoconstruction initiatives, it is merely extracted, reorganised and massively removed for earthworks and landscape adjustments necessary for making way for the construction of any type of infrastructure (roads, dams, malls etc). It is predominantly therefore, nothing more than waste that is not only left unused, but also disposed of at a considerable cost. Earth is a material that is described as ‘raw’; this means it changes state (e.g., solidifies) and gains required mechanical properties (e.g., stiffness) without having to undergo any chemical transformations either by subjecting it to extremely high temperatures, as in firing it or by mixing it with artificial substances, as in chemically treating it. Instead, its desired material properties are gained through energy-light physical reactions (e.g., compaction and sun-drying) and incorporation of natural fibres or additives (e.g., straw,

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animal dung and cactus mucilage). Therefore, in this pure, ‘raw’ state in which its chemical composition stays intact, earth is infinitely malleable and reusable. In other words, it is a building material with a very low embodied energy in its infinite use since it needs very little energy and resources to be created and then un-created and re-created. With minimal intervention, a deteriorated part of an earthen wall, for example, can simply be removed, soaked in water (in order to return to a ductile state) and then reused for its reparation. A discarded earth building likewise, can conveniently return back to the ground. Fairly simple and low-tech, earth is to a large extent not dependent on high-level expertise. It can be manipulated directly without the need of any special gear and implemented with easily fabricable and repairable tools. In fact, its use is as intimate to the one handling it as it can be, free from chemicals, one could work with earth using their bare hands (and feet and whole body as a matter of fact - Figure 9.3). It is therefore accessible to most, including the ‘non-specialised’ user. Mending the breach between builder and building end-user, earth fosters a considerable level of autonomy and self-sufficiency. Moreover, mud, in being a familiar form of social play traced to

Figure 9.3: Builder in a participatory building setting treading mud and occasionally playing the guitar.

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Figure 9.4: Mud Pies. Painting by Ludwig Knaus, 1873. Walters Art Museum – Public domain.

the childhoods of many (see ‘mud pies’ - Figure 9.4), can be considered as a stimulator of social bonding and collective engagement. For all the above, earth is not only particularly preferred in self-building practices, but also in participatory building processes. The psychosomatic aspects of earth are also noteworthy. Although these are very commonly attested by both builders and building end-users, they are barely scientifically studied. Yet, these shouldn’t come as a surprise when we consider the known benefits of clay masks, mud baths and other earth-related wellness activities. Using earth for therapeutic purposes dates back to prehistoric ages (Gomez, 2017). Minerals in earth and clay’s absorption capacities can present, among others, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties resulting in notable rheumatological and dermatological benefits (Gomez, 2017). It is no wonder that earth builders habitually boast about their smooth hands. Beyond working with earth, living or spending time in earthen buildings is also known to have many notable advantages. Devoid of toxic substances (except, of course, in the case of contaminated soils), reportedly able to absorb pollutants and electromagnetic waves (Minke, 2012) and, as we will see later, excellent in balancing indoor humidity levels, earth can participate actively in healthy indoor environments. Earth can be a particularly evocative material. Physically, it can be modelled, moulded and carved. Metaphysically, it is loaded with spiritual significations traced to notions of ecology and ontology, such as in the various sacred narratives on the origin of life. This, at once physical and metaphysical, disposition establishes earth as a material that is inherently affiliated with the plastic arts (e.g., sculpture and ceramics). Designing and building with earth therefore allows for vivid architectural ex-

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pressions and this is attested by the extremely rich diversity of earth architectures that have historically embellished civilisations around the globe (Dethier, 1981). Although 12 main techniques of earth building have been identified (Guillaud & Houben, 2015), these multiply in character according to the specific qualities of local earth, climate, needs and tools. What is more, with such a malleable medium, material, builder and culture are fused. From rounded corners to textured surfaces, earthen building elements are often impressed by the hands of their creators and the spirits of their cultures. The poetics of such crafted elements and their spaces are hard to capture, it’s only through touch and light that they come alive. Building with earth demonstrates stark contrasts to the dominant growth-driven building practices. Handling a range of machinery and toxic substances, the capitalist building context of today is typically fenced-off, complex, noisy and hazardous. The working conditions are not exactly fun, and the construction worker, who is often treated as simply a means to an end, is deeply alienated. Buildings, alienated to the same effect, rarely embody any significance in the sociocultural fabric. Building interiors, permeated with chemicals from conventional synthetic materials, are considerably unhealthy (Saijo, 2019). Earth building meanwhile recounts an opposing narrative. Being naturally difficult to commodify, widely available, uncomplicated, safe, accessible, infinitely circular, inherently spiritual, healthy and amusing to work with, earth is considered as the ultimate ecological, convivial and, as the prominent architectural critic Jean Dethier coins it, ‘acapitalist’ building material (Wustemann, 2020). Earth, we can therefore conclude, is thoroughly attuned to degrowth.

Passive Climate Control Things get particularly interesting when we look at the effect of earth on indoor climate. Like all building materials which envelope the interior of a building and thus react to the exterior conditions as skins, earth has its own unique way of reacting to them. Instead of working as an airtight shield blocking exterior heat and humidity (which is what conventional building materials strive to do) earth lets them enter in its porous mass. Being a material that is hygroscopic (able to adsorb, absorb and desorb significant amounts of water in liquid and gas forms before reaching physical saturation and mechanical failure) with a high thermal mass (able to absorb calories quickly, as well as store plenty of heat and transmit it slowly), it facilitates a coordinated interaction between heat and water called ‘hygrothermal coupling.’ This dynamic effect induces evaporation and condensation, giving earth its special ‘perspiration’ properties: it makes it capable of absorbing and storing excessive humidity or releasing it when too dry, together with inhibiting the escape of interior heat when it is cold outside or the entry of exterior heat when it is hot, and so on. These coordinated physical phenomena indicate that when earth is exploited within an architectural assembly of a fitting scale, usage and context-specific biocli-

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matic design – design that is informed by local climatic conditions – it can be a significant component of a passive climate control system. To put it simply, this material can make high-tech, energy-demanding machines habitually needed in modern building interiors, such as HVAC systems and refrigerators, obsolete.

Earth in the Degrowth Agrifood Context Earth’s capacity of non-mechanically regulating indoor climate is an energy-saving means that is applicable to many buildings in which the energy consumption deriving from mechanical refrigeration and HVAC systems is high (e.g., homes and offices). Yet, what is curious in its applicability in the agrifood setting is that earth can take on a role in participating within the industry’s modus operandi. Considering that much of agrifood activities – raising animals, drying produce, storing crops, fermenting beverages etc. – are majoritively based on the presence of specific levels of temperature and humidity, earth presents opportunities in providing the climate they necessitate. The vast diversity of earthen, machine-free, agrifood infrastructure – among many drying rooms, granaries, breweries, ice-houses – attests that earth is not merely an energy-saving contraption. By actively contributing in their ways of operating it is also an energy-stirring mechanism. The effect of this mechanism is inestimable. By its very own nature, earth can engage in inducing the conditions necessary for activities related to animal husbandry (e.g., animal comfort) and food processing (e.g., storage, preservation and transformation). This effect extends far beyond the activity alone as it can also partake in providing a healthy workplace to the labourer, while also playing a significant role in increasing the quality – flavour, nutritional content, texture, etc., – of the food processed. Directly and indirectly, actively and passively, earth manifests elements that can influence the well-being for builders and end-users, producers and consumers. Earth of course, in and of itself is not a panacea able to reverse the culture of industrial labour exploitation, provide full-fledged solutions to energy predicaments or mend the sociocultural disconnect most of us have with agriculture, but the stewardship and sensitivity that earth brings in the way we plan, build and treat the places of food can have an enormous impact. Food, after all, in being the basis of our needs, connects to everything and it is undeniably one of the most powerful mediums for systems change. As Carolyn Steel, architect and food systems thinker, highlights (2021), ‘the way we eat is inextricably linked to the social, political, economic and physical structures that govern our lives, which is what gives food its unparalleled complexity and potential (p. 14)’. Such an agricultural and architectural, or better, ‘archicultural’ or ‘agritectural’ approach that recognises the far-reaching agency of food and seeks both amendments and pleasures in the context of building for, producing and consuming food, is perhaps a cunningly comprehensive expression of degrowth.

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Existing Cases Accounts on Quality, Innovation and the Commons ‘Earthen agrifood buildings’ is not a novel idea. There are many pre-industrial examples and even some contemporary ones – although very few. Curiously enough, a lot of the ones built today are wineries. The impact of earth on wine is already long established in traditional vinification processes (underground cellars, clay amphorae etc.,), and it has now come to be especially associated with high-quality vinicultural activities. This is perhaps due to the culture of wine drinking: in being intrinsically tied to the traditional French food culture – a culture that carries an explicit emphasis on quality, expertise and pleasure (Steel, 2021) – it allowed for this thousand-year-old relationship between earth and wine to resist the pressures of conventional industrial winemaking practices. The Adega Dos Lagares (Figures 9.5a and b) winery of winemaking company Esporão in the Alentejo region of Portugal, is markedly driven by this relationship. Designed by Skrei and built in 2015, the idea of this building was to produce better wines (Esporão, 2016). Supported by a reinforced concrete and steel structure, it is enclosed with walls made of rammed earth, locally known as ‘taipa’ – an ancient building technique of compacted earth. Free of any HVAC system, it is designed with a particular recognition of earth’s climate control capacities, which the architects and the producers embrace both technically and poetically (Esporão, 2016). The architecture, a fusion of the local vernacular style and modern ‘box-like’ industrial look, carries an unassuming aesthetic, as well as a pronounced attentiveness to both local character and large-scale vinification processes. Being part of Esporão’s sustainability manifesto titled It’s Urgent to Slow Down, this building seeks to embody the slow food ethics and organic farming practices it serves.

Figure 9.5a: Exterior view of Adega dos Lagares. Alentejo region, Portugal. © Alexandre Delmar / Esporão, 2015.

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Figure 9.5b: Interior view of Adega dos Lagares during grape-treading. Alentejo region, Portugal. © Alexandre Delmar / Esporão, 2015.

Vernacular earthen agrifood buildings are largely under-documented, but mostly under-appreciated. Utterly swept by the ultra-industrial food systems of today, very few have remained to this day to testify their profound resourcefulness. Out of these, a small fraction are seen as historical artefacts and an even smaller number remain in use. The vast majority are abandoned, left in dilapidated conditions. These buildings, which operated (and some still operate) fully passively, offer precious insights on the architectural and engineering ingenuities responsible for bringing about the agrifood objectives. The Chunche (Figure 9.6) for instance, the typology of grape-drying houses in the Turpan basin in China, is quite literally a building-machine. These buildings are big rectangular drying rooms that are formed by densely perforated walls made of adobe – sun-dried bricks of mud and straw. They are astutely territorially placed and oriented and their brick pattern ingeniously designed to allow for a regulated amount of wind to pass through the grapes (hanging inside), just enough light to enter and an ideal temperature to hold, activating thus, the shade-drying process through a timely evaporation. The scale of production is massive and the raisins produced are world-known for their high-quality. Continuing to be part of an important economic activity, much of this infrastructure is still active. After all, producers claim that it is the drying process in the Chunche that gives these raisins their superior quality (Wei, 2016). Beyond technical innovations, the earthen make up of agrifood buildings also carries a range of political and socio-organisational dispositions, which are crucial in the context of culturally informed adaptation strategies and sustainable food governances. For example, earth, in being part of the commons, allowed for significant cooperative endeavours. From co-constructing agrifood buildings and collectively operating them to co-production practices and collaborative territorial management, the precedents of such endeavours are many: among others, collectively run granaries, notably the Ksour in Tunisia and underground cellar neighbourhoods, such as the Barrios de Bodegas in Spain. The Taddart N’Inzerki (Figure 9.7) in the Souss-Massa region of Mo-

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Figure 9.6: Several large Chunche in Turpan. Xinjiang region, China. © Museum of Wander, 2022.

rocco, famous for being the oldest and largest collective bee yard (Haccour, 1972), is a particularly impressive example. This apiary, which dates back to the mid-19th century, is still active and the property of 20 – historically 80 – rightholder families. They collectively use it, maintain it, monitor its operation, manage its immediate territory and partake in caring for the wider ecosystem, which is currently severely impacted by climate change (Berni, 2022). Constructed with local wood and earth and measuring five stories tall, it is able to host more than 4,000 beehives (Berni, 2022). The beehives, which can have a yearly yield of 100 kilos of high-quality honey each, are fabricated with local reed and covered with mud and cow dung (Haccour, 1972) – an ancient technique likely for keeping the bees cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Adding to the already rich heritage of collectivist infrastructure in traditional Moroccan culture (Naji, 2019), this earthen apiary is an exemplary model of apicultural collectivism.

Figure 9.7: Taddart N’Inzerki. Souss-Massa region, Morocco. © NJ Vereecken, 2017.

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Accounts on Ontology, Spirituality, Monumentality and Greenwashing Evidently, pre-industrial industrial agrifood practices were considerably different from the post-industrial industrial agrifood practices of today. And not just in their mechanical aspects, i.e., the lack of machines, but also in their sociocultural embodiments. For the most part of history, food occupied the majority of our time, thoughts and concerns. The agrifood infrastructure therefore was of intrinsic importance in everyday life and particularly interlinked with people’s values, exhibiting their relationship with nature and with each other. Bearing this ontological gravity, the majority of agrifood infrastructure had spiritual and symbolic dimensions and this is demonstrated by the way they were built and incorporated in the built and unbuilt landscape. Characterised by a strong presence and distinct monumentality, agrifood buildings signified glorious standings. Earthen vernacular agrifood buildings demonstrate that earth played an important role in their assertion as important places. Loaded with symbolism and armed with its characteristic plasticity, earth allowed for zealous expressions. In worshipping the interconnection between soil and food and its central role as a foundation of all existence, the imagination could run high in the interplay between the horizontality of the earth used for cultivation and the verticality of the earth used for building. With no material distinction, the artificial was almost indistinguishable from the natural. Besides, architecture then was not a means of sequestering oneself from nature; indeed, it was part of nature. Manifestly beautiful, these buildings were far more than purely places of production. This is perhaps most evidenced by the poetic demeanour of these buildings or the frequent presence of folk-art features, such as in reliefs, textures and patterns. Both form and ornamentation though were hardly purely adorning, rather they were conceivably responding to structural necessities, preventing pest intrusion or diligently guiding light and airflow – they almost always served a purpose. The Borj–e Kabotar (Figures 9.8a and b) for instance, the massive earthen pigeon towers (dovecotes) which decorated the landscapes of the Iranian plateau for centuries are considered to be radically functional architectural marvels. To the surprise of many people familiar with European pigeon keeping, these dovecotes were never used for providing meat. With a local longstanding tradition of pigeon sacredness, they were exclusively for collecting guano to use as agricultural fertiliser (Beazley, 1966). Correct, their sole function was pigeon poo production. And they were indeed very productive, able to house and provide comfort to thousands of pigeons (sometimes up to 10,000), the yearly yield could reach tens of tonnes. Considering the contemporary synthetic fertiliser crisis, Aaron Vansintjan, prominent degrowth author, thinks of these dovecotes as a viable low-tech alternative (Vansintjan, 2016). Seemingly ornamental with various intricate forms, elaborate cornices and friezes, it was exactly their way of ingeniously withstanding the seismic vibrations of startled birds and responding to the not-so-simple task of letting birds (which were free to come

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Figure 9.8a: One of six Borj–e Kabotar within the Sheikh Bahai Citadel. Isfahan Province, Iran. © Mehdi Kazemi, 2015.

Figure 9.8b: Interior of a Borj–e Kabotar in Maybod. Yazd Province, Iran. © Ghazal Kohandel, 2020.

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Figure 9.9a: A Yakhchāl in Abarkuh. Yazd Province, Iran. © Bočko Metod, 2017.

Figure 9.9b: View from the interior of the oculus of a Yakhchāl in Abarkuh. Yazd Province, Iran. © Adam Jones, 2012.

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and go) in and keeping snakes out (Beazley, 1966). The interior, splendidly lit and populated with thousands of nests shaped on the earthen walls in an efficient checkerboard configuration, is particularly impressive. Fascinatingly enough, this was mainly for birds to delight in; humans only needed to enter these buildings once or twice a year to collect the yield. Manifestly, the beauty and significance of these structures – achieved through sculpting the tangible earthen mass and the intangible synergy between time, light and air – transcended humans. Such mystical solicitations are often explored in the art of several Light and Space and Land artists, such as James Turrell and Hannsjörg Voth. Their work, at once architectural and sculptural, is interpreted as a spiritual channelling between Earth and sky, eliciting spaces and forms historically established in places of worship (e.g., The Pantheon, pagodas and ziggurats). One can also see uncanny parallels between their work and traditional earthen agrifood constructions. A particularly striking case in point is the Yakhchāl (Figures 9.9a and b) – another vernacular Persian typology of building complexes used for generating and storing large amounts of ice in the desert throughout the year (yes, it is possible to non-mechanically produce and store ice in hot desert climates). The ice is stored in a large excavated-in-earth pit, covered by a gigantic – sometimes reaching 13 metres in diameter and 15 metres tall (Bahadori, Dehghani-Sanij, 2021) – earthen terraced dome with a central opening (oculus) at top. The dome’s materiality, gradated verticality and strategic aperture are astutely designed to direct heat away and induce the right conditions for ice conservation. Yet, with such mystical gestures, the produced architecture does not shy away from conveying an ascension of the terrestrial to the celestial. This metaphysical spirit of earth is exploited to a great extent in the few contemporary earthen agrifood buildings. In today’s reality, this is often used as a tool of ecological expression. Let us take the Ricola Kräuterzentrum (Figure 9.10), a herb-based candy factory in Switzerland, designed by ‘starchitects’ Herzog and de Meuron as an example, which at the time of its opening was taking pride in being the largest earthen contemporary building in Europe (Ricola, 2014). Inversely to the typical expression-less, ultrautilitarian cast of industrial buildings, this building’s architecture is deliberately evocative. Drawing clear analogies with the styles of Louis Kahn or Carlos Scarpa – leading creators of modern monumentality in architecture – this factory can be seen as a monument. This is not only communicated through its monolithic scale and bold geometric gestures, but also through its designed quest to tap into elements of spiritual ecology. According to the architects, the architecture wants to pay homage to the surrounding landscape, the herbs processed within and the company’s – candy manufacturing giant Ricola – brand as a philosophy (Herzog & de Meuron, 2014). Yet, it falls somewhat short of being sincerely sustainably built and run. As shown in the architects’ drawings, the earth enveloping the structure is merely the exterior façade for the processing portion of the building. Using a decent amount of other conventional materials, which are disguised by the earthen ‘branding’ façade (Lowenstein, 2019), the herbs processing runs ‘efficiently’ in the typical fashion: with the use of large HVAC systems. Inevitably, earth is not

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entirely immune to green growth shenanigans. Through extraneous and superficial applications, it can indeed be used as a greenwashing medium in marketing.

Figure 9.10: Ricola Kräuterzentrum. Laufen, Switzerland. © Marion Sauter, 2020, Hochschule Luzern – Technik & Architektur.

Conclusion: Challenges and Prospects The goal is not to push for an old model of agrifood infrastructure as this revolutionary idea, nor to retreat to some sort of romanticism for the past in a neo-luddite fashion. Binary conclusions of this sort are notorious stumbling blocks to creatively addressing our most urgent predicaments and a familiar phenomenon rooted in the false perceptions of degrowth (Latouche, 2019). The fact is that things have to change and there’s an undeniable historical relevance in the ways we can do so. The importance of infrastructural improvements towards production performance, hygiene, work facilitation, etc., that can be brought about by new methods and technologies should not be overlooked and a reductionist approach should be avoided. Yet, it is clear that in the process we are squandering a lot from failing to scrutinise the architecture of these buildings and their very own materiality. In a truly sustainable world, architecturing agrifood infrastructure would address innovation as mainly a passive engineering challenge and see its materiality for its true disposition: as a crucial interactor with climate and culture. Once we understand earth’s role in energy exchange and ultimately, action, in the agrifood practice and far beyond it, our range of view on the nature of materiality expands: we suddenly start to see earth as an instrument and an artful component of an industrial and anthropological apparatus. Innately ecological, low-tech alternative to climate control machines, earth manifests utterly sustainable ways to mitigate and adapt. What is more, from its origin, its implementation, its occupancy to its sheer infrastruc-

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tural presence, earth participates in open relocalisation, labour de-alienation, commoning production and food valorisation. Finally, earth is proven to be a strong stimulator of ecological imagination. Its potentiality, therefore, in contributing to transforming social imaginaries through the way we experience our built environment and even through the way we eat, can be colossal. Its discerning employment through architecture and planning in the degrowth ways of, what Neil Smith describes as, ‘producing nature’ (Smith, 1984), could be a means of re-narrating the way we think of the ecosystem and our place in it, perhaps a creative medium of getting us back in sync with the natural world. Earthen agrifood architectures therefore can contribute to quintessentially sustainable, convivial, caring and regenerative practices of agriculture and food production and represent effective infrastructural means of administering food sovereignty and sustainable food governances. Materialising these buildings with earth can be a potentially powerful act of reappropriation able to not only redefine these buildings’ technical logic, but also challenge their own status quo and the status quo of the system they support. Be that as it may, the impediment to advancing earth’s application remains: it is not legislatively recognised. Recognising it shouldn’t be so difficult, it is after all one of the oldest building materials, embodied by an array of incredibly matured and polyvalent construction solutions, intelligences and craftsmanship in a variety of contexts, scales and architectures. Nonetheless, in capitalism, earth does indeed exhibit important challenges. The most evident one lies in the fact that earth does not fit in modern building logic. In being infinitely diverse (due to its heterogeneous composition) its material properties vary enormously. This means that in a culture of absolute standardisation, in which materials are ultra-processed and patented and their properties are textbook certified, building professionals get discombobulated at the sight of anything nontypical. A blessing and a curse, this doesn’t facilitate earth’s commodification, but also doesn’t allow for its legitimation. While many industrialisation initiatives are hypocritically (Poste, 2020) working towards homogenising earth through chemical transformation (namely by mixing-in cement) to fit a material that is no longer earth into the system, efforts to do the inverse and amend the system itself are rare. Such anticapitalist undertaking would require substantial policymaking and restructuring of building education and norms, something that is already imperative in supporting any genuinely sustainable building practice. This would involve among others, decentralising the building legislative system and giving more authority to interprofessional competence, valorising Indigenous building know-how, incorporating material life-cycle assessments (comprehensive assessments of environmental impacts of materials), diversifying and subsidising natural material certification methods and endorsing on-site testing and quality-control protocols. The real catch runs culturally deep. To illustrate, earth’s rusticity and even its colour, is perceived as a menace to our immaculately clean modernist selves and surroundings. Its human-touch feel does not correspond to our fool proof impressions of technological progress. And its building execution processes, which often require care

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in understanding the material and time for practices such as drying (e.g., sun-drying mud bricks), are inconsistent with contemporary notions of efficiency. Seen as ‘slow,’ ‘constraining,’ ‘informal’ and ‘dirty,’ earth is, more often than not, automatically dismissed. Evidently, the biggest hindrances in realising earth buildings today are earth’s ‘acapitalist’ nature and our imperialist imaginaries which relate it to notions of ‘past,’ ‘poverty’ and ‘underdevelopment.’ Indeed, it is a material that can barely be sustained in a culture of economic growth. This is why earth and degrowth are so greatly interrelated; one could even see their relationship as symbiotic. Given the obstacles, a big focus of the few contemporary earth architecture practices until now has been the issue of habitat – principally as an economically viable response to the need for low-income housing in less Westernised, less normative regions of the world – often casting aside the global and broader issues of large-scale infrastructural sustainability. We have seen that the discourse can go far beyond this elementary pertinence between earth and shelter and can expand to the absolutely enchanting relationship earth has with agriculture, food, animals, energy and well-being. In bringing this relationship, which is not purely mitigative or adaptive but also exciting, to the centre of our agrifood architecture practices, it would be possible to disrupt the dominant economic paradigm and materialise the degrowth alternatives.

References Ali, M. B., Saidur, R., & Hossain, M. S. (2011). A review on emission analysis in cement industries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(5), 2252–2261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2011.02.014 Bahadori, M. N., & Dehghani-Sanij, A. (2021). Ice-houses: Energy, architecture, and sustainability. Academic Press. Barber, D. A. (2020). Modern architecture and climate: Design before air conditioning. Princeton University Press. Barber, D. A. (2019). After comfort. Log, 47, 45–50. Beazley, E. (1966). The Pigeon Towers of Isfahan. Iran, 4, 105. https://doi.org/10.2307/4299579 Berni, V. (2022, July 29). Le plus vieux rucher d’abeilles du monde s’effondre. Mr Mondialisation. https://mrmondialisation.org/le-plus-vieux-rucher-dabeilles-du-monde-seffondre/ [Accessed: 9 August 2022] Dethier, J. (1981). Des architectures de terre ou l’avenir d’une tradition millénaire. Centre Georges Pompidou, Centre de Création Industrielle. Esporão (2016, April 8). Esporão: ‘Lagares’ winery: Of land and time [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Fex4 Yt9HYAA [Accessed: 19 February 2023]. Eurostat (2022, June 17). Energy use in households in 2020. European Commission – Eurostat. https://ec.eu ropa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220617-1 [Accessed: 1 August 2022]. Freidberg, S. (2010). Fresh A perishable history. Belknap Press. Gomes, C. de. (2017). Healing and edible clays: A review of basic concepts, benefits and risks. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 40(5), 1739–1765. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-016-9903-4

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Guerrero Lara, L., van Oers, L., Smessaert, J., Spanier, J., Raj, G., & Feola, G. (2023). Degrowth and agri-food systems: A research agenda for the critical social sciences. Sustainability Science. 1–16. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11625-022-01276-y Guillaud, H., & Houben, H. (2015). Traité de construction en terre. Parenthèses. Haccour, P. (1972). Un exemple de collectivisme apicole: Organa, le plus grand rucher collectif du monde. Gazette Apicole, 174–178. Herzog & de Meuron (2014). 369 Ricola Kräuterzentrum. Herzog & de Meuron. https://www.herzogde meuron.com/projects/369-ricola-krauterzentrum/ [Accessed: 9 February 2023]. Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more: How degrowth will save the world. Penguin Books. Jappe, A. (2020). Béton. arme de construction massive du capitalisme. L’Echappée Éditions. Latouche, S. (2019). La décroissance. Presses universitaires de France. Lowenstein, O. (2019). Unstructured 7 – Heavy weight. Fourthdoor. http://www.fourthdoor.co.uk/unstruc tured/unstructured_07/riccola.php [Accessed: 9 February 2023]. Marsh, A. T., & Kulshreshtha, Y. (2021). The state of earthen housing worldwide: How development affects attitudes and adoption. Building Research & Information, 50(5), 485–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09613218.2021.1953369 McGreevy, S. R., Rupprecht, C. D. D., Niles, D., Wiek, A., Carolan, M., Kallis, G. Kantamaturapoj, K., Mangnus, A. Jehlička, P., Taherzadeh, O., Sahakian, M., Chabay, I., Colby, A., Vivero-Pol, J-L., Chaudhuri, R., Spiegelberg, M., Kobayashi, M., Balázs, B., . . . Tachikawa, M. (2022). Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world. Nature Sustainability, 5(2), 1011–1017. https://doi.org/10. 1038/s41893-022-00933-5 Miller, S. A., Horvath, A., & Monteiro, P. J. (2018). Impacts of booming concrete production on water resources worldwide. Nature Sustainability, 1(1), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-017-0009-5 Minke, G. (2012). Building with earth. Birkhäuser. Naji, S. (2019). Architectures du bien commun: Pour une éthique de la préservation. MetisPresses. Plotnikova, S. (2020). Designing for degrowth: Architecture against climate apartheid. Design for Climate Action. 26–33. https://doi.org/10.35483/acsa.aia.inter.20.3 Poste, A. (2022, October 13). Le retour à la terre des bétonneurs. Terrestres. https://www.terrestres.org/ 2020/11/02/le-retour-a-la-terre-des-betonneurs/ [Accessed: 5 January 2023]. Ricola. (2014, 26 June). Ricola opens Kräuterzentrum (Herb center) in Laufen. https://www.ricola.com/it/ricola/ media/comunicati-stampa/international/ricola-opens-krauterzentrum [Accessed: 21 February 2023]. Ritchie, H. (2020, October 22). Climate change and flying: What share of global CO2 emissions come from aviation? Our world in data. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation [Accessed: 11 August 2022]. Saijo, Y. (2019). Sick building/house syndrome. In R. Kishi, D. Norbäck, & A. Araki. (Eds.) Indoor environmental quality and health risk toward healthier environment for all: Current topics in environmental health and preventive medicine. (pp. 21–38). Springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9182-9_2 Smith, N. (1984). Uneven development. Blackwell. Steel, C. (2021). Sitopia: How food can save the world. Vintage. United Nations Environment Programme (2014). Sand, rarer than one thinks. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAS). https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500. 11822/8665 [Accessed 19 February 2023]. Vansintjan, A. (2016, October 24). Pigeon towers: A low-tech alternative to synthetic fertilizers. Low-Tech Magazine. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/10/pigeon-towers-a-low-tech-alternative-tosynthetic-fertilizers.html [Accessed: 9 September 2022]. Watts, J. (2019, February 25). Concrete: The most destructive material on Earth. The Guardian. https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth [Accessed: 6 August 2022].

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Wei, C. (2016, August 6). How one of the world’s hottest cities became a hub for grape growing. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzkd8w/how-one-of-the-worlds-hottest-cities-became-a-hub-forgrape-growing [Accessed: 20 April 2022.] Wustemann, L. (2020, March 20). Beyond the mud hut: The return of raw-earth architecture. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/70e0e0a4-61fe-11ea-abcc-910c5b38d9ed [Accessed: 29 April 2022].

Harry Holmes

10 They Want Us to Live in Caves: Degrowth and the Housing Question Abstract: Housing remains a contentious issue in conversations around degrowth. Critics are quick to strawman degrowth advocates as proposing austere housing of smaller size and/or limited amenities. At the same time, housing remains a difficult issue for degrowth advocates on their own terms, as its necessity brings to the forefront complex questions of precisely how to reduce throughput and provide shelter. This chapter argues that there is a potentially generative engagement between degrowth theory and the lineage of Marxist-inspired thought concerned with housing. Such an engagement moves degrowth discussions away from the ‘models’ of degrowth in housing, its relationship vis-à-vis urbanisation and similar questions, towards concerns of ownership, class dimensions of housing development and the forms of organisation capable of fighting for green housing for all. To elucidate this, the chapter concludes by exploring examples where workingclass opposition has been built in response to the failure of housing systems in Newham, London, Great Britain. These show that by understanding housing systems as embedded within and reproducing of class relations, Marxist-inspired thought can develop both the theory and practice of degrowth advocates in ways that counteract critics and provide clarity to the thorny question of housing. Keywords: housing, Marxism, Newham, rent, tenants

Introduction In September 2021, Insulate Britain began mass actions blockading motorways, demanding a large-scale insulation retrofit campaign from the government, beginning with social housing. In and amongst these actions, talkRADIO’s Mike Graham interviewed Insulate Britain activist Cameron Ford on their show. Graham decided to question Ford on their work as a carpenter. This was an attempt to trap the activist into admitting to using polluting materials, in Graham’s eyes discounting Insulate Britain’s message by highlighting ‘hypocrisy.’ In response to Ford’s reminder that their carpentry wood is a renewable resource, Graham was left bizarrely proclaiming that concrete could be grown. In the face of such a strange claim, Ford refused to respond before the call was prematurely terminated. Graham continued over the following days to double down on this claim, citing both an article about a concrete substitute material containing bacte-

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ria and the argument that concrete expands when mixed, hence could be said to be grown. It was overall, a bizarre and strange intervention, common in the British media class. Yet, it was also particularly demonstrative of the dearth of serious conversations about housing and ecological breakdown. What might seem a classic case of reactionary ‘gotcha’ media collapsing in the face of its own contradictions reveals a wider logic of how opponents of the climate justice movement see the built environment as a wedge issue. For example, whilst discussing the activism of Extinction Rebellion in 2021, right-wing commentator Tom Harwood stated, ‘these cranks will not be satisfied until we are a nation reduced to living in caves subsisting off moss and earth’ (Harwood, 2021). Similarly, right-wing American commentator Ben Shapiro wrote of housing in their book Bullies, when they suggested that ‘the best solution for both environmentalists and class bullies, is for us all to live in mud huts. That’s equality.’ (Shapiro, 2014, p. 220). These examples represent a very common position amongst the political Right today; whilst environmental breakdown is not explicitly denied, environmentalists are othered and marginalised as hypocrites, extremists and ‘woke-moralists.’ To the political Right, most environmentalists are hypocrites, who have fallen into hysteria and want everyone to suffer in response. As the above quotes show, regular tropes like living in caves and mud huts are commonly invoked, both presenting environmentalists as a risk to your housing and securing their representation as ‘extremists.’ Rather than shy away from this trope, all too easily dismissed, it is important that radical degrowth and housing scholars are capable of articulating what housing looks like if we get our way, whilst also organising a social force that makes such dismissal impossible and transformation ever more imminent. This chapter argues that housing remains an issue for degrowth advocates on several levels, both as an ecological issue of reducing resource throughput and on a social level of meeting everyone’s housing needs. Bringing in works from Marxist thought on ‘The housing question,’ it argues that degrowth advocates would gain further insight by incorporating Marxist investigations into how capitalism determines the production of space. By bringing questions of ownership, the finance-rent nexus and class into degrowth approaches to housing, it is argued that greater tactical and strategic insight is brought into building a degrowth housing movement. Looking to the contemporary situation and historic examples of London housing organising in Newham, it is argued that greater action between degrowthers and socialists focused on building mass working class organisation around housing could bring about powerful results.

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Housing and Degrowth The Ecology of Housing The ecological impact of housing construction itself, from the clearing of lands to the use of high emissions tools and vehicles, is quite significant. For example, the construction sector is the major component in global capitalism, driving heavy industries like steel and cement production – both high emission and extremely complex to decarbonise. Additionally, as with transport systems, once buildings are constructed, they have a constraining effect on emissions pathways. The energy efficiency of homes determines energy consumption and related emissions, resulting in energy use often being partially collapsed into buildings in emissions calculations. As the World Green Building Council estimates, ‘buildings are currently responsible for 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions: 28% from operational emissions, from energy needed to heat, cool and power them, and the remaining 11% from materials and construction’ (World Green Building Council, 2019). In Britain, buildings are the second largest emissions source behind the transport sector (Committee on Climate Change, 2022, p. 156), though this ignores both Britain’s exporting of emissions and the role of its services sector in facilitating global emissions. Beyond simply accounting for emissions from energy systems and resource use, housing is an issue of a whole host of ecological systems – from ecosystem destruction from the clearing of land to the degradation of water catchments through sewage. Outside the impact of construction, housing is the major space people experience climate disasters like flooding. Thus, housing is not simply an ecological issue around its impacts and resource use, but also in the extent towards which stock is not adapted to potential climate risks (Christie & Salong, 2018; Holmes, 2021). These are the spaces where a significant portion of humanity engages in the day-to-day activities of life and thus housing mediates both our consumption and our experience of ecological impacts. This brings us to housing as a social system, not simply a technicalecological problem.

The Housing System The social role of the housing system, as already suggested, is massive and for an extended period has been described as ‘in crisis’ in Britain and globally (Rolnik, 2019). The precise character of this housing crisis requires disentangling – it is not simply one crisis, but a global bundle of varied contradictions and problems emerging in housing systems. There are, in many places, unfolding problems relating to the quality of housing which lead to poor health outcomes, what Davis termed the ‘planet of slums’ (Davis, 2017). Both in ‘slums’ and in stock generally not considered ‘slums’ there are issues of

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overcrowding and shortages, where constraints have prevented the provision of adequate units of housing for need. This emerges in a variety of forms, from urban overcrowding to the displacement of individuals in attempts to reduce demand. For example, in London, to overcome an insufficient amount of temporary accommodation and public housing, practices like the use of unsuitable poorer quality housing stock and the wholesale moving of individuals to coastal communities like Margate is common (Hubbard, 2022). Globally, the housing crisis therefore represents multiple unfolding and co-constituting issues of housing quantity and housing quality. Housing has a crucial social use, shelter, being a space of socialising, eating and cooking, reproduction and so on, much of which cannot be simply replaced. In other words, there is no positive ‘planned obsolescence’ or ‘creative destruction’ of the general activity of creating and maintaining shelter. Consequently, any degrowth strategy must engage with the minutia of specific activities and approaches to construction and forms of housing. Under capitalism, construction and the housing sector is a substantial economic system as well. In 2019, construction provided 7% of jobs in the UK, with 13% of British businesses involved in the sector (Rhodes, 2019). The sector produced £117bn, constituting 6% of GDP (Rhodes, 2019). Britain has been marked by the emergence of the ‘petit rentier,’ the individual who buys housing to let it out, with such rents and the adjacent industries like plumbing, joinery and property management all contributing significantly to Britain’s economy (Christophers, 2020). This is not to affirm the construction and housing industry with reference to growth figures and its contribution to the economy in the abstract. Instead, it is to point out that construction and the provision of housing is an activity that provides a significant number of jobs and income for people globally, with a large fraction of the ruling class committed to its continued expansion. This is before we explore the many ways in which the finance industry has become committed to expanded and continuous regular construction, made ever clearer given the mortgage system’s contribution to recent economic crises. On one level, people need housing and current housing systems are not providing for such needs adequately – both in quality and quantity. On another level, the housing system is a substantial part of the economy, which employs workers and has a significant profit and rent seeking class who will resist calls to degrow it. So, what has been the degrowth response to this complexity?

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The Degrowth Housing Response Finding a Movement The immediate challenge in tackling the degrowth response is the variety of organisations, institutions and individuals claiming the degrowth moniker. What could be termed the degrowth movement has ‘failed to evolve – so far – as a typical organised movement with a discernible formal structure’ (Liegey & Nelson, 2020, p. 52). Instead, the degrowth movement has been described as ‘a decentralised, multidimensional, and open network’ (Liegey & Nelson, 2020, p. 49). Consequently, the degrowth movement is perhaps best understood as an umbrella term referring to individuals committed to degrowth within already existing collective projects, whether explicitly in degrowth research and activism networks, or as individuals participating in ecological movements from climate camps to green parties. Defining who is committed to degrowth creates a further issue, as the concept can refer to those merely critical of the institutional commitment to GDP found in most social formations (what could be termed narrow degrowth), or as a proposal for a restructuring of the world social formation (wide degrowth). A recent account has attempted to articulate ‘degrowth principles’ which may provide greater theoretical unity across this network – degrowth is committed to global ecological justice, social justice and self-determination and the ‘redesigning of institutions and infrastructure to be no longer dependent on growth and continued expansion’ (Schmelzer, Vansintjan, & Vetter, 2022, p. 195). This account may be said to reflect wide degrowth, where the critique of growth is fleshed out with a commitment to social and ecological justice principles.

Spectrums of Responses A consequence of this is that there is no unified degrowth response to housing, instead, there are a wide spectrum of responses. On one account, ‘a degrowth perspective explores ways of responding to needs for shelter and security in a socially equitable and environmentally sustainable fashion’ (Martínez-Alier, 2018, p. xiii). For some, this might mean a focus on the technicalities of constructing housing with lower resource throughput. At times, this can veer close to the fantasies of the political Right, with discussions of ‘tiny homes’ (mobile housing of around 13 metres squared) (Anson, 2018) to ‘The Simpler Way’ of frugal living, including mud based housing and similar technologies (Trainer, 2018). These examples of degrowth literature look at housing resource throughput and emissions as a technical issue and propose alternative housing technologies in their place, consequently exploring the social implications of the adoption of these technologies. A further strand of degrowth thinking has been to look at the wider models of urban planning and urbanisation as a

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process, debating which direction degrowth should pull (Xue, 2018;Vansintjan, 2018). Of interest here is the form that a degrowth organisation of urban space would take – whether it would look closer to ecovillages, the vision of rurality and spread articulated by William Morris in News from Nowhere (Morris, 2004), or instead affirm the role of compact organisation in the city. Other approaches look to existing movements around housing as areas where degrowth movements can learn from or intervene. Of particular interest within degrowth movements are squatting movements and the long-term land occupation of land (Olsen, Orefice, & Pietrangeli, 2018; Cattaneo, 2018; Cattaneo & Engel-Di Mauro, 2015). These cases are often presented as prefigurative ‘nowtopias,’ spaces that both serve an important function around housing and sociality, whilst also politicising individuals and reducing ecological impact. Outside of a focus on the reclamation of housing space, there has been work on the wider movements against social cleansing and resistance to the destruction of existing housing stock and its replacement with new construction projects (Ferreri, 2018). Some in the degrowth movement have begun to put forward programmatic statements on housing, combining several proposals into a more complete approach. For example, the Unconditional Autonomy Allowance approach to housing focuses on the ‘right to housing and access to real estate’ (Liegey & Nelson, 2020, p. 164) and includes a spate of proposals around collective living, land use and similar which reflect this.

The Snail’s House Overall, much of what can be articulated as degrowth movement responses to the housing question can be understood with reference to the ‘strategy of the snail.’ This approach focuses not on the seizure of power, but on a longstanding battle against existing institutions’ growth-oriented policies, an ‘immediate exit from capitalism’ through the construction of ‘nowtopias’ and for the promotion of degrowth as a counter-hegemonic idea (Parti Pour La Décroissance, 2011). Thus, whilst the degrowth movement is diffuse and consequently produces a spectrum of viewpoints on housing issues, there is nevertheless some thematic and strategic unity. Degrowth housing thinkers have focused on technological or policy proposals and critiques of existing systems, on reclamation movements around housing (particularly squatting) and on the narratives/vision of degrowth housing. Much less focus has been placed on the actual forces capable of organisation within and around housing, or on the weak points in the housing-rent-finance nexus within capitalism. Ultimately, Ferreri is correct in arguing that a ‘truly ‘subversive’ degrowth housing agenda pays great attention to urban material conditions and addresses the challenge of reimagining and transforming existing housing, particularly housing that is at the margins of the housing market’ (Ferreri, 2018, p. 111). Much of the current de-

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growth movement has neglected to view housing as a terrain of long-term collective struggle, cut through with class relations mediated by race, gender and bordering, where contradictions allow the building of power to transform the housing system – and, if we’re lucky, push us into a post-growth socialist society. To move towards this orientation, I argue that inspiration should be taken from Marxist-inspired thought on housing.

The Housing Question and Marxist Thought Since Marxism as a tradition is internally dynamic and in some cases contradictory, with a wide variety of interpretations. However, there emerge some central touchstones that analyses share. As Rodney argues: There is a common understanding – or a body of common theoretical understanding – among all those who are avowedly Marxist, and that there is an area which is smaller, but nevertheless significant, of common practice – common anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist practice – among these rival groups (Rodney, 2022, p. 52).

Thus, in my account, Marxist-inspired thinking emerges from the varied body of work produced by Marx and Engels. It builds on their recognition of the determining (though not strictly, solely, or mechanistically) role of the capitalist mode of production in our current social formation (capitalism). This mode of production, made possible where the means of production are privately owned, sees the pursuit of capital accumulation, through the extraction of surplus value from a propertyless class who must trade their labour for a wage. This produces a socio-ecological formation split through with contradiction, from the class conflict of the proletariat and landless worker against the bourgeoise to the ecological contradictions shown in widespread environmental breakdown.

Engels and Housing Of Marx and Engels, the latter is most notable for their engagement with housing. In their first work, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1971), they study the conditions that workers in the towns of industrial England in the mid-1800s lived within. Led by Mary Burns, their life partner, Engels was guided through the working-class quarters in Manchester and Salford. This allowed them to catalogue the housing conditions generated by capitalism at a time of rapid urbanisation, overcrowding and disease (Engels, 1971). If there is a lesson from The Condition of the Working Class in England, it is that an important focus of Marxist critique must be built on an exploration of working-class living conditions. A Marxist account under-

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stands these conditions not as fixed or static immiseration but as the unfolding of wider structural processes in society, containing the potential for resistance. In a later work, The Housing Question (1932), Engels explicitly engages with housing. Initially it was a polemical response to a series of articles on the housing crisis in Germany, which Engels faulted for being ‘Proudhonist.’ The Proudhonists demanded the abolition of landlordism through making every worker an owner of their home. Whilst not necessarily objectionable, Engels argued this relied on a viewpoint that equated the worker-boss relation with the landlord-tenant relation. Crucially, Engels recognises that this neglects the wider unique structural position that the working class holds. There are several standout reasons this text deserves serious revisiting. First, The Housing Question contains near perfect predictions of future trends in housing, which remain relevant and generative today. Looking at widespread diseases from poor housing, such as cholera and typhus, Engels states ‘capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pleasure of creating epidemic diseases among the working class with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in its ranks as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers.’ (Engels, 1932, p. 43). Such an analysis is striking following the emergence today of zoonotic diseases from increased urbanisation and industrial agriculture, as well as the inept mobilisation of limited spread controlling measures once it became clear COVID-19 was spreading to all classes in society (Wallace, 2016). Similarly, Engels argues the only response the bourgeoise have to the housing crisis is ‘making breaches in the working-class quarters of our big towns’ to build new developments, leading to a cycle where ‘the scandalous alleys and lanes disappear . . . but they appear immediately somewhere else and often in the immediate neighbourhood’ (Engels, 1932, pp. 74–75). In short, Engels puts forward a proto analysis of gentrification and social cleansing. Finally, Engels looks at the example of flooding in Manchester, analysing how the cheapest housing was disproportionately impacted by flooding (Engels, 1932, pp. 75–76). This again pre-empts recognition in modern disaster studies and climate adaptation policy that housing inequalities exacerbate vulnerability to disasters (Peacock, Van Zandt, Zhang, & Highfield, 2015). Outside of the many practical and analytical insights from the pamphlet, Engels central argument is that many Proudhonists (whether they realised they were or not) were happy to criticise rent and demand an end to landlordism based on justice, ignoring the ways in which capital determined the production of the built environment, avoiding the final confrontation between capital and labour. For Engels, ending landlordism was pointless if workers were still exploited in surplus extracting wage labour – this relation was central to the reproduction of the rest. For Engels, housing shortage and poor quality, are ‘one of the numerous smaller, secondary evils which result from the present-day capitalist mode of production.’ (Engels, 1932, p. 22). Against a politics which attempts to substitute worker/bourgeoise with tenant/landlord, Engels argues that the cross-class character of the housing crisis means criticism of landlordism is often more amenable to the bourgeoise than strategies that seek the self-emancipation of workers.

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Building on Marx’s critique of political economy, Engels thus provides two initial drives within Marxist thinking on housing. Firstly, serious attention to how the capitalist mode of production leads to the arrangement of housing. Secondly, whilst recognising housing struggle as crucial to a working-class politics, repeatedly asserting the centrality of the proletariat-bourgeoise class divide as foundational to overcoming capitalism.

From the Housing Question to the Production of Space During the twentieth century, such insights were extended further. Whilst notable for their development of autogestion (Lefebvre, 2009), Lefebvre is perhaps most remembered for their introduction of the concept of the production of space (Lefebvre, 1991). Herein, Lefebvre demands focus on how the capitalist mode of production determines the organisation and development of the spaces of the built environment and the nature of everyday life. This insight was further extended in two different directions. Firstly, by Harvey, who looked at the role of construction projects as a way of capital accumulation stabilising itself. Notable here are the two-fold concepts of accumulation by dispossession and the spatial fix. The first develops Marx’s concept of ‘primitive’ accumulation, exploring how privatisation and other processes provide new assets and markets for capitalist exploitation to be facilitated, such as the privatisation of state social housing (Harvey, 2004). The spatial fix explores how crises of overaccumulation by capital are ‘fixed’ through the construction and development of new spaces, particularly investment in the built environment (Harvey, 2001). Lefebvre’s insights were also developed by Smith, who began to articulate the wider ways in which the production of space approach can be understood in the context of ecological breakdown, with an exploration of the ‘uneven’ ways in which housing and urban space produced ecological and social crises (Smith, 2010). Smith, through concepts like the ‘rent gap,’, began to explore the ways in which capitalism restructured urban housing for the working class (Smith, 1996). Ultimately, their insights are decidedly Marxist in their focus, both on how the capitalist mode of production determines the organisation of space and how this is often done to contain the contradictions of capitalism. Further, it is often obscured that these thinkers retain some loyalty to the view that the proletariat remains the class most necessary to overcoming capitalism. For example, Harvey when surveying neoliberalism states ‘the mass of the population has either to resign itself to the historical and geographical trajectory defined by this overwhelming class power or respond to it in class terms’ (Harvey, 2006, p. 65). Smith, critiquing geographical scholarship in 2000, argued for a reintegration of class analyses into geography as a priority (Smith, 2000). Lefebvre is most unequivocal on this point, with his tenth thesis on the city stating, ‘only the proletariat can invest its social and political activity in the realization of urban society’ (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 180). Whilst each have a nuanced understanding of class struggle and the proletariat’s role in it,

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they affirm the importance of the working class to capitalism and to the development of strategies to resist it.

Taking Rent and Social Reproduction Seriously Increasingly, scholars are exploring the role of rent and finance in its relation to the capitalist mode of production. This reflects an increased recognition that housing and other rent-producing assets have remained resilient alongside wage exploitation, becoming transformed and co-constituting of a wider system of ‘rentier capitalism’ (Christophers, 2020). Thus, following Engels, whilst rent does not displace wage exploitation as the major mechanism in surplus value extraction, serious attention is being paid to how rent, whether from housing or other assets, is crucial to the capitalist mode of production (Purcell, Loftus, & March, 2019). As Marxist thought, in the face of changing class composition regarding gender, race and bordering, was increasingly ossified by sclerotic groups, the emerging lefts of the latter half of the 20th century increasingly critiqued accounts of housing for not seriously including concerns of gender, race and bordering (Gray, 2018). There have been over a century of generative challenges to Marxism, reflecting its need constantly develop and adequately reflect the realities of the current social formation. Over the decades, social reproduction theorists increasingly began to explore the household as an area for the socially reproductive work not perceived as valuable from the perspective of capital accumulation (Vogel, 2014; Bhattacharya, 2017), which is often gendered and distributed on racialised lines. This insight has been extended further by Marxist-feminist geographers who have explored how the organisation of housing and the wider built environment produces crises of social reproduction (Katz, 2002). Overall, today’s Marxist-inspired thought leaves us with a lively and strategically relevant body of literature around housing.

Marxism and Housing – Summary This has not been an exhaustive account, but it should provide some of the key flavours and generative areas where degrowth scholars could enrich their theory and practice. Returning to Rodney’s concern with the theoretical core of Marxist theory, I’d suggest the following as key takeaways from a Marxist approach to housing: – Asserting the central role that the capitalist mode of production has on the organisation of housing. – Responding to housing movements which limit themselves to opposing landlordism or for the right to housing by asserting the continued necessity of ending surplus value extraction from wage labour for capital accumulation.

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Whilst recognising this, still appreciating the way in which the production of space and landlordism is central to the modern capitalist social formation, particularly around the rent-finance nexus. Seeing housing and the built environment as a site of social reproduction, and consequently building a view of the working class not limited to the workplace alone. Recognising the transformative role the working class have in leading the masses to overcome capitalism by seizing power. Recognising that this is a working class mediated by the intersection of race, gender and bordering.

Dialogues Between Marx and the Snail Given that degrowth has been recognised as a ‘critique of economics’ (Schmelzer, Vansintjan, & Vetter, 2022, p. 19) and Marxism is marked by the ‘critique of political economy’ it is frustrating that dialogue is not more extensive. As Balibar notes, the role of this critique is ‘on the one hand the eradication of error; on the other, knowledge of the limits of a faculty or practice’ (Balibar, 2017, p. 18). If degrowth is the eradication of the errors of growth delusions and recognition of the limits of contemporary growth-centric economics, Marxism is perfectly capable of incorporating and enriching these insights into its wider project of critique. My purpose in this chapter is not to explore every single way in which the above literature may be co-constitutive of a radical degrowth around housing, but to merely identify some key lessons from the Marxist literature on housing.

Three Conversations for Red Snails Firstly, Marxist theory, in highlighting the production of space by the capitalist mode of production, refuses to engage with housing as a simple technical concern. As per Engels, attention to the condition and standards of housing under capitalism is crucial, but simply proposing certain technical solutions is not enough. Thus, it is important to resist attempts to reduce housing to abstract units of metres squared and talk of minimum occupancy, as is occasional in degrowth discussions. Relatedly, just as housing cannot be reduced to its quantity, nor can one individual’s experience of its quality be used to generalise around degrowth and housing. For example, Trainer in discussing their experience with living in The Simpler Way, states ‘my experience leaves me in no doubt that we could very easily adopt housing designs that are very resource cheap, sustainable and beautiful’ (Trainer, 2018, p. 123). How wide the ‘we’ is in this regard is left open and unconvincing. Attempting to generalise from one’s own

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account of ‘minimalist’ living tells us little, given the sheer variety of needs that are present across different social groups and individual cases. The quantity of housing spaces is impossibly entangled to its quality, and serious attention to this, as in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1971), is needed before proposing particular solutions. At the same time, Marxist thought looks to housing as a problem of political economy. Consequently, it demands discussion of housing as embedded in the political-economic relations they engender and reproduce. For example, in the contribution of Anson of ‘tiny houses’ as a degrowth strategy, it is all well exploring how the production of tiny houses can often reflect dynamics of privilege and settler-colonialism, but the author neglects to explore their landlordism of a tiny house and what the implications of ‘tiny houses,’ or other forms of alternative degrowth housing, being captured by the landlord relation would be (Anson, 2018). Texts like this repeat the Proudhonist mistake Engels critiqued, of neglecting the political-economic relations that emerge within the social formation and their centrality to the organisation of space and everyday life. Following this, it becomes possible for degrowth advocates to better understand the forces which drive the organisation of the production of space. By articulating the role of the built environment in the rent-finance nexus and the way in which rentierism has come to ballast capitalism, it becomes possible to highlight key weak points in the current social formation – what are the choke points for accumulation? Further, in recognising growth as the materialisation of capital accumulation (Schmelzer, Vansintjan, & Vetter, 2022), it then becomes possible to disentangle the different but crucial processes of rentierism, accumulation by dispossession and wage exploitation for capital accumulation. All these relations are present in housing, but they produce different forms of resistance, resulting from different contradictions. Following Engels, we recognise the centrality of abolishing wage exploitation for any overcoming of capitalism whilst still giving sufficient attention to anti-landlord struggles and struggles against privatisation. Marxism teaches us not to become rosy eyed about these struggles, no matter how prefigurative or politicising they might appear. Squats and occupations, for example, might inspire as ‘nowtopias’ but they are insufficient unless the contradictions of capitalist property relations are driven to breaking point. Finally, and this is most crucial, Marxism identifies the working class as the fulcrum by which the transformation of society will be achieved. Sometimes this is within alliances with other classes and fractions, for example peasants (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021) or the wider lumpenproletariat (Fanon, 2001). This is not merely because Marxists see it as just or fair that workers are key to the changing of society. It is because for Marx and others, the system of wage labour is central to capital accumulation and produces within it the forces necessary for the overcoming of existing contradictions. Thus, against the often-amorphous movements, ‘nowtopias,’ and narratives that the network of degrowth activists talk about, Marxists recognise that organised workers have a structural power – they can disrupt production and withdraw their labour, frustrating capital accumulation. The analysis of capitalism that Marx and Engels pro-

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moted argued for the historic role of the working class in overcoming capitalism, based on their unique position within the relations of production. This insight can be further extended by social reproduction thinkers, who look at the other forms of labour which, whilst not producing surplus value, are necessary for the wider systems of wage labour to occur. The collective organisation of this labour, similarly, can link the struggle of the wider working class and lumpenproletariat with its wage labour engaged fraction (Jaffe, 2020). What does this mean for housing activism? Outside of the construction of ‘nowtopias’ and the prefigurative politics of occupations and squats, there is a need for a focus on organising and politicising existing working-class people around their housing and the ideas of degrowth. However, whilst recognising that collective organising of existing working-class communities facing housing difficulty is crucial, this is only as part of a wider struggle to build an organised force of workers who can take political power. Notably absent from many discussions of degrowth and housing then, are the actual workers who both build and maintain housing infrastructure. The organising of these workers as a group with both structural power from the withdrawal of their labour and the technical know-how to engage with degrowth design and implementation seems crucial to a successful degrowth approach to housing. Similarly, there is an insufficient engagement with the organisation of working-class renters, such as in Britain with groups like ACORN, Living Rent, Greater Manchester Tenants Union or the London Renters Union. It is to this we now turn.

Concrete Forces in Concrete Spaces The author has resided in East London, in the region east of the Olympic Park, since mid-2020. During that time, they have been active in housing unionism locally, as well as exploring the history of this area – Newham, the borough extending from Stratford and the Olympic Park, down to the Docklands in particular. If, as Rolnik states, Britain is the ‘epicentre and laboratory of housing as a financial asset’ (Rolnik, 2019, p. 14), then Newham is the main floor of the lab. According to the Trust for London, Newham has the highest rates of evictions in London at 3.4/1000 households and the highest rate of households in temporary accommodation in London (49/1000 households) (Trust for London, 2022). This is an area of major settlement for working class communities in London, with some of the most impoverished living in Newham, for example, half of children in the borough are in households in poverty (Trust for London, 2022). Newham’s working class is further bordered and multi-racial, with the 2011 census recording 41% of the borough speaking a language other than English, coming to a total of 103 languages, with 42.4% of residents being born in other countries. At the same time, Newham has faced regeneration pressure from two main areas: Docklands, where the old London docks used to operate to the south of the borough, and

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the Olympic Park to the west of the borough (Duman, Hancox, James, & Minton, 2018). Overall, Newham is an area of working-class residence which has faced and resisted several decades of social cleansing, with varying degrees of success.

The People’s Plan An earlier movement in Newham’s housing history to discuss is the People’s Plan for the Royal Docks. Due to cargo containerisation, the Royal Docks in Newham faced financial collapse during the latter half of the 20th century. Thatcher’s government responded by creating the London Docklands Development Corporation, with the privatisation of 5,000 acres of public land, extending both into the Isle of Dogs and Newham. Thereupon ‘Enterprise Zones’ were set up to relocate and expand London’s financial centre and build London City Airport. Against this, trade unions, tenants’ groups and other local residents approached the Greater London Council (GLC), which organised a centre where an alternative plan for the Newham Docklands was developed (Spencer, 2022). This plan, built through a contradictory process of community engagement, with tension between the state role of the GLC and the different community interests (Brownill, 1988), nevertheless should be inspirational to housing and degrowth activists today. Firstly, and most obviously, it provides an example of how to organise democratic alternative planning in the face of polluting mega-construction projects like airports which are going to worsen peoples’ housing conditions and lead to ecological breakdown. Second, it recognised that new housing construction may be necessary, but against the luxury developments of the region which were built, it attempted to articulate the kinds of housing working class residents wanted. It attempted to explore the quality and quantity of housing stock needed, not in simple numerical terms, but in the often messy, affective and complex ways in which housing is actually lived. Finally, the Plan discussed the role of work and jobs in the area, given many looked to the airport as ‘job creating.’ Against this, it advocated more restorative work, such as boat and cargo repair roles, which could use existing skills within the region. Thus, along with projects like the Lucas Plan, there is a key lesson for degrowth advocates in recognising the mass of already existing desire for socially and ecologically useful, low-impact and restorative work amongst working class communities and where it does not exist, the role of documents like the Plan in politicising this as part and parcel of a plan to deal with housing issues.

Against Social Cleansing and for Working Class Tenant Organisation Sadly, the forces of capital succeeded in ignoring the plan, and ultimately abolishing the GLC. Consequently, housing in Newham continued to spiral into crisis. In the 21st

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Century, Newham has been a major flashpoint in anti-social cleansing campaigns and the origin point of the latest wave of tenant unionism. In 2013, in response to the attempted eviction of mothers using Newham’s Focus E15 hostel, these tenants organised to resist under the banner of ‘social housing, not social cleansing’ with Focus E15. This saw not only the organisation of existing working-class users of hostel accommodation, but the occupation of the empty Carpenters Estate, a disused block of social housing under threat from the Olympic development. The focus on the provision of social housing and the need to prevent the destruction of existing estates demonstrates again the importance of degrowth scholars like Ferreri, who look at the contestations occurring in existing stock and the successful resistance of processes of further tearing down and development. More recently, since 2017, the London Renters Union has been organising working class tenants in both private and social rented accommodation in Newham. The union, in trying to organise along the lines of the shared renter relationship in a majority working class area, is attempting to build a collective force with the power to secure everything from repairs to deposits, to the ultimate blocking of evictions. In its campaign around the 2020 local elections, it succeeded in forcing the council to commit to improving standards of existing housing stock, enforcement on private landlords and the wider amount of social housing provision (Rosa, 2022). Increasingly, such forces could be mobilised to fight for retrofitting, against unnecessary and resource-intensive construction and similar degrowth demands.

Marxism and the Streets of Newham What unites these examples, in the cauldron of social cleansing and gentrification of Newham, are many of the features found in Marxist thought on housing. It is important to understand the condition of the working class in Newham’s housing to begin to organise together. It is also important to understand the rent-finance nexus and the production of space under capitalism to understand the forces of social cleansing coming from the Docklands and Olympic Park, as well as their weak points. By building the collective power of the working class in this crisis of social reproduction it also becomes possible to articulate visions like the People’s Plan and fight for major structural reforms in the local housing system, as with Focus E15 and London Renters Union. They have done so on a class basis whilst recognising that organising based on the tenant relation is crucial too.

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Conclusion There are many ways Marxist thinking around housing and capitalism is already being utilised by scholars and activists in the degrowth movement. But there is also much that has not been mentioned and explored, or that remains underdeveloped. Marxist ideas provide several ways to enrich the existing thinking around degrowth and housing. Firstly, in explicitly preventing a reduction of housing to a technical or policy issue. Secondly, in providing a clearer account of the different forces which drive the development and condition of housing in society. Finally, in identifying the working class as the crucial force which will bring transformative change, something degrowth thinkers have been slow to bring into their work. It is my hope that many of the thinkers and theoretical innovations mentioned above will get their own exploration as an issue of degrowth. In looking at the cases of housing activism in Newham, whether the People’s Plan or recent tenant unionism, class-based organising could be utilised to produce alternative visions to the dominant model of accumulation in housing. But not just visions, organised members of the working-class community could build and exert a collective power. The so far minimal engagement between degrowth and these processes of organising is a missed opportunity in the attempt to effect a merger between Marxism and the environmental movement, as well as for the actual power degrowthers hold. As forces on the political Right continue to use housing as a trope to batter the degrowth and environmental movement with, such organising and theory will allow us to break through the strange world of ‘grown concrete’ we live in today. If there is a home for degrowth organising, whether on housing or other issues, it is to be found in building mass working class power.

References Anson, A. (2018). Framing degrowth: The radical potential of tiny house mobility. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 68–79). Routledge. Balibar, E. (2017). The philosophy of Marx. Verso Books. Bhattacharya, T. (2017). Social reproduction theory. Pluto Press. Brownill, S. (1988). The people’s plan for the Royal Docks: Some contradictions in popular planning. Planning Practice & Research, 2(4), 15–21. Cattaneo, C. (2018). How can squatting contribute to degrowth? In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 44–54). Routledge. Cattaneo, C., & Engel-Di Mauro, S. (2015). Urban squats as eco-social resistance to and resilience in the face of capitalist relations: Case studies from Barcelona and Rome. Partecipazione e Conflitto, 8(2), 343–66.

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Christie, W., & Salong, J. (2018). Housing and climate change resilience: Vanuatu. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 80–96). Routledge. Christophers, B. (2020). Rentier capitalism. London: Verso Books. Committee on Climate Change. (2022). Progress in reducing emissions: 2022 Report to Parliament. Committee on Climate Change. Davis, M. (2017). Planet of slums. Verso Books. Duman, A., Hancox, D., James, M., & Minton, A. (2018). Regeneration songs: Sound of investment and loss from East London. Repeater Books. Engels, F. (1932). The housing question. Martin Lawrence Limited. Engels, F. (1971). The condition of the working class in England (2nd ed.). Basil Blackwell. Fanon, F. (2001). The wretched of the Earth. Penguin. Ferreri, M. (2018). Refurbishment vs demolition? Social housing campaigning for degrowth. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 109–119). Routledge. Gray, N. (2018). Rent and its discontents: A century of housing struggle. Rowman & Littlefield. Harvey, D. (2001). Globalisation and the ‘spatial fix’. Geographische Revue, 3(2), 23–31. Harvey, D. (2004). The ‘new’ imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register, 40, 63–87. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of global capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographic development. Verso Books. Harwood, T. (2021, August 24). Let’s call these pious Extinction Rebellion ‘activists’ by their real name: terrorists. And call in the police. MailPlus. Holmes, H. (2021, October 16). As the floodwaters rise: Survival on an inundated island. New Socialist. https://newsocialist.org.uk/floodwaters-rise-survival-inundated-island/ [Accessed: 20 February 2023]. Hubbard, P. (2022). Borderlands: Identity and belonging at the edge of England. Manchester University Press. Jaffe, A. (2020). Social reproduction theory and the socialist horizon. Pluto Press. Katz, C. (2002). Vagabond capitalism and the necessity of social reproduction. Antipode, 33(4), 709–728. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Wiley-Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on cities. Blackwell Publishing. Lefebvre, H. (2009). State, space, world: Selected essays. University of Minnesota Press. Liegey, V., & Nelson, A. (2020). Exploring degrowth: A critical guide. Pluto Press. Martínez-Alier, J. (2018). Foreword. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. xii–xiv). Routledge. Morris, W. (2004). News from nowhere and other writings. Penguin. Olsen, E. S., Orefice, M., & Pietrangeli, G. (2018). From the ‘right to the city’ to the ‘right to metabolism.’ In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 33–43). Routledge. Parti Pour La Décroissance. (2011). Degrowth: A platform for convergence. Le Havre: parti pour la décroissance. https://www.partipourladecroissance.net/?p=6541 [Accessed: 17 January 2023] Patnaik, U., & Patnaik, P. (2021). Capital and imperialism: Theory, history, and the present. Monthly Review Press. Peacock, W. G., Van Zandt, S., Zhang, Y., & Highfield, W. E. (2015). Inequities in long-term housing recovery after disasters. Journal of the American Planning Association, 80(4), 356–371. Purcell, T., Loftus, A., & March, H. (2019). Value-rent-finance. Progress in Human Geography, 44(3), 437–456. Rhodes, C. (2019). Construction industry: Statistics and policy. House of Commons Library. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01432/ [Accessed: 18 June 2023]. Rodney, W. (2022). Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the pan-African revolution. Verso Books. Rolnik, R. (2019). Urban warfare: Housing under the empire of finance. Verso Books.

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Rosa, S. (2022, June 29). How we won: The housing campaigners who forced councils to protect renters. Novara Media. https://novaramedia.com/2022/06/29/how-we-won-the-housing-campaigners-whoforced-councils-to-protect-renters/ [Accessed: 20 February 2022]. Schmelzer, M., Vansintjan, A., & Vetter, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism.: Verso Books. Shapiro, B. (2014). Bullies: How the left’s culture of fear and intimidation silences Americans. Threshold Editions. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. Routledge. Smith, N. (2000). What happened to class? Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 32(6), 1011–1032. Smith, N. (2010). Uneven development: Nature, capital and the production of space. Verso Books. Spencer, J. (2022, May 16). A plan for a people’s London. Tribune. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/05/peo ples-plan-royal-docks-london-thatcherism-glc-neoliberalism#:~:text=Faced%20with%20Thatcher’s% 20redevelopment%20of,wasn’t%20London’s%20only%20future. [Accessed: 20 February 2023]. Trainer, T. (2018). The simpler way: Housing, living and settlements. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 120–130). Routledge. Trust for London. (2022). Newham: London’s poverty profile. https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/data/bor oughs/newham-poverty-and-inequality-indicators/ [Accessed: 17 January 2023] Vansintjan, A. (2018). Urbanisation as the death of politics: Sketches of degrowth municipalism. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 196–209). Routledge. Vogel, L. (2014). Marxism and the oppression of women: Towards a unitary theory. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Wallace, R. (2016). Big farms make big flu: Dispatches on influenza, agribusiness, and the nature of science. Monthly Review Press. World Green Building Council. (2019). Bringing embodied carbon upfront: Coordinated action for the building and construction sector to tackle embodied carbon. https://worldgbc.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wpcontent/uploads/2022/09/22123951/WorldGBC_Bringing_Embodied_Carbon_Upfront.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2023]. Xue, J. (2018). Housing for degrowth: Space, planning and distribution. In A. Nelson, & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 185–195). Routledge.

Part III: The Urban and the Rural

The third part groups pieces that raise questions about degrowth’s potential within and across urban/rural divides. Karl Krähmer and Anton Brokow-Loga begin by asking how degrowth ought to be spatialised. Arguing for a multi- and trans-scalar approach to degrowth’s implementation, Krähmer and Brokow-Loga develop five propositions about how abstract and despatialised demands for degrowth can be realised through their spatialisation. Benedikt Schmid follows by taking an urban perspective on degrowth. Cities, Schmid shows, are primary spaces and drivers of economic growth and must therefore lie at the heart of a degrowth agenda. Despite this, degrowth scholarship has only recently started to consider the role of the urban in degrowth’s political ambitions. Schmid seeks to remedy this weakness by, in his words, ‘journeying’ with degrowth through the European cities of Berlin, Freiburg, Amsterdam and Barcelona. The third chapter of the part, provided by Alex Baumann, Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon, returns us to the problem of housing to show how land’s commodification acts as a barrier to any possible degrowth transition. In response, they propose the development of an urban commons through public housing policy and a ‘participation income.’ Shifting decisively to the rural, Chloe Broadfield then argues that agroecology is a clear instance of degrowth in practice, before Bjorn Inge Melås closes the part by returning us to the urban once more to suggest that urban gardening exhibits many of the characteristics of degrowth and indeed cultivates degrowth sensitivities in its practitioners. Lauren Eastwood and Kai Heron

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-015

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11 The Case for Solidary Degrowth Spaces. Five Propositions on the Challenging Project of Spatialising Degrowth Abstract: If degrowth as a project of socio-ecological transformation is to become real, it needs to become a reality in space. But how? Will the macro-political implementation of degrowth automatically lead to different places and spaces? Or vice versa, can degrowth only be implemented in concrete places? Beyond such a dualist and passive vision of space and its relations to other realms of the social, we formulate five propositions which reflect the complex interaction between the general proposal of a just and selective reduction of production and consumption and the diversified geographies in which this needs to be spatialised. We argue that rather than assuming the local as the privileged scale, a degrowth transformation can only occur in a multi- and trans-scalar perspective and with a relational understanding of space. In making the case for ‘solidary degrowth spaces,’ spatial relations must be reshaped from exploitative to solidary (1), the global social metabolism reduced in sheer quantity (2) and places transformed by the principles of sufficiency, sharing and reuse (3). Ultimately, a strategic pluralism (4) is paramount to a new cultural hegemony to be spread through trans-local ties and alliances (5). Without a pretension of completeness, these propositions draw transversal connections between issues frequently discussed or underrepresented in the literature and, while mindful of our European positionality, we try to relate them to diverse geographical realities. Keywords: degrowth, space, scale, urban planning, socio-ecological transformation

Introduction How could the spaces of degrowth look like? As degrowth sets out from a critique of current human metabolism, imagining degrowth spaces can neither mean to develop Acknowledgements: Karl Krähmer thanks Silvio Cristiano for the collaboration on their Italian book ‘Città oltre la crescita’ which has been crucial also for this chapter. Anton Brokow-Loga thanks Frank Eckardt for the ongoing joint elaborations towards the ‘Postwachstumsstadt.’ Both authors would like to thank the anonymous referees and the editors for valuable comments that improved the quality of the article. The interaction with members of the Spaces Beyond Growth: Municipal Degrowth Network was a constant enrichment, for which we are very grateful. Karl Krähmer, University of Turin, Italy Anton Brokow-Loga, Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-016

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ideal models of community, nor can degrowth spaces be imagined according to universal rules true everywhere. We reflect here on what could be principles for the degrowth transformation of spaces and places in the Global North and their connections around the globe. There is no universal utopia of a degrowth city (or rural area), context is crucial, which means that degrowth transformations need to critically explore, re-imagine and re-inhabit existing geographies shaped by growth imperatives and the imperial mode of living (Brand & Wissen, 2021; Latouche, 2019). Standing in the tradition of degrowth as both an academic debate and an activist call for action, this chapter presents five propositions about how to spatialise degrowth, referring and adding to the emerging debates at the intersection of degrowth, space, planning and cities (Mocca 2020; Xue 2021; Savini 2021; Krähmer, 2022; Schmid 2022; Khmara & Kronenberg 2022; Xue & Kębłowski, 2022; Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). Rather than providing a comprehensive synthesis of the debate, our propositions work out transversal arguments that we consider crucial in it – arguments which are controversial (propositions one and two), widely discussed (proposition three) or, thus far, underrepresented (propositions four and five). As we embrace a relational and multi-scalar understanding of space and its socioecological transformation, degrowth transformations cannot be limited to the local scale and the meaning of localism in degrowth needs to be reassessed. Rather than a project of ‘utopian’ localism, i.e., imagining an idealised global space of even-sized communities, degrowth should work towards furthering a framework that we term ‘solidary degrowth spaces’: – following the relationality of space, strategies to transform material and immaterial relations in space must be directed at a qualitative change from exploitative to solidary; – also, setting limits to and in some cases reducing the size of local and global metabolisms is crucial; – specific places at the intersections of relations across space require situated perspectives of transformation that can nevertheless be guided by the principles of sufficiency, reuse, and sharing; – strategic pluralism, i.e., the combination of multiple logics of change, with a constant focus of promoting counter-hegemony, is needed to achieve solidary degrowth spaces; – experiences in building networks via mobile policies and trans-local municipal networks help to move degrowth politics beyond the nation-state. In the next sections, these propositions are presented and discussed. Concluding observations and suggestions for future research are provided in the final section. These propositions are not supposed to be complete or all-encompassing. However, we hope that they can inform, provoke or accompany current and future debates around realising and spatialising degrowth.

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Proposition one: To spatialise degrowth and build solidary degrowth spaces, it is necessary to adopt a relational conceptualisation of space that recognises the importance of connections and relations between places. Then, strategies are required for a qualitative transformation of material and immaterial relations in space from exploitative to solidary The local scale has played a crucial role in the degrowth debate when imagining degrowth’s spatial dimension. Following Mocca (2020), localism in the degrowth literature can be distinguished in a ‘pragmatic’ and an ‘utopian’ localism. Pragmatic localism refers to local action here and now, a way of pinning down the abstractness of degrowth’s larger goals, through concrete local, often collective, nowtopian projects, be it tiny houses (Anson, 2018), co-housing (Litaert, 2010; Cucca and Friesenecker, 2021) or squatting (Cattaneo and Gavaldà, 2010). On the other hand, in utopian localism, the process of ‘relocalisation’ becomes a central project of degrowth, for instance in Serge Latouche’s ‘8Rs’ (e.g., Latouche, 2014), often pictured in utopian scenarios (cf. Gerber, 2020; Widmer & Schneider, 2018; Trainer, 2018; Vansintjan, 2018). Relocalisation is intended here as the reorganisation of human inhabitation as small and autonomous human settlements as well as the reorganisation of economics and politics at a local scale. While this may seem an intuitive answer to the symptoms of an excessive and destructive capitalist globalisation, it is sometimes surprising how disproportionate the proposed solutions appear in relation to the analysed problems of global scale. There is nothing intrinsically false in proposing an urban gardening project in response to the damages produced by extractive global food chains, yet when remaining alone and isolated in bubbles (Brokow-Loga et al., 2020), such practices of pragmatic localism are insufficient for wide-ranging change. Proposals of utopian localism have received much critical attention in a second wave of literature on degrowth and space, highlighting the physical obstacles and ecological unsustainability of building a world of ecovillages (Xue, 2014), the ‘thin’ theorisation of the political and the ‘idyllic’ imaginary of local community implicit in such versions (Mocca, 2020), as well as their ignorance of real spaces and places, their complex interrelations and diverse geobiophysical, socio-economic, historical and cultural backgrounds (Krähmer, 2018, 2022). We propose to take this debate pro and contra localism one step forward, beyond a counterposition of arguments on localism in general, to a reframing of what localism in degrowth should mean precisely. We employ the notion of the relationality of space (as proposed, for instance, by Massey, 2005), understanding space not so much as a physical surface on which social and economic activities occur, and places as smaller – ‘local’ – pieces of space, but rather, conceiving space as made by human (and non-human) relations and places as where relations meet and intersect. Considering space in relational terms has at least three implications for the discussion on localism. First, the definition of the local itself blurs if one recognises the global making of the local as much as the local making of the global through relations of travel, migration, trade etc. (Massey, 2005). Hence, the borders between the different imag-

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ined locals become a very troubled concept. Yet to establish some ideal number such as 500, 10,000, or 300,000 of inhabitants of a presumably basic and ideal spatial unit (cf. Gerber, 2020), a clear conception of (new) borders would be required. Not that the local and the global cease to exist but they exist in relation to each other rather than in opposition (Massey, 2005). Second, these relations themselves, between places, across space, gain fundamental importance – even when we look at the local, we must do so considering its connections and relations to other places. Third, as these relations, at least the material and energetic part of it, could also be described by the term of human metabolism, which degrowth crucially proposes to limit, the proposal of localism gains a different sense for degrowth, having to do much more with relations than with borders. Spanier and Feola (2022) remind us that in the multi-scalar entanglements of place and space, there are not only relations between local and global, and Global North and South, but also between urban and rural and that all four of these conceptual couples should not be understood as dichotomies but rather as degrees on scales that intersect, mix and hybridise. Our central argument in this first proposition is that the quality of global flows and trans-local relations, which remain, even if reduced in quantity, should be rethought and reorganised to be transformed from extractivist to solidary with all participants. Thus, how the multi-scalar relations between places are organised becomes a crucial normative question, as one dimension of the ‘solidarity’ of degrowth cities that Brand (2020) or Eckardt (2020) reflect on. In this sense, solidarity points in the direction of striving for a mode of living that is not at the expense of other people, nature or future generations (ILA Kollektiv, 2019, p. 18). An obvious point of departure to achieve this transformation could be the principles of fair trade, which should become general principles rather than elitist exceptions to an unjust majority model of trade (cf. Krähmer, 2023). Small steps in this direction are, for example, the laws to increase the fairness of international supply chains through laws adopted in recent years in European countries such as Germany and France (Krähmer, 2023). The relations across space Massey (2005) refers to are of course not only trade relations and Brand’s (2020) proposal of a solidary degrowth city equally contemplates solidarity towards migration movements. In other words, there is a responsibility to pay attention to the multi-scalar entanglements of a city’s life and economy when taking local decisions, to consider impacts produced in other places near and far, avoiding superficial solutions like those of Copenhagen (Krähmer, 2020) and Freiburg (Mössner & Miller, 2015), which could be described as ‘islands of (apparent) sustainability’ made possible by the externalisation of social and ecological impacts.

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Proposition two: Localism in solidary degrowth spaces should be understood as a quantitative tendency of the limitation and reduction of selected social metabolic relations (e.g., trade). While setting and institutionalising limits is becoming crucial, the interpretation of concrete strategies for spatial transformation must remain open and flexible The concept of solidary degrowth spaces is not limited to a change in the quality of relations between places. It also includes a strong stance towards a quantitative but selective limitation of the volume of relations, specifically their material component. This perspective is also substantially informed by the focus on relations across space rather than the construction of ideal places, which we introduced in the first proposition. As degrowth sets out to politically institute societal limits, localism should be intended as a tendency of reducing and limiting human metabolism in quantitative terms. This would imply an inversion of the tendency of unlimited growth of the human metabolism that has unfolded during the past decades – that is, of economic flows and its spatial counterparts: the world of logistics, the transport of goods, energy and so forth (cf. Krähmer, 2022). As global production chains are to be shortened and unbundled, Wolfgang Sachs’ (1993) call for ‘unbundling’ (‘Entflechtung’) hints at a spatial realisation of an extensive reduction of relations in quantitative terms. However, this is not to be confused with an attempt (doomed to failure) to roll back globalisation as such. Pre-globalised times should not be glorified, which is why we reject the term ‘re-localisation.’ The element of localism in solidary degrowth spaces thus is not the search for an ideal dimension or model of community, rather a recognition of limits of the expansion of cities in a physical sense and of the metabolic flows that keep a city or a village (meaning the whole of the urban built environment including people and economic activities) alive. This can be a general principle to guide differentiated projects to reinhabit very different existing spaces and places, transforming their way of operation more than their physical form. Thus, rather than a merely philosophical concept, the actual translation into practice is at the core of our proposition. This flexible conception of localism can be related to diverse existing social, cultural, economic and institutional contexts. It takes the idea of an ‘open localism’ (Nelson & Schneider, 2018) one step further: it is not only conceived as open in respect to its relations with the outside but is also open in relation to the forms it may assume. This conceptualisation does not require an illusionary naturalisation of borders, as utopian localist projects need. The fundamental prescription is to not rely, through the way we inhabit the world for our social metabolism, on exploitative relations with other places – a prescription which includes both a qualitative component on the way these relations function (see proposition one) and a quantitative component in recognising that beyond certain dimensions, such flows and relations become intrinsically harmful and unsustainable.

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Imagining the concrete application of such an understanding of localism in a European city would imply, in the first instance, an assessment of how life in the city depends on external relations and at which scales: for food, energy, materials, travel, migration and so forth. An assessment that combines quantitative and qualitative elements, discussing how harmful or beneficial these relations are for other places. Most likely, lives of many in the city currently would require more energy and resource consumption than the respect of criteria of global ecology and equity would allow. It would thus be necessary to politically discuss which of these relations to eliminate or reduce (because more harmful there, less beneficial here) and which to reorganise according to principles of solidarity (cf. proposition one). Projects such as the expansion of an airport (cf. Brand 2020), the building of a new shopping mall or even more so the construction of luxurious new neighbourhoods, would be limited by such principles, as they have significant requirements in terms of material and energetic flows across space (see also proposition three). These discussions should not focus only on ‘urban’ spaces, as those who live today in a ‘rural’ space in the Global North tend to lead a life equally dependent on supralocal relations (Krähmer & Cristiano 2022). Proposition three: In solidary degrowth spaces, the right to the city is the right to not always have to want more. Places in the Global North must guarantee a good life for all with less material abundance. For this scope, principles such as sufficiency, sharing and reuse must be spatialised If the proposals made in propositions one and two are enacted, in places in the Global North, in cities and also rural areas, lifestyles must change, away from contemporary productivism and consumerism. A rethinking of relations is closely entangled with the organisation of places we (in the Global North) live in. Concretely, we would need to rely to a lesser degree on imports, on metabolic flows from around the globe that through unequal exchange allow us today to live (on average) exuberant and unsustainable lives (Chancel & Piketty, 2015). In addition, these flows would not only be reduced in quantity but would also become costlier if they were reorganised in a logic of solidarity (see propositions one and two). In order to avoid this transformation coming about as one of scarcity and restrictions, we must build different imaginaries of what a ‘good life for all’ means. The addition of ‘for all’ makes the good life a point of reference for emancipatory movements – and a connection to questions of (in)justice and de(privileging), to avoid the poorer parts of our societies paying the price. While this relates to state-wide social policies as much as local urban and regional policies, it also implies imagining and building places where we can live well while producing, owning and consuming less. This proposition is inspired by Uta von Winterfeld’s (2007, p. 53) protective right of sufficiency that affirms, ‘no one should always have to want more.’ The question of how to live good lives owning and consuming less has been a central preoccupation of the degrowth literature (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). We propose that in particular three guiding principles – sufficiency, sharing

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and reuse – can be taken from this literature and applied to a spatial perspective to help to imagine, concretise and build places in which such modes of living can be situated. In a perspective of ‘private sufficiency and public luxury’ (Monbiot, 2021), degrowth places should offer more public space and facilities where one can enjoy life, while private housing may decrease in size. Such a principle of spatial sufficiency can be applied to many aspects of urban and non-urban life. It can be played out when debating urban expansion (do we need a new shopping mall or are the places of consumption we have enough? Is it more important to grow food on the agricultural lands we would destroy?), as much as in relation to questions of housing justice (how much space per capita is needed? How unequally is living space distributed?) and other fields. Sufficiency (the decisions about what is sufficient need to be the subject of political debate) allows social and ecological questions to be considered together: it implies upper limits to wealth and accumulation as well as minimum standards of what is needed for a good life and thus provides a rule to distribute enough space (and metabolic flows) to everyone without menacing ecological thresholds (Bohnenberger, 2021). For sufficiency to not become austerity, sharing and togetherness (Jarvis, 2019) are principles that need to be combined. Sharing spaces of housing (e.g., in co-housing projects Cucca & Friesenecker, 2021; Lietaert, 2010) can help to achieve high qualities of housing without needing excessive amounts of space, while state intervention can help to avoid this leading to the creation of elitist enclaves (Cucca & Friesenecker, 2021). More public space can be made available to spend time which would be liberated from paid work and consumption, instead of dedicating it, for instance, to parked cars. Sharing needs to become a principle for urban policies and planning instead of an individual habit in order for it to become a structural feature of places. Sharing, in this perspective, can also be applied to property and ownership: instead of fostering individualised accumulation of wealth, collective and anti-speculative models of property such as the Mietshäuser Syndikat (Hürlin, 2018) can help to contrast the commodification of land (see Baumann, Alexander & Burdon, this volume) which constitutes an obstacle to the changes proposed here, as the ‘profitable’ use of land, imposed through scarcity and zoning based on private property rights, favours places of consumption and building for speculative purposes (Savini 2021). In order to achieve these wider goals, beyond single bottom-up initiatives, important though these are as experiments, land should be seen as the common good it actually is. Too often, the value created through public investment and community initiatives is privately appropriated by investors who see cities as a place to secure their finances to a concrete economic good, treating land as a ‘pure financial asset’ (Harvey, 1982, p. 346). This financialisation of housing is one of the causes of gentrification processes, promoted, in a context of a speculative land market, also by ‘ecological’ urban transformations (Dooling, 2009; Rice et al., 2020). These processes of ‘ecological gentrification’ are not only socially unjust, expelling poorer inhabitants to other neighbourhoods but also

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ecologically ineffective, as Rice et al. (2020) demonstrate: wealthy people may, after such processes, have a lower carbon footprint in relation to housing, but due to their high levels of consumption, their overall footprints remain unsustainably high. A broad application of the principles of sufficiency (not too much for anybody but enough for everybody) and of sharing (of the city, of urban spaces, of land and housing ownership) can help to avoid such outcomes, considering ecological sustainability and social justice together. Reuse is another important principle which includes existing debates about the reuse of buildings and urban spaces and their need of refurbishment (Ferreri, 2018). In addition, reuse in the context of solidary degrowth spaces might also relate to the challenge of many areas nowadays dedicated to urban activities which are fundamentally unsustainable, such as parking lots or shopping malls. Dedicating such buildings to other uses might help to respond to the demand for housing and more public space for all. Partly, and according to the evolution of specific situations of specific cities, they might also be spaces left to renaturalise (Espín, 2022). The principle of reuse can be applied in general to human settlements, in the sense of ‘re-inhabiting’ differently existing places (Alexander & Gleeson, 2019; Krähmer, 2018; Latouche, 2019), instead of imagining building new idealised settlements. In doing so, the growth-fixation of the building industry and its political influence must be critically evaluated, as its conversion is needed to favour (socially just) retrofitting over new urban expansions. Reuse in a degrowth perspective should avoid forms of ‘incremental reuse’ (Krähmer and Cristiano, 2022), i.e., the reuse of buildings or neighbourhoods with the principal scope of fostering economic growth as in many contemporary projects of urban renewal. Sufficiency, sharing and reuse are concepts grounded in both the theoretical and empirical literature of degrowth. At the same time, they are highly suitable for adaptation within the planning systems at different scales and in different places. Understanding them as wide principles to imagine and build places of degrowth in the Global North, with multiple possible applications, adds to this literature a strategic perspective of how to imagine places in solidary degrowth spaces. Proposition four: Strategic pluralism is needed for systemic change to build and govern solidary degrowth spaces and places. These are not only defined by their physical reality, their relations and the principles according to which they change, but also by the political question of how decisions on their government are taken. The proposal of strategic pluralism offers a perspective on how to build such a counter-hegemonic project As Latouche (2013) demonstrated, the logic of economic growth can be seen as a driver of discourses not only at global or national scales, but of local development too. The hegemony of growth is not only manifested in the global order and flow of goods (Schmelzer, 2015 and cf. proposition one), but also inscribed into particular forms of

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local and urban growth regimes, policies and constellations. Green growth approaches and even more dominant narratives of the ‘entrepreneurial city’ (Jessop, 1998) or of cities as ‘growth machines’ (Molotch, 1976) shape the everyday lives of billions of inhabitants around the globe – especially because these ideas are made to sound and appear ‘normal’ and hence, hegemonic. Safeguarded by state actors and rooted in the everyday practices of people, the imperial mode of living and production (Brand & Wissen, 2018), i.e., the mode of living of the Global North of material abundance based on the exploitation of nature and people elsewhere, is in a hegemonic position. As long as domination along class, gender, race, global and other lines is accepted by the dominated, alternatives remain marginalised. The hegemony of growth, made possible by the imperial mode of living, is deeply rooted in spatial structures. These structures work trifold: physically through urban design, e.g., of car-centric spatial distribution of traffic space, institutionally through policies and regulations, e.g., as privileged groups have influence on decision-makers and mentally through habits and desires, e.g., as the concept of an individual ‘good life’ is still often connected to living in a detached house on the outskirts or maybe to a loft in a newly gentrified neighbourhood. In this manner, places play a significant role in maintaining the growth-centred status quo. Planning processes often foster this effect, as they set ‘economic growth as the primary goal and pursue sustainability, attractiveness and liveability partly for the sake of being competitive. Urban planners, willingly or not, often adopt an urban green growth agenda’ (Xue, 2022, p. 414). This primacy of growth remains even in apparently virtuous cases like Copenhagen, in which sustainability policies are promoted as much for the sake of growth as for the sake of sustainability (Krähmer, 2020), with sustainability policies used as a ‘fix’ to capitalist growth (Holgersen & Malm, 2015; While et al., 2004). In such a context, isolated policies such as the successful promotion of cycling in Copenhagen remain, finally, ineffective, as their sustainability achievements are consumed by other, growth-oriented policies such as airport expansions or the growth of spaces dedicated to shopping, with social and ecological impacts externalised, away from local carbon accounting (Krähmer, 2020), if not simply by physically moving less sustainable car based lifestyles out of the city, rather than transforming them, as in the case of Freiburg (Mössner & Miller, 2015). Thus, for a degrowth transformation of places and spaces, a degrowth transformation of the society is needed (Latouche, 2016): the systemic logic must change (Cristiano et al., 2020). This is, in other words, a question of (cultural) hegemony. We argue that if degrowth perspectives are to rise to become counter-hegemonic (D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020) it is necessary to integrate a wide range of logics of transformation, rather than preferring any particular scale of action as complex solutions are needed to address complex challenges (De Angelis, 2022). Whereas urban and regional planning are usually considered the most effective instruments to move cities beyond the market economy (Savini et al., 2022), histories and practices of degrowth movement(s) are able to enrich these perspectives with grassroots approaches (Treu et al., 2020). Erik Olin Wright (2013) found that successful transformation movements usually involve

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not only a variety, but also a combination of different strategic logics of transformation. A thorough understanding of the different impacts of these logics could possibly contribute to ‘radical flank effects,’ how Haines (2013, p. 1) and others describe positive (or negative) effects that radical activists have on more moderate activists, media and society. On the one hand, initiatives – often in the vein of a pragmatic localism – such as house projects, squats or wagon squares show that new ways of relating to each other are already possible and feasible in the cracks and niches of capitalist cities. Wright (2013, p. 20) frames these as interstitial strategies, a term borrowed from biology: building alternatives serves as a critical ideological function by showing that another city, place-making or way of relating is possible even under the current circumstances. The TINA (there is no alternative) logic is led ad absurdum. While social movements can be identified as main actors using this strategy, administrative and planning actors still have a role to play. Administrations use their own (limited) scope for action to work on progressive agendas and projects, mitigating climate change or tackling social inequalities. Additionally, partisan planning can be oriented towards institutional backing up of lived alternatives (Sager, 2019), which expands the scope for degrowth initiatives and institutionally safeguards their successes. This is a crucial effect, given the ambition of institutionalising degrowth-oriented places. Beyond that, symbiotic forms of politics (Wright, 2013, p. 20) through the involvement in participatory processes, lobbying, political practice in city or district councils enable the protection of the successes won by social movements – and the defence against neoliberal or racist rollbacks. Furthermore, planning actors should act to reform planning instruments to drive exnovation (Krüger & Pellicer-Sifres, 2020). Exnovation refers to the intentional displacement (or deconstruction) and elimination of harmful (especially resource-intensive) practices, products, technologies and infrastructures. Furthermore, symbiotic politics could start to promote and normalise principles such as sufficiency, sharing and reuse (cf. proposition three). Ultimately, disruptive and conflict-oriented groups work towards a break with existing power relations through protests and blockades and shift lines of discourse. These revolutionary or ruptural transformations aim at shifting power relations, rapidly transforming state structures and deprivileging current planning systems. For actors within the (local) governmental systems, this means entering into conflicts with profiteers of the growth society in order to translate democratically legitimised goals into planning practice and to put an end to destructive practices. Chertkovskaya (2022) adds, understanding of ruptures as small-scale and temporary [. . .] opens an important direction for pursuing social-ecological transformation. An act of disobedience like blocking a coal mine (. . .) can be seen as an example of a temporary rupture that empowers and encourages other forms of action. (p. 60)

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Thus, even without claiming a system-level revolution, this strategy breaks with the institutions of the growth society and builds up power and momentum needed for counter-hegemony. It can be argued that such a pluralist strategy of transformation carries implications also for an imaginary of ‘degrowth institutions’ to govern place and space: an imaginary which speaks of a variety of actors collaborating at different scales in relation to the specificity of the respective problem to be tackled, rather than preferring, again, a single specific scale. Such a generic definition of course might as well be applied to neoliberal forms of governance (cf. Micciarelli, 2022). Fundamental are thus the systemic goals, as well as the questions of specific power balances. Micciarelli (2022) provides an example of how the question of governance has been approached in the process of building the model of Naples’ urban commons. Here, an interstitial strategy of ‘legal hacks’ has been applied to creatively invent a model of an assembly based, collective, open and non-profit-oriented model of governance for occupied, abandoned and interstitial urban places. At the same time, the space of action for this model has been widened by a symbiotic strategy that has achieved the formal recognition of the model (rather than of single people or subjectivities) by the municipality. It could be argued that the establishment of this ‘civic use’ model of urban commons has, in perspective, a ruptural potential, as it has established a new type of institution oriented at collaborative use, rather than the economic valorisation of urban places. In conclusion, as much as systemic change is needed, this can hardly be defined in one coherent masterplan – the challenges are too complex to do so (Cristiano, 2020). Instead of exclusions and debates on the ‘correct’ strategies, a whole prism of strategical logics must be applied in order to implement and experiment with solidary degrowth spaces. Proposition five: Building networks means forging trans-local ties, alliances and politics. If the challenge of a degrowth transformation of spaces and places is multi-scalar, so should be the development and diffusion of policies and practices. This implies establishing ties of dialogue and cooperation between places in solidary degrowth spaces When taking the state into consideration, one could wonder why the analysis of ‘the state’ in the degrowth literature is still mainly limited to the scale of the nation-state (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022), in a curious tension with the degrowth preference for the local (Mocca, 2020). Degrowth should open up the debate for a closer look at transformation processes and leverage points at the scale of the local state, beyond a fixation on nation states. Understanding the local not simply as equivalent to community initiatives, but rather zooming in to political actors and processes of the local state is a crucial pillar of this endeavour – the waves of (new) municipalisms worldwide might provide valuable experiences (Russell, 2019). However, as Mocca (2020, p. 89) suggested, ‘degrowth proponents fail to construct a persuasive argument about the scalability [. . .] capable of going beyond the communitarian utopia.’ This chapter does

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not argue for the local level as the optimal scale for transformation but in a relational approach we propose to look at the ways localities exchange transformational knowledge and build networks beyond both growth- and nation-centrism. A roll-out of degrowth politics with spatial dimension benefits, first, from progressive mobile policies moved and adapted from place to place and second, from trans-local municipal networks to spread knowledge and organise mutual support. First, as pointed out in proposition one, places are not disconnected and concepts (and utopia) of degrowth spaces and places emerge through processes that constantly shift between site-specificity and mobility to or from other places. Instead of believing in a certain ideal or model of a degrowth city, developing and expanding scope for action in different places is becoming crucial. The argument is that ideas for municipal or regional transformations towards degrowth are not only fought for locally, but also set in motion trans-locally (cf. Peck & Theodore, 2010). To understand how urban policies for degrowth are transformed as they travel and are adopted elsewhere, the concept of (urban) policy mobility can be helpful. This approach ‘denies the existence of localised best practices and models of good governance by introducing a relational view on continuous transformation and adaptation processes and their underlying driving forces’ (Affolderbach & Schulz, 2016, p. 1948). As Clarke (2012) shows, the global circulation of knowledge and policies is highly dependent on ties and connections often rooted in transnational social movements. The policy mobility perspective1 goes beyond unidirectional policy transfer and places emphasis on individuals, actor groups and their perspectives, situated knowledges and contexts in these processes (McCann, 2011; McCann & Ward, 2012). One example degrowth movements can learn from is the Climate Emergency Declarations buzzing around the globe between 2016 and 2022 and bringing about more than 2,150 municipal resolutions towards climate action (CEDAMIA, 2022, BrokowLoga & Krüger, 2023). Whereas the concrete effects are still under-researched and whether the declarations actually resulted in more ambitious climate action planning and implementation remains disputed, their quick dissemination contributed to raising awareness and ‘situating local governments as crucial agents bridging global and local action agenda’ (Ruiz-Campillo et al., 2021, p. 24). Surely, actors striving for (green) growth regimes are active in the realm of travelling policies, too, with large transnational companies, venture capital and municipal administrations (cf. van den Buuse & Kolk, 2019) circulating and implementing dominant neoliberal ideas, be it Business Improvement Districts (McCann & Ward, 2010) or Smart Cities (Wiig, 2015). Again though, it is local resistance and trans-local mobilisations that question flagship projects of this specific capitalist model of urbanity, for instance in Toronto, where

 Another related entry point is the assemblage approach, providing a conceptual dimension of complex processes of translation of policies or adoption of technologies over time and space: Blok (2013): ‘urban green assemblage.’

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Alphabet Inc.’s plans for the waterfront showed post-political modes of urban governance, but ‘controversies surrounding the project (. . .) stirred a civic discourse that might signal a return of the political’ (Carr & Hesse, 2020, p. 69). Second, we turn towards the ever more prominent role of trans-local networks: for strategic agenda-setting and exchange of experiences, especially for the rough waters of governing climate change through limiting resource throughput, engaging in transnational municipal networks2 (TMNs) is essential (cf. Kern & Bulkeley, 2009). While nation states seem less and less able to deal with global issues such as responses to climate warming or inequality, municipalities worldwide position themselves as problem solvers and participate in transnational networks of local governments, such as C40, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), Covenant of Mayors (for climate governance) or Human Rights Cities, Eurocities Solidarity Cities (for the field of migration) etc. Transnational municipal networks include an increasing number of municipalities and ‘are widely considered of high potential relevance’ (Haupt & Coppola, 2019, p. 137). However, research findings indicate that, instead of radical alternative pathways, the politics of these municipal networks (as well as urban mobile policies) too often point to a municipal sustainability fix (Temenos & McCann, 2012) accommodating both profit-making and environmental concerns, allowing status quo urban development to proceed. Moreover, these new trans-local and global governance arrangements tend to reproduce inequality and power relations between Global North and South, as Bouteligier (2013) indicates by focusing on informational and ideational flows in transnational municipal networks. Any future degrowth-oriented trans-local network must pay attention to these pitfalls. The quest for spatialising degrowth under the given circumstances of current global power relations raises the question of how far trans-local transformation processes between municipalities and social movements can tame the wicked problems cities are facing today (for insights related to urban climate change strategies, see Kemmerzell, 2019). What are the actors and activities that are needed to bridge the multi-scalar nature of actions towards degrowth-oriented places? How, then, are forums and processes designed, in which learning from practices elsewhere can be facilitated, that are neither Eurocentric nor enclosed by green growth regimes? Many questions need to be clarified; however, it seems to us that urban policy mobility as well as trans-local networks might prove helpful in expanding the scope and scale of degrowth approaches. The strategic use of progressive mobile policies and cross-boundary networks could serve to diffuse ideas and practices on how the principles of sufficiency, sharing and reuse can be applied, but also how places in the Global North can build solidary relations with places from which they receive their resources and potentially help to move from a logic of competition to a logic of cooperation between places.

 Other common terms to describe this phenomenon are ‘inter-urban networks’ or ‘socio-ecological urban networks,’ (Mocca, 2017).

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Conclusions We have formulated five propositions about how degrowth can be spatialised to build what we have called solidary degrowth spaces. These entail an idea of a tendency of localisation in the sense of limiting the amount and speed of the global social metabolism to an ecologically feasible level while considering that relations across space at all scales will persist but should be transformed in a perspective of solidarity. In this context, places in the Global North need to be re-inhabited following the principles of sufficiency, sharing and reuse. To work towards such a transformation, counterhegemony (also at the scale of the local state) is needed and can potentially be achieved through strategic pluralism. In this, trans-local municipal networks and progressive mobile policies can play a crucial role. This framework embraces the idea of a relational space, of counter-hegemonic interventions and the need for multi-scalar transformations. On the other hand, it rejects ideas of a single privileged scale of action, as well as of a neat opposition between the urban and the rural, considering that, nowadays, at least in the Global North, areas generally considered ‘rural,’ are permeated by the same unsustainable lifestyles.3 The proposed framework goes beyond the question of the pros and cons of the application of certain specific technologies, which is often considered crucial in the challenge of building cities in the face of climate and ecological crisis: this is not to say that technologies are irrelevant, rather that we consider them as secondary to the systemic (re-)orientation of urban and territorial systems (Cristiano et al., 2020). This is in line with the degrowth literature that has analysed how the implementation of certain technologies alone, be it widespread cycling or electric cars, remains insufficient for the achievement of social justice and ecological sustainability (Parrique et al., 2019). The proposed relational understanding of space seems highly compatible with degrowth as part of a pluriverse of alternatives (Kothari et al., 2019). The proposal of solidary degrowth spaces with regard to the reorganisation metabolic relations according to a tendency of reduction of global social metabolism and a logic of solidarity between places can be a way to frame these pluriversal interconnections, especially when combined with networks for mutual learning and exchange, as proposed in proposition five. However, as this text is influenced by the limited European perspective of the authors, this is not intended to suggest an automatic global explainability or transferability of its propositions.

 The question of the urban-rural relation would need further discussion. In the context of the propositions presented here, one can say (1) that a neat opposition of urban and rural cannot be uphold, with many intermediate forms existing and ‘urban’ lifestyles permeating ‘rural’ areas, while this does not imply that the rural as such does not exist anymore and (2) that this relation nowadays must be rethought at different scales, local, global and intermediate scales and can be partially juxtaposed with Global North-South relations.

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These propositions do not design a clear form of what a degrowth city or territory might be. We argue that attempting to do this in the abstract is a vain attempt, instead, they are to be seen as a set of principles, adaptable to diverse places and spaces. As much as profit, economic growth and efficiency are guiding principles of contemporary urban policies and strategies of transformation, here we propose that sufficiency, sharing and reuse, in the context of localism as a tendency and solidary relations across space, are principles that can inform degrowth strategies to reinhabit cities and territories, transforming them into places in which the right to the city is the right for everybody to live well without exceeding ecological limits. These principles are based on and in dialogue with precedent proposals such as Savini’s (2021) triad of finity, habitability and polycentric autonomism or the idea of an open localism (Nelson & Schneider, 2018). Following on from this, this fundamental ‘openness’ responds to the risk of the governance of limited resources becoming a ‘dark side of sustainability,’ as ‘scarcity may be used to control resources and people, and that emotions can be used as a way to achieve such objective’ (Santangelo, 2018, p. 364). In closing our reflections on how to spatialise degrowth, we want to emphasise the idea that any open localism includes the idea that localist tendencies should not lead to exclusionary closures, but rather guarantee the free movement of people across human-made boundaries, also and in particular migrants, in the limits of a sustainable transport system. The concept of solidary degrowth spaces may be disputed, overcharging or difficult to implement, however, either it exists for everyone or it does not exist at all.

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Benedikt Schmid

12 Urban Degrowth Abstract: This contribution takes an urban perspective on degrowth. Cities and urban spaces are key sites and drivers of (economic) growth as well as of social struggles and counter politics. As such, they have long taken a central role in justice and sustainability research. Degrowth scholarship, however, has only recently started to engage more deeply and systematically with the role of cities and urban spaces for overcoming growth-based social arrangements and transforming them in ways to align with ecological and social well-being. Through three distinct definitional approaches to cities and the urban – as territorial entities, as multi-scalar entanglements and as places of encounter and mediation – this chapter explores the potential of an urban degrowth perspective. Each urban gaze is developed alongside concrete examples from European cities, journeying through Berlin, Freiburg, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Keywords: urban space, city, place, territory, scale, transformation

Introduction Imagine your city had dense bicycle and public transport networks with an affordable yearround ticket while reducing much more expensive and perilous car infrastructure. Imagine your city sold properties not to the highest bidder, extracting maximum rent, but leased them to those with the best concept for pro-social and pro-environmental development. Imagine a large fraction of your city’s citizenry organised in community-supported agriculture initiatives to cooperate with regional farmers receiving affordable local produce while reducing risks and ecological footprints. Imagine public spending in your city privileged local eco-social enterprises and cooperatives from building to catering and, if not available locally and regionally, fair trade products, supporting inclusive, low-impact and nonextractive business models. Imagine your neighbourhood set up sharing and swapping schemes to give, lend and trade out second-hand goods and skills, cultivating other-thanmarket forms of exchange and interdependence. Cities have long fascinated and inspired people as spaces of endless possibilities, as ‘the most prestigious of human artifacts’ and ‘the workshops of civilization’ (Park, quoted in Harvey 1973, 195). In line with the celebration of cities’ innovativeness and diversity, it is of little surprise that cities, today, feature prominently as potential solutions to the complex environmental and social challenges of the 21st century (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020; Hodson & Marvin, 2017). Cities have been identified as a promis-

Benedikt Schmid, University of Freiburg, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-017

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ing stage and force in sustainability- and justice-oriented struggles in various areas including climate governance (Hofstad & Vedeld, 2021), circular economies (Bassens, Kębłowski, & Lambert, 2020), post-capitalist experiments (Chatterton, 2019) and much more besides. These variegated perspectives on cities’ transformative potential emphasise that cities are not confined entities but sites that are entangled with and have effects on other places and scales beyond their material and administrative borders. A particular expression of that is the ‘think globally – act locally’ approach to socio-environmental crises that has shaped early international agreements and action plans. As arguably one of the most influential amongst them, the Agenda 21 gives a prominent role to local authorities and initiatives: ‘as the level of governance closest to the people, [local authorities] play a vital role in educating, mobilizing and responding to the public to promote sustainable development’ (United Nations, 1992, chapter 28.1). Taking this from acknowledging to building local capacity for pro-environmental and pro-social action, city networks, such as ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – have emerged, facilitating learning but also lobbying at higher political levels (Davidson et al., 2019). While cooperation in global networks has not replaced cities’ agenda of economic competitiveness, inter-urban competition increasingly plays out – at least on a discursive level – around sustainability dimensions (Herrschel, 2013). Cities compete with each other for who is (the) green(est) and smart(est) (Affolderbach & Schulz, 2017; Evans et al., 2019). The progressive face of sustainable-, eco-, green-, liveable- and smart cities, however, easily obscures the fact that these cities (which are predominantly located in the Global North) are still major consumers and polluters (Creutzig et al., 2015), not to mention their role in an extractive global economy (Brand & Wissen, 2021). When it comes to cities’ consumption, their entanglement and effects on other places and scales beyond, is often overlooked (or ignored) (Martin et al., 2018). Indeed, many ‘sustainability’ programmes and indices fail to factor in the full impacts of cities and other entities, omitting, for instance, the energy and resources embodied in the technologies of smart cities (Requena-i-Mora & Brockington, 2021). A brief journey through the variegated attributions made to cities in the context of sustainability transformations shows two things. First, that a deeper look is required below the façade of greening. And second, that such a perspective needs to be attentive to what cities are and do in the context of sustainability-oriented transformations; as well as the spatial relations that travel through the spaces we call ‘urban.’ While degrowth research is at the forefront of challenging the tokenism of sustainable development and green economy approaches, it has done so largely outside of urban and spatial theories. Degrowth scholars have only recently started to take a deeper and more systematic interest in the role of cities for overcoming growth-based social arrangements and transforming them in ways to align with ecological and social wellbeing (e.g., Savini et al., 2022). This contribution brings in the perspectives of urban research and geography to discuss the emergent field of ‘urban degrowth.’ The next section traces the complex re-

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lation between degrowth and the ‘urban.’ It explores degrowth’s hesitation to engage with urban theories while pointing towards the over-simplification that often surrounds the use of categories such as urban and rural, erroneously producing the picture of degrowth as ‘anti-urban.’ Section three, then, follows up with different ways to define cities and the urban, highlighting three perspectives that can be linked to the spatial concepts of territory, scale and place respectively. Sections four to six each spell out one of these definitional approaches, exploring their consequences for degrowth research by means of specific examples. The paper closes with reflections on what urban degrowth is and could be against the background of an urban-theoretical and geographical analysis. The focus of this chapter is primarily on the Global North for three reasons: First, this is where per capita consumption is (by far) the highest. The Global North has a particular historical and contemporary responsibility to align its economies with planetary boundaries and global justice. Second, a significant part of influential definitional approaches to cities and the urban are (often implicitly) geared towards cities in the Global North. And third, the author’s expertise and lived experience pertains primarily to (cities in) the Global North. This focus by no means seeks to diminish the viability of corresponding research on cities in the Global South or across different global regions. On the contrary, it explicitly encourages scholars with the respective expertise to amend or rectify the inevitably partial perspective on urban degrowth offered in this chapter.

Degrowth Between the ‘Urban’ and the ‘Rural’ Degrowth criticises the socio-economic goals of an ever-greater penetration of social relations by markets, the continuous increase of available goods and services and the ubiquitous technologisation of life without considerations for proportionality, desirability, justice and planetary well-being. These tendencies materialise and culminate in cities that function as ‘growth machines’ (Molotch, 1976) and are ‘triumphs’ of human progress (Glaeser, 2012). It is of little surprise, then, that degrowth scholars harbour a certain suspicion against the (enormous) concentration of power, people, infrastructure, technologies and values in (major) cities, raising the question if degrowth has or should have an ‘anti-urbanist’ orientation (Knuth et al., 2020; Mocca, 2020). Indeed, arguments that reject technological advancements, large infrastructural developments and specialised economies have a strong presence throughout degrowth discourses. However, whereas degrowth scholarship has put a strong emphasis on place-based experiments and community economies, the identification of degrowth with anti-urban imaginaries falls short of degrowth’s complexity. First, degrowth is a broad and lively field that coheres around the horizon of a socially and ecologically just future rather than a clear vision of what this future looks like. There are, of course,

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specific proposals by degrowth scholars that include self-sufficient ‘micro-economies’ (Trainer, 2012, p. 594) that have a clear ruralist undertone. Such arrangements are sometimes imagined to require scales that are magnitudes below that of major and even mid-sized cities, ‘to enable the social bonds required to make the new microeconomies work’ (Trainer, 2012, p. 594). Meanwhile, degrowth scholars have also drawn much inspiration from phenomena that are decidedly urban and even reflected in designations such as urban gardening (Müller, 2020). In general, many community-led initiatives, from open workshops (Smith, 2020) to squatter movements (Lloveras et al., 2018), researched and theorised by degrowth scholars, emerge primarily in cities. Second, spatial concepts such as urban/rural, global/local, or centralised/decentralised evoke strong associations (intentionally or unintentionally) that are often not further explained and clarified through a clear conceptualisation of terms. An enduring contention, for instance, surrounds the binary of local and global (Marston et al., 2005; Massey, 2008), whereas large-scale phenomena such as global markets are (conceptually) severed from place-based practices. This way of thinking obscures the fact that ‘the everydayness of even the most privileged social actors who, though favourably anointed by class, race and gender, and while typically more efficacious in spatial reach, are no less situated than the workers they seek to command’ (Marston et al., 2005, p. 421). Or, in other words, that ‘the global itself is produced in local places’ (Massey, 2008, p. 167). This global/local binary (erroneously) rubs off on ‘similar’ conceptual pairs such as that of urban/rural, with the urban being associated with processes of (planetary) expansion – an ‘advancing frontier of urbanization, enveloping rural space’ (Gillen et al., 2022, p. 4). In contrast, the rural carries different connotations around agrarian economies and cultures, spaciousness, tranquillity and nature, but also around backwardness, precarity and lack of agency. Aside from ‘being unable to account for the complexities on the ground’ (Ortega, 2022, p. 3), the categorisation of urban and rural is also political and performative, instigating processes and policies that are in favour of urbanisation, which is equated with (economic) development and (global) competitiveness (Robinson, 2006). To turn the tables and frame these dynamics in terms of a ‘ruralization of the urban’ (Krause, 2013), however, also fails to properly challenge what Angelo (2017, p. 162) calls ‘city-lens’ though which the meaning of urban derives from putting the ‘density, energy, social difference, anonymity and alienation [of the city] in contrast to the quiet, familial ties of rural life.’ Degrowth, in fact, blends characteristics that are typically associated with both rural and urban contexts. Urban gardening and urban farming, for instance, bring archetypical practices of subsistence and peasant economies into urban arenas, using and appropriating the vacant spaces of the urban fabric and its immediate surroundings. Sharing schemes, from time banks to libraries of things and co-housing, build on (urban) proximity and a critical milieu to create personal bonds and co-dependencies in ways that are predominantly associated with rural communities. And the (technology-based) circulation of material, energy and nutrient flows aspired for by eco-districts and circular cities can be read as attempts to create urban ecosystems that mimic natural cycles.

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Instead of deepening the urban-rural binary, the complex dynamics of degrowth should be seen as opening avenues beyond the confines of orthodox urban and rural development paths. Degrowth perspectives, then, would shift away from ‘prioritizing the urban and the city’ and towards ‘complicating the categories of the urban and the rural’ (Spanier & Feola, 2022). Analogous to Robinsons’ (2006) call to acknowledge cities’ complexity, diversity and peculiarity on their own terms, this would mean to explore how degrowth principles draw on, resonate with and are weaved into different social realities without forcing these spaces into the categories of urban and rural. This way, degrowth scholars move away from single, idealised solutions and uncover a variety of different development options needed for the multitude of settlement arrangements in and through which humans coexist. This is not to be mistaken for a general rejection of the categories of urban and rural. Despite the difficulties associated with these concepts, they still hold an analytical potential if taken for what they are: social constructs (Ortega, 2022). Instead of conceiving of urban and rural as ontological attributions, they should be viewed as different directions of inquiry. In other words, they each point to specific questions that are not ‘more important’ than others but highlight selected issues in need for further investigation to address the degrowth question. In the following, I will explore what issues open themselves going down the alley of urban degrowth.

From Cities to Urban Spaces To bring some order into the conceptual diversity that surrounds the terms city and urban, I will now turn to three definitional approaches to cities/urban spaces: cities as bounded entities, the multi-scalarity of the urban and the urban as a space of mediation (see also Schmid 2023). Despite many frictions and disagreements between these perspectives, I argue that each lens can be helpful to hone the notion of ‘urban degrowth,’ starting with a conception of the city. Cities are variously identified through physiognomic, territorial and social characteristics (Anderson, 2017). While most common definitions acknowledge the relations that are constitutive of cities and reach beyond its territorial boundaries, cities are primarily conceived of as ‘entity,’ ‘location,’ or ‘setting.’ As such, they evoke notions of boundedness – an inside and an outside. This has led scholars to be critical of ‘methodological cityism’ – ‘a privileging, an isolation and perhaps a naturalization of the city in studies of urban processes where the non-city may also be significant’ (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015, p. 20). As we have seen above, cities are entangled with places and scales beyond and are themselves heterogenous spaces that can hardly be subsumed under particular physiognomic, territorial and social categories. Some go as far as arguing that ‘the category of the “city” has today become obsolete as an analytical social science tool’ (Brenner & Schmid, 2011, p. 12).

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Despite this valid critique, to which I will return below, there is one dimension in which the boundedness of cities is indeed highly relevant: the territorial constitution of cities. While cities are inextricably linked with other places and scales – rendering perspectives that analyse cities in isolation untenable – their territorial demarcation is highly efficacious in practice. Far from being endogenous phenomena, relations of governance and law, still, are inextricably linked to cities’ territorial constitution (Schroeder & Bulkeley, 2009). In legal and political terms, municipalities are the smallest administrative bodies within complex arrangements of multi-level governance (Bache et al., 2016). They possess a highly context-specific (depending on federal or state legislation) but often considerable ‘policy capacity’ (Wolfram, 2018). As criticised above, a perspective on cities as ‘localised entities,’ however, falls short of the complexity of urban spaces. To overcome this limitation, urban scholars have moved from the conception of the city towards a theorisation of ‘the urban’ (Brenner, 2019; Kip, 2015). Kip (2015) traces two main lines of argumentation that have influenced urban studies: the multi-scalarity of the urban and the urban as a space of mediation. The multi-scalarity of the urban is rooted in the insight that urban phenomena have moved far beyond the (legally, administratively) bounded spaces of cities and have to be understood at multiple scales, from the body to the planet (Brenner, 2019). The ‘conditions, processes and terrains of struggle can only be understood adequately within a broader, multi-scalar field of socio-spatial relations that constitutes and continually reweaves the capitalist urban fabric as a whole’ (Brenner, 2019, p. 15). Such a perspective includes flows of money, people, ideas, practices and artefacts as well as their differential effects on and within different spaces from concentrated urban arenas to the spreading out of and transformation of the urban fabric. Another perspective on the urban foregrounds the diverse positions, interests, and lifestyles that unfold, interact and clash in or as urban spaces. Such a perspective sees the urban as a space of encounter (Merrifield, 2013) and mediation (Kip, 2015) between different social worlds, but also between the private and the global (Lefebvre, 2003). Without neglecting the multi-scalar entanglements of urban spaces, the focus here is on the horizontal relations at the ‘level’ of the urban (Kip, 2015). Difference, then, emerges as a key defining feature: ‘the emergence and multiplication of social milieus and subcultures and the individualization of lifestyles are thus part and parcel of urbanization’ (Kip, 2015, p. 50). What do these different perspectives on cities and the urban mean for degrowth scholarship? And what would it mean to develop an explicitly urban degrowth research focus? Of late, there has been a wide and varied interest in cities and urban spaces by degrowth scholars (i.e., Brokow-Loga & Eckardt, 2020; Krähmer, 2022; Savini et al., 2022). While cities and urban spaces feature in rich and diverse ways in the literature, most writings do not engage systematically with questions of what cities and urban spaces are and do in the context of degrowth (Schmid, 2022b). Based on the three conceptions developed above, the remainder of this chapter outlines what each

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perspective offers for degrowth scholarship, using concrete examples to illustrate links and potentials. Acknowledging the territorial constitution of cities enables degrowth researchers to explore responsibilities and the scope for action of city administration and politics as well as the legal frameworks in which (degrowth) actions take place. I will explore this by looking at the Berlin-based expropriation campaign ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen’ (DWE) and Freiburg’s housing policy. The multi-scalar notion of the urban as a space that is inextricably linked up with other places near and far proves particularly fruitful to explore diverse economic entanglements. Looking at Amsterdam’s implementation of Doughnut Economics, I will consider potentials (and frustrations) linked to the (partial) challenging of extractive economic relations. Cities, furthermore, are places of encounter and mediation. To explore the complex struggles and negotiation processes at play in urban transformations (towards degrowth), I will look at forms of participation and basic-democratic decision-making implemented by Barcelona En Comú, a leftprogressive confluence holding office in Barcelona between 2015 and 2023.

Cities as Distinct Territorial Entities While there is much (valid) criticism of approaches that delimit cities along clear boundaries (see above), there is one direction of inquiry where this is helpful, even necessary. In addition to the close material and cultural entanglements of cities with spaces and places beyond, cities also have a decidedly territorial dimension. Administrative and political competences and responsibilities are tied to specific segments of space – not always in line with functional links and people’s everyday practices. Moreover, these territories are nested within larger spatial segments, constituting arrangements of ‘multi-level governance’ (Bache et al., 2016). Qua its territorial embeddedness, the legal context of any given place is always multiple and distinct. Multiple, because places are simultaneously embedded in municipal, possibly sub-national, national and international legal frameworks. Distinct, because any given place is not just embedded in a specific territorial context but also exhibits a specific practicing of law (Blomley and Clark, 1990). Although the aforementioned diversity of degrowth perspectives also needs to be acknowledged when it comes to different transformation pathways (Schmid, 2022a) – which are variously imagined to play out with, through, against and despite present institutional settings – there is an increasing interest of degrowth scholars in the transformative capacity of policy (Fitzpatrick et al., 2022). Reforms, including those that aim to be ‘revolutionary,’ ‘radical,’ ‘transformative’ or ‘non-reformist’ (e.g., Gorz, 1967) are generally conceived of, planned and implemented in congruence with defined legal proceedings, competences and practices. As a matter of course, there is room for legal contingencies and ‘lived law’ (Delaney, 2015), but ‘without investigating

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exactly how and why [. . .] structures interact with and work through law in particular times and places, our understanding of the law, and how we might harness it for progressive ends, is limited’ (Orzeck & Hae, 2020, p. 11). A look at the legal and governance relations in Berlin’s housing market exemplifies the importance of such a perspective. In 2021, Berlin’s citizenry voted on the socialization of large profit-oriented housing companies that own more than 3,000 apartments. The popular vote was the result of the campaign ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen’ (DWE), a grassroots movement that pushed for a public referendum in Berlin on the question of socialization. Berlin has seen an intense increase in rents that have doubled in some parts of the city within a decade. A key driver of rent increases are large for-profit enterprises such as the eponymous corporation Deutsche Wohnen which owns around 113,000 flats in Berlin (2021). In response, the campaign aims to socialise some 240,000 flats which would take pressure off of Berlin’s housing market and reorient a considerable fraction of the housing stock towards the common good. After close to 60% of the votes were cast in favour of the expropriation, Berlin’s then red-green-red (of social democratic, green, and left parties) government has been called on to formulate a law on the basis of which the transfer into common ownership can be implemented. The government, however, has considerable legal room for manoeuvre which it currently seems to be making use of, according to the campaigners who accuse the government of delaying the process. To fully understand the legal dimension of the case, it is important to know that Berlin is both a city and a federated state (with an identical territory). In addition to the competences of municipalities, Berlin, thus, has the wide-ranging legal capacities of a state. In 2021, a decision by the federal constitutional court to overturn a law on rent limitation issued by Berlin’s government the year before in an attempt to curtail rents intensified the debate. The reason for this ruling was a lack of legal competences: despite holding the competences of a federated German state, Berlin is not allowed to directly regulate rents. A corresponding law needs to be issued at the federal level. The citizen’s initiative that led to the referendum, in turn, is both possible at the municipal level or the state level. As other successful referenda show, for instance on the remunicipalisation of energy grids in Hamburg (another city state), they can be a viable tool for progressive policies (Becker et al., 2016). The capacity of ‘ordinary’ German municipalities for socialization, however, is more limited. The Berlin campaign draws on section 15 of the German constitution according to which ‘land, natural resources and means of production may, for the purpose of nationalisation, be transferred to public ownership or other forms of public enterprise by a law that determines the nature and extent of compensation’ (Bundestag, 2020, p. 22 emphasis added). Such a law can be issued at the state or federal level. Berlin, which doubles as municipality and state, has the respective legislative competence. This is however not the case for ‘ordinary’ municipalities, which would need to find other pathways. Freiburg, a mid-sized municipality in southwestern Germany, for instance, has (at least in principle) ceased to sell property,

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instead letting out city-owned land on a leasehold basis and actively (re)purchasing property within its administrative borders. Aside from reducing speculation and increasing price stability, city-owned land can be developed on a concept-basis. That is, instead of purchasing power, land is allocated to those organisations and groups with the most suitable concept – especially in social and ecological terms. In this way, an entire district, encompassing some 550 housing units, is soon to be developed exclusively by ‘common-good-oriented’ actors. Leasehold principles and concept-based allocation cannot undo the marketisation and financialisation of housing the same way that socialization does. Still, all these measures move cities away from growth-focused development towards social and ecological priorities. While the impact of highly mobile global capital on immobile place-based housing infrastructures can only be understood across different scales, the examples of Berlin and Freiburg have shown that cities do not have to stand by idly as real estate markets grow at the expense of millions of urban residents. Cities’ spatial boundedness and territorial embeddedness, thereby, is key to understand the legal and regulatory principles and possibilities at play.

Multi-Scalarity of the Urban Looking at cities as territorial entities that are embedded in multi-level governance arrangements foregrounds the legal and political competences cities do and do not have. As outlined above, however, there is valid criticism on viewing cities first and foremost as localised and localisable entities. By perceiving of the city as ‘bounded form’ (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015, p. 171), the variegated interdependencies that are integral to cities’ functioning only come as an afterthought, if they are considered at all. As such, cities emerge as privileged or even exclusive site of urban processes, the geographies of which, however, extend far beyond the actual settlements that the notion of city identifies. Although ostensibly a conceptual issue, deemphasising interdependencies has farreaching consequences when it comes to cities’ sustainability performance. Looking at Copenhagen, Krähmer (2021) shows that the city’s strategy for climate-neutrality is deeply problematic as it is solely based on production-based emissions – i.e., those emissions that are produced within Copenhagen’s territorial boundaries. This, however, ignores consumption-based emissions which are generated elsewhere. Copenhagen’s green city image ultimately hinges on the city’s ignorance of its externalised impacts – in other words by foregrounding the city as entity and not as urban configuration that is densely interwoven with places beyond. In an attempt to implement a more spatially sensitive approach to sustainable urban development, the city of Amsterdam has made headlines recently by drawing on Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut model’ (Doughnut Economics Action Lab, 2020). The

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model is based on Raworth’s (2017) seminal publication that outlines the ‘doughnut economics,’ an approach which rethinks the basic coordinates of present economies to ‘meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.’ Its application to the city scale is structured along two distinctions: social and ecological (the social foundation and the ecological ceiling which the doughnut represents) and local and global. The latter moves questions around the externalisation of social and environmental impacts into focus, asking ‘what would it mean for [in this case] Amsterdam to respect the well-being of people worldwide?’ and ‘what would it mean for Amsterdam to respect the health of the whole planet?’ (Doughnut Economics Action Lab, 2020, p. 5). On this basis, the Amsterdam city portrait explores the city’s performance across all four dimensions (local/social; local/ecological; global/social; global/ecological) – although, in sum, on a rather superficial level. The actual implementation of the doughnut economics framework would have profound ramifications: it would mean a decisive move away from competition and growth towards social and planetary well-being. Yet, the question remains which of the ambitious goals of doughnut economics will be realised and how. The main outcome of the integration of doughnut economics into local development plans is Amsterdam’s Circular Strategy 2020–2025 with the doughnut also having a strong visual presence throughout the strategy’s official documentation (City of Amsterdam, 2020). In terms of content, the targets of the strategy include to move to 50% circular procurement by 2025 and to halve the use of primary raw materials by 2030 (City of Amsterdam, 2020). Despite these ambitious objectives, however, ‘the strategy does not include any straightforward measure to reduce the volume of goods circulating in the city, or specific targets for citizens’ consumption reduction’ (Maldini, 2021, p. 3), which means that it is far from being in line with degrowth’s aims. While it is too early to tell, there is a risk that this novel orientation towards a trans-local approach to sustainability will be reintegrated into growth-based economic frameworks. Although Amsterdam’s turn to doughnut economics acknowledges the city’s complex interdependencies with places near and far, it is still closely tied to the city as the primary unit of interest: ‘By opting for a new economy, we will turn Amsterdam into one of the world’s most circular cities: innovative, prosperous, inclusive and attractive,’ so says the city’s deputy mayor for spatial development and responsibility (City of Amsterdam, 2020, p. 5). On the one hand, as a matter of course, political and administrative responsibilities come into play here that condition this focus on the citylevel. On the other hand, however, the strategy largely evades more profound questions of the role of exploitation and growth in global economies – issues that are at the core of the degrowth project. And yet, even if the effects are primarily symbolic (for now), Amsterdam’s turn to doughnut economics is an important step in the right direction, recognising the responsibility of place beyond place (Massey, 2008).

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The Urban as a Place of Encounter In addition to the ‘vertical’ complexity of the urban that can only be understood across multiple terrains and scales, urban spaces also exhibit a ‘horizontal’ complexity. The urban, in this sense, is characterised by the coming together, or encounter, of diverse people and activities in physical proximity. The debates that emerge from and surround the perspective of the urban as place of encounter are numerous and range from the multiplication of social milieus, discrimination and segregation to the creativity and innovative potential that emerges from the diversity and difference of urban space. The central concerns, then, are the frictions, negotiations, confrontations and inspirations that result from the heterogeneity of and in urban spaces. Commodification and privatisation of urban space, however, distorts and limits the arenas for encounter and thus the possibilities of collective deliberation, exchange, and negotiation (Mitchell, 2003). Conversely, degrowth’s turn away from the market- and growth-conforming organisation of urban space resonates well with claims to the ‘urban commons’ and ‘the right to the city’ (Kip, 2015). Instead of channelling diversity towards exclusion and competition, these approaches foreground the necessity and possibility of shared and ‘common’ forms of governance and ownership of urban space. This orientation towards a (more) direct democracy means that citizens take an active part in political decision-making and the shaping of urban realities. Direct democracy, as a key element of degrowth (Fotopoulos, 2010), then, raises the question of what processes and institutions facilitate ‘encounters’ and mediate between the variegated capacities and needs present in and constitutive of urban space. Arguably the most far-reaching example for direct democracy in a European city can be found in the programs and practices of Barcelona En Comú (BComú), a leftprogressive political confluence that has held office in Barcelona from 2015 to 2023. Barcelona is the poster child of ‘new municipalism,’ an international movement working towards a radical political and economic reshaping of the ‘local state at the municipal scale’ (Thompson, 2021, p. 319). Aside from the creation of a more social and just economy, the new municipalist project centres around the redistribution of political power. As Castro (2019, p. 195) puts it: ‘the idea [of BComú] was not to form a “more progressive” party that would reform the city on behalf of its citizens, but to “place power in the hands of the people” by transforming the way politics is done as such.’ A key part of this transformative approach is a respective internal organisation of BComú that ensures shared power and continuous accountability of elected officials. New municipalists refer to such an alliance between different political forms – that is, elected officials and parties, social movements and citizens’ platforms – as ‘confluence’ to emphasise the coming together or encounter of diverse people that aims to ‘move beyond the logic of traditional coalitions’ (Junqué et al., 2019, p. 57). Barcelona En Comú is made up of a complex structure of different ‘areas of participation’ (Junqué et al., 2019, p. 53) with varying degrees of commitment and respon-

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sibility as well as specific functions and competences. The broadest area is simply called ‘the Comú’ (or Commons). The Comú is the ‘highest decision-making body’ (Barcelona En Comú, n.d.) and is open to all registered supporters who want to have a say in the confluence’s general orientation without necessarily committing to any deeper involvement. All 1,500 active members of BComú form ‘the Plenary’ that takes strategic decisions and ensures the organisation’s internal transparency. Mandated by the Comú and the Plenary, the 150 elected members of the ‘Political Council’ deliberate the confluence’s strategy and political action which they pass back to the Plenary and on to the ‘General Coordination Team.’ The latter is BComú’s ‘executive body [. . .] where political and operational decisions of the organisation are made’ (Barcelona En Comú, n.d., p. 9). All mentioned areas of participation form a nested structure: the Coordination Team is a subsection of the Council, the Council alongside other organisational branches of BComú form the Plenary, and the Plenary is part of the Comú. In addition to being mandated by ‘broader circles’ of the organisation, the executive body is composed of people from all areas of the confluence, including members of the BComú community, representatives of BComú working groups (Technical Committee, Policy Groups and Neighbourhood Groups) as well as delegates of the ‘Municipal Group’ and the members of the ‘Executive Team.’ The latter actually carries out BComú’s day-to-day activities including operational management, media representation, human resources, budgeting and also implementing mechanisms that ensure transparency and accountability. By including delegates from the Municipal Group – the elected officials formally involved in the city council – the General Coordination Team constitutes the primary interface between public participation and formal politics. Through its accessible organisational structure, BComú creates, cultivates and institutionalises spaces for encounter not just between different social groups and individuals but also between ‘the public and the private’ (Castro, 2019, p. 207). Such an open and direct democratic arrangement deeply resonates with degrowth principles. At the heart of the degrowth project is the question of collective self-limitation (Kallis, 2019), rather than sacrifice or imposed austerity. Such a project requires public deliberation and direct democratic decision-making – both in terms of its shape and acceptability. Urban spaces, thus, emerge as salient places of encounter in which confluences experiment with (new and old) ‘politics of proximity, the concrete bringing together of bodies [. . .] in the activation of municipalist political processes’ (Russell, 2019, p. 1001).

Conclusion This chapter has both outlined the potential of an urban degrowth approach as well as the caution that is needed for such an endeavour. To make sense of and further develop degrowth’s relation to the urban – which is often characterised by ambiva-

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lence and sometimes by misconception – this contribution has offered three different definitory approaches to the city and the urban: as territorial entities, as multi-scalar entanglements and as places of encounter and mediation. All three approaches bring to light different aspects of urban degrowth while also pointing towards the limitations of overemphasising the urban at the expense of rural spaces and imaginaries. Journeying through Berlin, Freiburg, Amsterdam and Barcelona – admittedly some of the usual suspects when it comes to sustainability-oriented changes – the chapter has explored both the potentials but also the limitations of specific initiatives and undertakings. While they all have (some) points of connection to degrowth – the socialisation of housing, the reduction and greening of value chains, and the stimulation of local democracy – this is not necessarily a straightforward and unambiguous relationship. Neither do the initiatives operate under the label of degrowth, nor are all the activities they involve aligned with degrowth objectives. What they do, however, is to question and confront urban relations and processes – profit-oriented housing, cost externalisation and social diversity – and attempt to push them towards ecological sustainability and social justice. It is clear, thereby, for degrowth scholars, that a social-ecological transformation worthy of the name must include the recalibration of institutional configurations that underly economic, political and cultural orientations to growth. In other words, degrowth moves beyond mere problem solving and addresses socio-ecological challenges on a structural level. An urban degrowth perspective, thus, not only explores how specific initiatives and projects implement more sustainable and just relations and practices but is particularly interested in the potential of these undertakings to instigate shifts away from growth orientations and dependencies. This involves cities as territorial entities, as multi-scalar entanglements and as places of encounter and mediation. An urban degrowth transformation needs to know what cities can do within existing legal frameworks and make use of what we might call the ‘municipal scope for action’ while at the same time lobbying for more socially ecologically conducive conditions at other scales. Urban degrowth needs to work with and through the complex trans-local entanglements that characterise cities to minimise cost externalisation while embracing cities’ responsibilities beyond place. And urban degrowth needs to acknowledge the diverse aspirations, desires and needs in place establishing mechanisms that allow for the (partial) coalescence of divergent interests to enable democratic degrowth transformations. In sum, a crucial question of urban degrowth is what measures and processes can be implemented in cities (legally, economically, politically, and culturally) that allow for democratic changes in urban systems that reduce their dependency on market competition, monetary profitability and financial resources while acknowledging responsibilities beyond place. Cities, thereby, can implement a broad range of measures: shifting (local) mobility towards bicycles and public transportation can reduce expenses, increasing liveability and reducing resource and energy use. Fostering nonprofit-oriented housing developments takes pressure off local housing markets while

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nurturing flourishing neighbourhoods. Non-extractive regional food systems can foster food security and sovereignty alongside a better ecological performance. Public procurement can be a key leverage to foster social-ecological economic relations across different sectors. And finally, the implementation of non-profit-oriented relations of production and exchange allow for regenerative and distributive business models all the way to schemes that work outside of markets, rendering a fixation of growth increasingly irrelevant.

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Alex Baumann, Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon

13 Land Commodification: A Structural Barrier to Degrowth Transition Abstract: The willingness of politicians or business to acknowledge the necessity of a degrowth transition is scarce to non-existent (Rickters & Siemoneit, 2019). In response to this, there is broad support within the degrowth movement for the notion that a degrowth society will have to emerge from the grassroots up (see D’Alisa et al., 2015). However, serious doubts can also be levelled against such a sociocultural groundswell (Frankel, 2018; Sanne, 2002). While the degrowth movement has been explicit about the degree of ecological overshoot associated with perpetual growth, overall, certain politico-economic barriers to degrowth transition, that are faced by this potential groundswell, have not been well addressed in the literature (Strunz & Schindler, 2018; de Jesus & Mendonça, 2018). To address this gap in degrowth transition scholarship, this chapter demonstrates the way in which, for ordinary people expected to pursue a degrowth transition, costs associated with land and housing operate as a significant barrier to their involvement. As we will argue, these housing costs almost always function as a powerful economic determinant, locking people into sustained, but not sustainable, market participation. Our contribution to the literature is to analyse this terrain, exploring the way in which land privatisation (land enclosure being capitalism’s inaugural step) instigated and now continues to compel long-term participation in an unsustainable growth economy. The chapter concludes by exploring one way in which this structural obstacle to degrowth transition could be addressed. We propose an innovative public housing policy approach coupled with a ‘participation income – an approach that we argue could create a politically palatable urban commons pathway to degrowth. Keywords: degrowth, land, enclosures, commodification, public housing, participation income, urban commons

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge that this chapter is based on Alex Baumann, Samuel Alexander and Peter Burdon, 2021, ‘Land commodification as a barrier to political and economic agency: A degrowth perspective’ Journal of Australian Political Economy, 86, 379–405. We are grateful for permission to publish in this revised form. The authors would also like to acknowledge Chris Baulman as the originator of the central NTW concept on which this chapter has been developed. Their feedback on an earlier version of this chapter was very helpful. Alex Baumann, School of Social Science at Western Sydney University, Australia Samuel Alexander, The Simplicity Institute, Australia Peter Burdon, Adelaide Law School, Australia https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-018

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Introduction Although the degrowth movement has no singular vision of the ‘good society’ (Kothari et al., 2019) or singular theory of transition, there seems to be broad support for the notion that a degrowth society, if it is to overcome the many social, economic and political obstacles in the way of its emergence, will have to be driven into existence from the grassroots up, with individuals, households and communities coming together to ‘prefigure’ a new post-capitalist society within the shell of the old (see D’Alisa et al., 2015). According to this broad theory of change (Buch-Hansen, 2018), such prefigurative action is projected to filter upwards over time to change social, economic and political structures in recognition of the systemic nature of the problems (Alexander, 2013; Trainer, 2010, 2019). The privileging of grassroots or community-led action is mainly due to the widely shared perspective that the ability or willingness of politicians or business to lead a degrowth transition is scarce to non-existent (Alexander & Gleeson, 2019; Rickters & Siemoneit, 2019). Nevertheless, despite the coherency of these doubts, similar doubts could be levelled against hope for a degrowth transition rising up from any kind of a sociocultural groundswell (Frankel, 2018; Sanne, 2002). Indeed, this chapter argues that such paralysis in degrowth transition stems from the growth imperatives of the dominant politico-economic order of global capitalism – particularly relating to land, whereby ordinary people expected to model the transition are essentially locked into long-term market participation to buy or rent housing and keep a roof over their head. While the biophysical aspects of the degrowth perspective are important, coherent and largely compelling – indeed, we accept the validity of the case (Wiedmann et al., 2020, 2015; Turner, 2019; Kallis et al., 2018; Kallis, 2017; Weiss & Cattaneo, 2017) – the movement has given insufficient attention to land and housing costs, which are significant barriers hindering true political and economic agency and any grassroots driven degrowth transition. This absence is consistent with the insufficient attention degrowth literature more generally has given to the obstacles to degrowth. Strunz and Schindler’s (2018, p. 69) review of degrowth literature finds that, ‘Very few studies explicitly identify post-growth barriers’ and that, ‘what the literature seems to be lacking, is an inventory of interests opposed to a post-growth transition.’ In response to this gap in degrowth scholarship, this chapter directly responds to obstacles for those who have been placed at the very nucleus of the degrowth transition strategy – those ‘grassroots’ actors charged with initiating a groundswell. As such, the chapter will argue that the struggle for access to land and housing almost always locks such actors into lifelong market participation. While land has been analysed by political economists for centuries, none have presented an extended analysis of land in the context of the ‘limits to growth’ predicament (Turner, 2019). Nor have they examined how access to land in market societies is a barrier to prefiguring sufficiency-based ways of living necessary for post-carbon

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and post-growth social structures to emerge within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015). Our contribution to the literature is to analyse this terrain, exploring why access to land is a barrier to a degrowth transition and how that barrier could be removed. We could present our central thesis in a different way. Those in the degrowth movement who have been fortunate enough to afford land and housing may be able to grow their own organic food, put solar panels on their roof, bike to work and reduce working hours in the formal economy – and these practices may indeed provide some important prefigurative degrowth examples of localised economy, downshifted consumption and post-carbon energy practices. However, we will argue that they provide a fundamentally problematic example of a degrowth pathway. Many of those practices presuppose access to land, with the implication that ‘downshifters’ are often in a minority of privileged market actors – spending decades ‘buying in’ to the market economy in order to downshift lifestyles and ‘opt out.’ Anyone seeking to follow their example would also have to commit to long and successful market participation to afford their rent or mortgage payments. In short, it is very hard and often impossible, to live a life of downshifted consumption and increased self-sufficiency, especially in modern urban contexts. In turn, this entrenches the ecologically destructive paradigm of economic growth, essentially locks people into market participation and consumerist lifestyles, and inhibits people prefiguring local and post-carbon modes of production and consumption. Our reading of this structural obstacle to degrowth suggests that this reality represents a deeply problematic curtailment of political and economic agency, because land privatisation only permits agency (such as related to degrowth) to emerge within a market context. We begin by briefly reviewing how the foundations of capitalism in the historical ‘enclosures’ movement dispossessed people from land upon which to live and a commons from which they could source food. We then unpack the reasons why the struggle to access land and housing, especially in contemporary urban contexts, has oppressive and ecologically problematic implications that must be recognised as major barriers hindering a degrowth transition. The fundamental implication of this realisation is that degrowth and related movements must give increased attention to land and housing rights as a fundamental enabler and prerequisite to any degrowth transition (BuchHansen, 2018). Accordingly, after presenting a detailed case for this neglected obstacle to degrowth, we consider what new land governance arrangements might look like if they were designed to foster and enable sufficiency-based living consistent with the degrowth imaginary. We will propose a strategy we call ‘Neighbourhoods that Work,’ which essentially involves providing people already economically and socially marginalised by capitalism, with (1) access to suburban public land and housing; and (2) a ‘participation income’ (i.e., a modest ‘living wage’ instead of unemployment benefits) for helping build new, relocalised, ecologically viable and socially just communities and economies.

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As we outline this approach and unpack a broader vision for transition, we will argue that this strategy could support the prefigurative action called for by the degrowth movement. Just as importantly, it may expand the social and political imagination to make more space for degrowth in cultural visions of progress and prosperity. Central to this vision for sustainable1 suburban development is recognition that access to land, just as with air and water, is not a commodity. Rather, land is an essential element of nature, necessary for the realisation of many human rights (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]). In turn, we explore how a strategy combining public tenure with productive local community development programmes could open a new post-growth pathway. For those public residents choosing it, this option could represent a shift in their status as economic citizens. Such a new option could help overcome what has become a very destructive binary – where people are either positioned as ‘successful market citizens’ (having secured paid work and private housing) or are positioned as ‘flawed citizens’ (because of their exclusion / redundancy and resultant welfare dependency) (Flint, 2003; Bauman 1998). The broader theory of transformation we will defend is that demonstrating successful examples of new land and livelihood arrangements, even if initially at a smallscale, could also be of critical importance as the existing system comes under greater stress and potentially collapses (Streeck, 2017). As more people are cast into unemployment or insecurity by financial crises, the automation of jobs, globalisation of labour, intensifying global climate change and pandemic events and the phasing-out of high impact industries like fossil fuel power stations, it is highly likely that they will require and demand new housing and community options that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

How Land Privatisation has Locked People into the Growth Economy While missing from most contemporary political, economic and environmental discourse, many of the themes around land at the centre of this chapter are not new. The importance of land access and its foundational implications for economic and political freedoms can be traced back to a perspective found in the resistance to the enclosure of the commons (Hickel, 2019), and the spread of land enclosure through colonisation (Roberts, 1969). The dispossession from land stood at the heart of much political resistance to the enclosure and the industrialisation which followed. This resistance can

 NTW’s core value is well stated in the UN’s definition of sustainability: “Sustainable development: [1] is development that meets the needs of the present, [2] without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).

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be seen in the peasant riots of the time2 (Manning, 1988), and the political writings and movements associated with agrarianism: The Diggers.,3 George and Busey’s writings (1886, 1921), Tuma (1965), Akram-Lodh (2007) Howkins (2002), Oliver Goldsmith, deploring rural depopulation, (1965) and contemporary resistance movements such as Land in Our Names4 and George Monbiot’s The Land is Ours.5 (Monbiot, 1994). Marxist historians point to enclosure, or primitive accumulation, as the event that provides the foundation for class conflict, where the bourgeoisie emerged and where the English peasantry was undermined (Katz, 1993; Marx, 1981 [1867]).6 Today, it is rare to find land politicised in such rich terms. There are several interconnected reasons for this, including the enclosure of the commons and the way neoliberal rationality has economised our thinking and reduced landowners to taxpayers or vehicles for stimulating economic growth (Brown, 2015). To the extent that this paradigm is unsustainable and distributively unjust, such entrenched subjectivity requires critique and politicisation. To undertake such a critical project, we now provide a brief history of land privatisation, beginning with the enclosures that became widespread from the 16th century. We contrast access to commons with the contemporary situation dominated by the central institutions of capitalism – private property and the market. This helps us better understand how the privatisation of the commons changed the contours of political participation and reshaped political subjectivities of citizens in ways that are increasingly entrenched within the growth paradigm of political economy. In feudal England, the common was an integral segment of the estate or manor that was overseen by a lord. In this system, an individual was typically born into the allegiance of local nobility and provided labour and other forms of feudal duties to a land ‘lord’ in return for use of the lord’s land and protection from invasion. This arrangement was characteristic of Europe in the eighth century through to medieval

 ‘Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were illegally destroying enclosures. Revolts swept all over the nation, and other revolts occurred periodically throughout the century’ (Thomson, 1991, p. 237).  The Diggers wished to establish the earth ‘a common treasury for all’. They began at the conclusion of the English Civil war.  Land in Our Names (LION) is grassroots, Black-led collective committed to reparations in Britain by connecting land and climate justice with racial justice. Website: https://landinournames.community/.  Land is Ours was established in 1990 by George Monbiot. It is a British land rights movement working toward achieving access to the land. Website: https://tlio.org.uk/.  ‘By the fifteenth-century, peasant communities in England had effectively put an end to the lords’ capacity to extract an economic surplus in the form of feudal rents. Unable to maintain or reinstate the institution of serfdom, the landlords responded to their predicament by abandoning customary arrangements in favour of economic rents on their lands, in effect carrying out the so-called ‘primitive accumulation by stripping the peasants of the conventional guarantees to their holdings, reducing them to commercial tenants or agricultural wage laborers. The result was the distinctive development of agrarian capitalism in England, with its characteristic three-tiered relation among a large landlord, typically an aristocrat, a capitalist tenant farmer, who made the main economic contribution, and dispossessed peasants now relegated to proletarian status’ (Katz, 1993, p.367).

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times (Neeson, 1993). While commoner land rights were indeed restricted and far from ideal in feudal times, the extent to which land remained unexploited by the nobility allowed the continuation of ancient subsistence traditions (Yadle, 1992). However, under feudal exploitative conditions, these land rights were ultimately eroded and lost as it became profitable for the nobility to enclose the commons (Thompson, 1991). Struggling or unable to secure a livelihood off the disappearing commons, more people were driven into the cities to sell their labour, work in factories and purchase access to land – the birth of the proletariat7 and rise of capitalist social relations. This process of urbanisation is still underway today (Linebaugh, 2014). In accordance with this dispossession, E.P. Thompson states that enclosure ’made the poor strangers in their own land’ and that ‘[i]t would be fair to say that our people resisted tooth and nail against being turned into the working class’ (1991, p. 184). It was of course this European notion of private property and market modes of participation that were spread through the world by colonisation. Pre-enclosure commoners retained a form of subsistence access to land that was still direct, not tradable and not entirely subsumed by exploitative forces. It provided a context that shaped what it meant to be a good member of society – a good citizen. In this ‘commons’ conception, good economic citizenship involved performing local, collaborative and productive roles on common land. Contrary to Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ thesis (1968) – which fails to acknowledge any kind of community of users and instead sets forth a fictional unmanaged individualistic free for all system – commons have been successfully managed over countless millennia by widespread communities with complex and varied systems of boundaries, rules, social norms and sanctions against free riders (Ostrom, 1990; Basurto & Ostrom, 2009; Bollier, 2014). This economic and social form of good citizenship is remarkable in that it can be directly contrasted with the reality of the contemporary market citizen, whose access to land – and, in turn, economic, political and social existence – is primarily subsumed by the market (Hickel, 2019). The market, rather than any kind of direct relationship with land, has become the location of ‘normal’ acts of economic and political participation. It can, thus, be concluded that the perspective or rationality shaping current democratic subjectivities (as well as all other rights) is directly informed by the market paradigm (Brown, 2015). For example, public housing residents, in their use of public land and efforts at local unpaid collaboration (i.e., ‘tenant participation’ schemes), are not recognised as ‘good’ economic citizens. Instead, public tenure is constructed within a ‘welfare’ framework and, if at all possible, as a stepping-stone to acts of ‘real’ or ‘normal’ economic citizenship – such as paid work and private housing. The obvious shadow of

 Proletariat is derived from Latin meaning someone without property and whose only wealth is their labour and the labour of their children.

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this framing is that public tenure is constructed as a site of dependency and what John Flint (2003) and Zygmunt Bauman (1998) term ‘flawed’ economic citizenship. Both pre-enclosure commons and pre-colonial Indigenous subjectivities on land, housing and participation remind us that the market discourse dominating economic and democratic citizenship can be juxtaposed against another perspective and discourse. This alternative discourse contains within it notions that fundamentally reshape thinking about ‘good’ economic, political and social citizenship. Here we meet a fundamentally different ‘good’ economic citizen: one whose independence, productivity and integrity come from a direct and intimate relationship with common land and subsistence collaborative participation, rather than private land ownership and selling their labour in the market (and subsequent dependence on economic growth). This brief historical account identifies and contextualises the market rationality dominating contemporary conceptions of democracy. As argued below, it also has the potential to lay the groundwork for an alternative path, with different implications for citizenship.

What does Current Land (and Housing) Governance Mean for Degrowth and Democracy? Despite the political, economic and social freedoms presumed available in Western democracies, these do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, our freedoms must attempt to navigate and survive within a highly pressurised market context – central here being the often lifelong cost associated with rents or mortgages. While much scholarship points to various injustices and inequalities related to this market context (particularly within neoliberalism), the notion that we are nevertheless democratically free remains principally accepted in the collective ethos. To undertake a foundational critique, we are seeking to re-examine a key institution of Western liberal democracy – the idea of land privatisation. By re-politicising this particular economic institution (which is historically synonymous with Western liberal democracies (Locke, 1988 [1690]; Smith, 1970)), we seek to expose a structural obstacle to genuine human agency and participation. Our analysis explores human agency in terms of private land as an economic determinant – where citizens of capitalist economies have no option other than to secure market opportunity to gain access to land for housing, which delimits the scope of people’s political and economic freedom – shaping everything from their daily economic activities and relationships to their voting practices. As an example of the tremendous pressure faced because of land and housing costs in capitalist economies, we will now consider Australia’s long-running housing crisis, where house price inflation has outstripped income growth since the early 2000s (Wilkins and Lass, 2015). According to the Grattan Institute, median Australian

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house prices have ‘increased from around 4 times median incomes in the early 1990s to more than 7 times today (and more than 8 times in Sydney)’ (Daley et al., 2018, p. 16). This persistent housing affordability crisis has placed tremendous and unrelenting pressures on a broad gamut of Australian households – from intensifying rental affordability problems for those with lower incomes, to over-indebting and locking-out would be first home buyers (Pawson et al., 2020a; Morris, 2010; Collins, 2018). Contemporary housing scholars, such as Hal Pawson et al (2020b), recognise that this problem of housing unaffordability is: fundamentally structural – not cyclical – in nature. Yes, periodic turbulence affects prices and rents. And yes, market conditions vary greatly from place to place. Australia-wide, though, there is an underlying dynamic that – over the medium to long-term – is driving housing affordability and rental stress in one general direction only: for the worse. (para 2)

Surely, if there were a ‘structure’ we may review in this regard, it is the structure of the commodification of land, which is not so much a market good and more a social need. In the context of this tremendous and lifelong pressure to pay, our daily democratic, economic and lifestyle practices will necessarily be constrained by the reality of meeting what is a generally unavoidable mortgage/rent obligation. Meeting this obligation is no small matter and has a range of knock-on implications: affecting what a person does for work, how much they work, their need for a car, what they wear, where they source their food, and a range of other consumer habits. Within the market paradigm, where land is highly commodified, our political and economic agency or freedoms become contingent on our ability to acquiesce to markets. In this market paradigm, the degree to which we can practice aspects of degrowth are seriously constrained. In this regard, private land is pivotal to broader social relations within capitalism. This is consistent with a Marxist perspective, where alienation from land is indicative of the separation of the majority from access to the means of production more generally, resulting in market dependency for housing and many other essential goods and services (Wood, 2012). For the many households caught up in the daily struggle to make ‘ends meet,’ the reliance on jobs (derived from successful economic growth) is uncompromising. It stands to reason that, for such people, the idea of degrowth presents as antithetical to their economic and survival needs and, thus, becomes implausible. This reality has set up a powerful tension between two competing survival imperatives: economic security and ecological sustainability. Needless to say, economic security is far more immediate and personally pressing, and so routinely trumps individual and collective sustainability priorities. Ironically, even a job as a post-growth academic relies on highly carbon intensive flyin students and government revenue from mining and exporting commodities – a trade-off that keeps a roof overhead. In light of the relationship between economic growth and something as basic to survival as shelter, it is little wonder that political parties live or die by their ability to secure ‘jobs and growth.’ Since most people have normalised this well-established eco-

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nomic reality, they uncritically direct their political allegiance to growth-oriented political parties. The result is a total stalemate in terms of meaningful sustainability policy – a politics of paralysis – where the collective mandate for business as usual (economic growth) eclipses any kind of meaningful management of ecological overshoot. Even purportedly ‘progressive’ parties, like the Greens, are forced to demonstrate their electability credentials by committing to some sort of path to jobs and growth (The Greens, 2018). In this situation, a broader prefigurative degrowth movement is inevitably suffocated, and we inch ever closer to ecological collapse. Our critical point is that the market paradigm, through the privatisation of land, thwarts degrowth. Beyond critique, our positive intervention is to emphasise why changes to land governance are a fundamental prerequisite for enabling and expanding the degrowth movement (and related movements). But, in ways to be explained, our transition theory is organic and pragmatic rather than revolutionary – although, we will argue, it is not lacking the potential to be transformative. If land commons could be restored for housing, it would release people who are seeking to practice degrowth, from what is essentially the largest and most unavoidable part of their dependence on the market. Given common land, those wishing to engage in prefigurative degrowth practices would be free to focus their labour on myriad subsistence needs – from self-build housing and maintenance to food production, resource repair and share programmes. Our more nuanced theory of change is this: as more people recognise the forthcoming dangers presented by the ‘limits to growth’ predicament (Turner, 2019), we expect that the degrowth movement, or something like it, will expand more broadly into the cultural consciousness. Indeed, this is already underway (Drews & van den Bergh, 2016). As more people accept that governments and businesses are unable to lead a degrowth transition and endeavour to live materially downshifted, post-carbon lives, it is probable that they will discover that access to land is a foundational structural impediment – making transition difficult or impossible. Frustrated by this barrier to living their values, the movement will shift its focus to land rights advocacy, in order to broaden access to land, thereby enabling greater freedoms to choose a sufficiency-based way of life without such extensive and prolonged market engagement. Indeed, mandating broader access to land may become a necessary political expedient if economies enter prolonged crisis or deterioration and engender increasing unemployment and social tension (Alexander & Baumann, 2020a). If this movement were successful, people would no longer be under such constraining financial pressure to meet basic land and housing needs via extended market participation. Sufficiency-based living would be a more viable option through new land governance arrangements. This post-consumerist culture would expand the political imagination beyond growth politics and, over time, lead to more extensive institutional and structural changes in the direction of degrowth (Alexander, 2016).

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A Politically Palatable Land Strategy is Needed to Begin: From Theory to Prefigurative Politics All sustainability movements need to answer the question: how can we shelter and feed ourselves if not through (unsustainable) long-term market growth and participation? Until this question is answered, sustainability movements, including degrowth, will continue to be movements that are too often elitist, out of touch, politically alienated and sadly, hypocritical in what they demand from government, industry and, most importantly, ordinary people trying to make ends meet. In recognition of this inescapable need for inclusivity and degrowth, we will now explore a land and community development strategy that we think has the potential to be politically palatable to a wide section of the population. That is, we are choosing to be pragmatic rather than idealistic. Indeed, we believe that, if framed correctly, this strategy has the potential to provide benefits that could be attractive to progressive and conservative segments of the population. This strategy is seeking to help remedy what has become an extremely polarising social and environmental justice debate – where economic prosperity and opportunity are often in contention with environmental and social justice. In the following sections, we argue that if public land and participation experiments could begin to show potential as enabling a flourishing but low-impact mode of living, they could play a role in the provision of real-world examples of non-private property relations and a new form of degrowth opportunity/agency.

A Public Housing Degrowth Strategy In this part of the chapter, we discuss an urban degrowth strategy that has emerged in Australia called ‘Neighbourhoods that Work’ (NTW).8 As foreshadowed in the introduction, this involves linking (and ultimately expanding) existing government policies with public housing residents who could elect to secure their unemployment benefit as a ‘participation income’. For unemployed residents who choose the option, this would give them a participation income for a formal 15 hour per week commitment to community development work (Baumann & Alexander, 2019). Combining this validation of voluntary local community development work with existing public housing, while not without challenges,9 provides a starting point for those seeking to practice

 Motivated by a concern for some of the most dispossessed people in the world facing famine, the thinking behind the NTW concept was originally developd by Chris Baulman.  As part of an incremental neoliberalism, public housing has increasingly been framed as ‘transitional housing.’ In NTW’s conception, public housing will be seen less as ‘transitional’ housing if it can progressively be seen less as a welfare safety net and more as part of a viable and economically responsible direction for ‘good economic citizenship.’

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prefigurative degrowth practices and lifestyles effectively proscribed by the structural centrality of commodified land in the current market context. With access to land and housing, plus a participation income, people engaged in a NTW demonstration project would have the economic foundations to be involved in programmes related to fresh food production, shared networks, maintaining their homes, common spaces and surrounds, producing local goods to meet their needs from local resources, participating in a range of collaborative projects, and perhaps even participating in home building projects under guidance. If successful, examples like this would show that access to land liberated people from consumer lifestyles and market ‘lock-in,’ which could draw more people into such collaborative living experiments that were consistent with the degrowth imaginary and its ‘grassroots’ theory of transition (Baumann, Alexander & Burdon, 2020). Over time, this type of social organisation and collaboration could be seen to be both viable and desirable, with the degrowth economy of sufficiency laying down roots and flourishing as the growth economy receded through natural forces and under its own unsustainable weight.

Validating Public Housing Participation Despite decades of neoliberal policies, many countries around the world maintain some heritage of public housing (or ‘social housing,’ which includes housing managed and, in some instances, owned by a community organisation for a specific social purpose). In some public housing communities, particularly public housing estates, residents already self-select to participate in community development programmes (sometimes under the umbrella of ‘tenant participation’), such as community food gardens, resources repair/ share programmes, housing management, maintenance and, in the UK, even housing construction (Hedgehog Self Build Housing Co-op, 1996). In this way, public housing provides an example – albeit limited and sometimes problematic (Baumann, 2011; McKee, 2008) – of publicly owned land (public commons in fact) for a form of community development that is local, cooperative and not inherently defined by dependence on market growth. Central to liberating the agency of public residents who wish to participate in local community development is the way their participation is validated (authorised, given status and economically supported). In the Australian context, one existing policy setting that could be harnessed to help advance this validation, can be found within Centrelink’s10 policies. Distinct from mandatory work for the dole policy, Cen-

 Centrelink is an Australian Federal government statutory authority delivering services such as income support. As an employment agency, Centrelink also makes sure those on benefits are undertaking activities related to finding paid employment.

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trelink’s voluntary work allows unemployed public housing residents, who have been unemployed for over 12 months, and who are over 55, to volunteer in a formal 15hour weekly commitment to local community development work of their own choice – as a valid option for fulfilling mutual obligations11 (earning participants their income benefit as an ongoing participation income). For now, for those under 55, satisfying mutual obligations with voluntary work must be approved by a Centrelink officer, and it is usually permitted only if it can be seen as leading to paid work – and usually only for a limited time of 6–12 months. In this voluntary work arrangement, unemployed participants are accountable for 15 hours per week in their choice of a range of neighbourhood programmes that are run by a government approved organisation, like a neighbourhood centre. Under the auspice of such a grassroots organisation, NTW’s community-led management process12 also seeks to supports participants to initiate their own neighbourhood programmes (Baumann, 2016, 2011). While voluntary work for the dole is currently a policy that is not well engaged, we believe that it is an existing policy setting that could be harnessed to make local collaboration in public housing much more feasible for those residents who may wish to voluntarily participate in their own local community development as a way to satisfy Centrelink’s income benefit requirements. It could be developed to help liberate residents’ productive agency in this important area of localised, collaborative and community-oriented post-growth development. Such community programmes could include facilitating tool and other resource sharing, food gardens and playing a role in maintaining their homes and neighbourhood projects – to improve their own environment. Such localised self-help programmes are central to degrowth – returning cultural value, cooperation and strategic housing and food security to neighbourhood. To this end, the NTW strategy is working (and seeking support) to mobilise this policy setting, by combining it with other key supportive structures in a fit for purpose proposal for any unemployed person who may wish to choose it. The innovation of NTW’s proposal is that it would lend a vision, good citizenship status and key support to those seeking out this opportunity – and subsequently, anybody seeking a degrowth opportunity. While the housing affordability and security offered by public forms of housing means that public tenants are far better placed to take advantage of this opportunity, the design of NTW is intended to support any unemployed person to choose this form of recognised and supported community development as an alternative to job search or welfare dependence. The potential is for willing residents to create local or community-based activity to supplement their

 Mutual Obligations is an Australian government policy term. It is used to describe the contractual obligations the unemployed have to earn their income support. These obligations can include seeking paid work and/or engaging in activities such as vocational study, work for the dole and volunteering.  To coordinate its work, NTW participants will use a purpose-built management process called ‘Village’ (Baumann 2016). See: https://ntwonline.weebly.com/how-we-manage.html.

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needs and, indeed, minimise the need for income via the market. Such supplementing is, of course, incremental and, in the meantime, unemployed participants would be no worse off (Alexander & Baumann, 2020b, 2020c). An exciting aspect about this seemingly radical idea is that it is not actually particularly radical. With the right support, it can commence immediately – given that the policy settings are already in place to allow some unemployed public residents to self-select into voluntary local development programmes. Such an opportunity, with the right structures (including an appropriate self-management process) could show that access to land plus local self-help skills and a participation income could help build new forms of genuinely sustainable development beyond the market.

An ‘Active Participation’ Framing of Public Housing Among those eligible for public housing and voluntary work (as a satisfaction of mutual obligations), there will be many who would simply not be interested in the sort of participation NTW is attempting to encourage. This option would in no way interfere with these peoples’ income or housing entitlements. To mandate involvement in NTW, as programmes like work for the dole (Australia) and Workfare (UK) do, would be antithetical to NTW, and would completely undermine its ethical and practical integrity. However, we believe there are people who would be interested in choosing NTW as a way to meet requirements for their government income benefit and find a creative role in their locality. In the way that NTW could give ongoing status and validity to local community development on public land, it is entirely distinct from market-centric mutual obligation policy – constructed, as it is, around the idea that the market is the sole site of valid economic citizenship. Some of these NTW volunteers would inevitably take the new skills learnt and use them as a stepping-stone into paid work and possibly even private housing, should that be their goal. For others, who might enjoy the option provided by this alternative and sustainable path to security, or for those who might otherwise face long-term unemployment, NTW could provide a fulfilling, ongoing housing and participation option. Progressively, as new skills are found, this group could begin to demonstrate a new type of productive and political agency that is consistent with the degrowth imaginary, as well as being sustainable, in terms of social and ecological justice (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987). While such a new path to security is certainly radical to some degree, at risk of appearing naïve, we would tentatively but pragmatically suggest that providing those alienated from the market with such an alternative site of valid participation might also represent a shift acceptable to many on the political right. They would likely see peoples’ involvement as a step toward skill development and potential market involvement – as it would inevitably be for some. Even for those who might continue in

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public housing and voluntary work, conservatives would likely see such participation as a more active, and less passive, form of welfare. If self-selecting participants could demonstrate the economic, social and environmental value of their participation, this voluntary work policy setting could ultimately be expanded to include a further easing up of restrictions on those under 55 years old who might choose it in the longerterm.13

An Alternative (Degrowth) Participation Subjectivity In essence, NTW’s strategy is that, in lieu of market engagement, public housing and community participation could be organised (for those willing) so as to facilitate the emergence of local and increasingly self-reliant community development – a form of participation consistent with pre-market commons. If such a space proved productive, the identity we give to public housing tenants who choose to participate could begin to be uplifted and even celebrated alongside market forms of housing and employment. Indeed, if these self-selecting residents could be better supported, their status in our market-centric society, and how they might conceive of themselves, could gradually move from being regarded as ‘social dependants’ to pioneers of a new type of local, cooperative and sustainable form of development. As we have indicated, an important step in developing this strategy involves addressing the problematic way public housing is understood within neoliberal market framing. In a market society, good economic citizens are taught to recognise themselves (and others) primarily by two key hallmarks of economic achievement: paid work and private housing (Flint, 2002; Pateman, 1989). Flawed citizens can, conversely, be identified by the lack of these two key hallmarks (Baumann, 2016; Flint, 2003; Bauman, 1976, 1998). As Bauman (1998, p. 614) outlines: ‘individuals unable or unwilling to undertake these ‘normalised’ acts of consumption become conceptualised as flawed consumers, with a particular focus on the deficiency [dependency] of those reliant on allocated, as opposed to chosen, goods.’ Where an absolute binary of market integration or welfare dependence has been established, dependency subjectivities have inevitably emerged as both a defence and a necessity by people alienated by market-based constructions of participation and housing (Baumann, 2016). An alternative perspective holds that collaboration on non-private land is, in itself, a valid expression of productive or active citizenship. Despite it being rendered invisible by the full gamut of market actors, collaboration on commons is humanity’s oldest and most widespread mode of productive operation (Ostrom, 1990; GibsonGraham, 2010; Bollier, 2014). For Indigenous Australians, it underpinned their way of

 NTW is undertaking a campaign to ease the restrictions around voluntary work as a satisfaction of mutual obligations: https://ntwonline.weebly.com/under-55s-approval.html.

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life for tens of thousands of years (Common Ground, 2020; Foley & Anderson, 2006; Rose, 2000). Similarly, in Britain, people lived and locally collaborated on common land for many thousands of years before it became enclosed (Thompson, 1991).

Vision of Organic Transformation Empirical studies show that some simple living communities (Lockyer, 2017) and strategies (Trainer et al., 2019) can reduce ecological impacts by up to 90% or more, which is arguably the scale of downshifting needed to bring developed nations within sustainable limits of the planet (Trainer and Alexander, 2019). In NTW’s living arrangement, the opportunity of public housing and many benefits of local collaborative development make a small income sufficient and arguably even desirable (Boyle, 2009). In this way, NTW would be an example of degrowth that would put those participating within the realms of globally sustainable resource use.14 In essence, NTW could give people a productive participation option that relies on their access to land and local collaborative productivity – rather than welfare dependency subjectivities or their success in the competitive housing and employment markets. For the poorest in the world (the unemployed and insecurely housed in the developed North and many more in the Global South), the policy planks of NTW (secure land and housing and an opportunity to make a globally sustainable income level stretch further through localised collective sufficiency) would offer greater (but sustainable) material opportunity. Many of us in the developed North are simply too embedded in the market to come to terms with the sort of degrowth that is required for a true path to global resource justice and sustainability (Trainer, 2016). It is likely that those market subjects that are relatively successful will mostly continue to place hope in technology – and the unreasoned hope that perverse levels of consumerism and growth can be made sustainable and equitable for the whole world through high-tech renewable innovations (Hickel & Kallis, 2020). Some may certainly follow the lead set by a project like NTW – if they were to understand the necessity of degrowth and were given the opportunity to overcome the structural impediment of lifelong land debt. However, it is likely that many others will need to directly experience the limits to growth – and the loss of opportunity engendered by economic and environmental crisis – to extract them from consumer culture. Because of this, we think that the poor leading the more affluent into examples of commoning and a socially and en-

 If we assume that income is a rough proxy for environmental impact (University of Leeds 2020), we can also say that the income available on Australian government income benefits (which is 15% of the Australian average income) represents the seven-fold decease in developed world carbon emissions being called for by the UN Environment Programme (2020).

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vironmentally sustainable future is the most likely scenario – if the poor were given a way out of their poverty through a scheme like NTW. This strategy has nothing to do with any naïve belief that the poor are somehow more principled in their decisionmaking. It simply acknowledges the fact that, for the poor and dispossessed, the opportunity to achieve land security, a participation income and the benefits of local collaboration, represent a material opportunity – rather than any kind of voluntary simplicity or relinquishment of wealth. While this strategy will necessarily begin with the unemployed in public housing, it could be expanded to include others alienated from the market: the ever-growing victims of the automation of jobs, the globalisation of labour – such as manufactured goods being increasingly produced in developing nations15 (Borland, 2016) – or the decline in polluting industries such as fossil fuels (Trainer, 2012, 2016). Perhaps even more significantly, this strategy could help model a path for many in the Global South – who require a model for housing security and appropriate development. As the serious unsustainability of market growth becomes increasingly problematic, NTW seeks to be one model that can be activated within the social and economic vacuum that will inevitably grow. In this scenario, it is estimated that governments could transition organically, local participation on public land (NTW) being a far more economically and socially viable option than passive welfare (including a UBI16) (Alexander & Baumann, 2020a). An option like NTW is also more viable than widespread social unrest – with the political bedlam, conflict and security threats such social unrest would inevitably generate. Scaling-up new land governance arrangements to the point where they influence the broader economy would require a gradual expansion in public housing. As we have seen with Labor’s Housing Future Fund (Australian Labor Party, 2023), we feel that it is not unlikely that the economic and social difficulties that lie ahead will prompt just such an increase in public housing – which could be made far more economically and socially viable if combined with an ‘active participation’ programme like NTW. COVID-19 has already highlighted Australia’s public housing shortage – prompting social welfare advocates (Australian Council of Social Services, 2020), unions and the building industry (Mealey, 2020) to recognise the problem. The stimulus following the Great Depression and the end of World War II offers a precedent: it led to the ‘golden age’ of Australian public housing (Green, 2016).

 For example, studies by Siu and Jaimovich (2015) emphasise that the ongoing decline in manufacturing employment and disappearance of other routine jobs is causing the current low rates of employment.  Unlike the Universal Basic Income (UBI), this reestablishment of land and skills is not essentially dependent on market growth, because (while it does have a small market relationship) it ultimately draws on the wealth of land and community cooperation – not on market taxation revenue for redistribution (economic growth).

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Conclusion In light of the broad consensus that degrowth transition is most likely to occur from the grassroots up (see D’Alisa et al., 2015), it is apparent that certain politico-economic barriers, faced by this potential groundswell, have not been well addressed (Strunz & Schindler, 2018; de Jesus and Mendonça, 2018). To respond to this gap in degrowth transition scholarship, this chapter has sought to demonstrate the way in which costs associated with land and housing function as a powerful economic determinant, locking people into sustained, but not sustainable, market participation. Our contribution to the literature has been to analyse this terrain, exploring the way in which land privatisation (enclosure) instigated and now continues to compel long-term participation in an unsustainable growth economy. The second half of the chapter explored the NTW project as one possible strategy to address this structural obstacle to degrowth transition. As an innovative but politically palatable policy approach, public housing would be coupled with a ‘participation income’ to create a new pathway to help balance the social and ecological downside of our current growth reliant form of economic citizenship. Such a pathway would seek to establish a modern and urban incarnation of the age-old human settlement pattern of local collaboration on common land – reinvigorating an Indigenous, premarket form of good economic citizenship. As the unsustainability of markets becomes increasingly problematic, NTW would be one model that can be activated within the social and economic vacuum that will inevitably grow. In this transition strategy, it is estimated that governments would require such a post-growth policy strategy – local participation on public land being a far more economically and socially desirable option than unsustainable costs associated with passive welfare and serious social unrest. Without assuming that we have joined all the necessary dots, we invite readers to consider that NTW’s public housing strategy could be explored and further developed as one possible way we might overcome a significant obstacle in the path of the needed degrowth transition. Beyond this example, we suggest that experiments with ways to broaden post-market access to land ought to be given more attention by those who appreciate the urgent need for post-growth pathways. It is time to experiment with new frameworks that can increase access to land without having to rely on the growth economy, empowering more people to explore lifestyles of reduced consumption, increased self-sufficiency and local economic collaboration, thereby enabling a prefigurative degrowth movement to build new pathways within the shell of latestage capitalism.

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Chloe Broadfield

14 Agroecology as Degrowth in Practice: Resistance Rooted in Human-Nature Relationality Abstract: Significant synergies can be identified between degrowth and agroecology. Whilst degrowth re-imagines economy and society to prioritise ecosystem health and social justice, the agroecological movement works towards these outcomes in the context of agriculture and food systems. Owing to its emphasis on small-scale, ecological and local production, agroecology is an example of degrowth in practice. Yet beyond being an approach to production, agroecology is a way-of-being that has long resisted the capitalist development model and the myth of human/nature separation at its foundations. Despite its dedication to non-capitalist ways-of-being, degrowth has been criticised for its failure to redress the subordination of nature to society. The centrality of human-nature relationality to agroecological resistance may therefore yield insights for the degrowth movement. The research was conducted through in-depth interviews and participant observation with farmers in the region of Granada, Spain. A thematic analysis revealed agroecology as a thriving example of degrowth in practice, with experiences of the human-nature interrelationship underpinning key degrowth concepts of voluntary simplicity, care, reproductive and meaningful work, eco-localisation, sharing and non-material conceptions of well-being. Keywords: agroecology, farming, more-than-human, ontology, relationality, subsistence, well-being

Beyond the Social Imaginary: Challenging the Ontological Foundations of Growth Central to degrowth’s endeavour to re-imagine economy and society is its commitment to the ‘decolonisation of the social imaginary’ (Latouche, 2009, p. 13). This is a concept outlined by Serge Latouche, recognising the transformative possibilities held by non-capitalist/non-Western cultural imaginaries. Degrowth thus draws inspiration from distinct communities of practice that demonstrate alternatives to the high-consumption and individualist lifestyles entrenched

Chloe Broadfield, Independent Researcher https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-019

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by the capitalist paradigm. Its vision, broadly, is one in which well-being is decoupled from consumption and re-oriented instead towards concepts of ‘simplicity,’ ‘sharing,’ ‘conviviality’ and ‘care’ (Kothari, Demaria & Acosta, 2014, p. 369). However, Latouche’s emphasis upon the social imaginary has been critiqued for overstating the cultural and symbolic dimensions of capitalism, whilst neglecting the embodied and material realities upon which it is built (Leff, 2010; Feola, 2019). Moore (2017) emphasises that capitalism is not merely a social, but also an ontological formation. To understand what Moore means by this, we can look to Sullivan (2017), who explains how ontologies are ‘made through interactions between human and other-thanhuman agencies’ (p. 224, original emphasis). The ontology enacted by the capitalist paradigm, then, is one in which nature is separate from society, thus justifying its exploitation in the name of capitalist gain (Moore, 2017; Richter, 2019). Whilst degrowth recognises humanity as part of a much larger living system, asserting that the economy should be embedded within the global ecosystem, much of the scholarship continues to frame the living world as ‘materials,’ ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs,’ echoing the language of capitalist economics (Richter, 2019). On this basis the movement has been criticised for implicitly reproducing the same dualist ontology upon which the capitalist edifice is constructed (Escobar, 2015). As such, degrowth has failed to harness broad support from environmental justice movements in the Global South. Rodríguez-Labajos et al. (2019) consider degrowth to be anthropocentric and irreconcilable with Indigenous ontologies in which nature and society are not separate, but inextricably bound in emergent processes of co-becoming. Failure to address its perpetuation of a dualist ontology therefore represents a significant gap within the degrowth literature that is likely to impede its success, not only in garnering broader support, but also in effecting lasting transformation (Richter, 2019). The subjugation of nature has been fundamental to the success of the capitalist project and only its reversal is likely to dismantle the growth economy from its foundations (Moore, 2017). Addressing this within degrowth research implies considering nature not as finite resource, but as an unfolding element of distinct socio-ecological environments (Paulson, 2015). This shift in focus sees the challenge of overcoming growth dependency as inextricable from nature-society relations and highlights the possibility for existing relational ways of living-with nature to yield insights for enacting post-growth worlds.

Agroecology: Degrowth in Practice and Worlds Beyond Dualism Agroecology is a method of farming that optimises interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment and defies the economic rationality driving industrial agriculture to prioritise social reproduction and ecological health (Altieri & Rosset, 2017; van

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der Ploeg, 2020). Rooted in experiences of human-nature interactions, agroecology is a relational way-of-being, which Giraldo claims ‘can well be a part of the knowledge of interdependencies that we would do well to learn fully, in order to inhabit the Earth that we have uninhabited’ (Giraldo, 2019, p.119). Agroecology and the ways of life which it supports are of particular relevance to degrowth because they exist in spite of, and in constant resistance to, a veritable assault from global agricultural policies centred on economic growth. Since the end of WW2, the roll-out of industrial agribusiness has been a pivotal element to the expansion of the growth-driven development model. The impact this has had on agroecological ways of life equates to what Giraldo has termed an ‘ontology-cide’ (Giraldo, 2019, p. 56). Industrial agriculture outflanks natural processes with chemicals and mechanisation, usurping the biological limits to profit extraction and locking farmers into costly dependencies on external inputs (Goodman et al., 1987). Farmers are transformed into competitive economic actors by rural extension programs and the emphasis on use-value in subsistence cultures is colonised by exchange-value (McMichael, 2005). As a result, traditional practices of cooperative labour, seed saving and care for the commons are devalued and the organic ties between farmers and their land are severed, leading to the fragmentation of rural communities and the displacement of traditional knowledge by the agricultural technologies of Western science (McMichael, 2005; Nally, 2010; Sexton, 2018). Yet where agroecological practices are taking root again they are transforming the material, political and socio-economic landscapes of agriculture, creating new realities rooted in care, autonomy and voluntary simplicity, that broadly align with the vision of degrowth. Beyond this, agroecology shapes relational ways-of-being, rooted in reciprocal human-nature interactions, that diverge from the capitalist ontology of separation. Agroecology has begun to draw attention within the degrowth literature as a lowimpact mode of production capable of reducing material throughput in the agricultural sector (Gomiero, 2018). However, the broader convergences between agroecology and degrowth, together with the role of human-nature relationality in shaping alternatives to the growth paradigm, have received limited exploration.

Research Objective and Strategy In order to examine the ways in which agroecology might inform the theory of degrowth, with a particular focus on the role of ontology in shaping post-growth worlds, the author engaged with a number of farmers practicing agroecology in the Alpujarra mountain range in southern Spain, with the intention of answering the question: In what ways does agroecological farming and the human-nature relationships it produces, shape subjectivities, practices and value systems compatible with degrowth?

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The research was carried out through semi-structured interviews lasting 60–90 minutes, relying on open-format questions which dealt broadly with the role of agroecology in the farmers’ lives. The data was subsequently analysed with particular attention to reference of non-human relations and entities to draw out key themes. The researcher also requested to work with the farmers on their land to carry out participant observation. This was an optional element of the research, in sensitivity to participants’ concerns about physical interaction in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Eleven participants were recruited to the study and four of these took part in participant observation, lasting two to four hours. Where possible, participant observation yielded first-hand insights to human-nature interrelationships which may not have been easily elicited or expressed at the interview stage. Five of the participants were subsistence farmers, two were producing for sale at local markets and the remaining four produced primarily for personal consumption and either sold or exchanged any surplus within the local community. All of the farmers were growing on less than an acre, either independently or with a partner and sometimes with the help of volunteers. Pseudonyms are used throughout the following presentation of the data.

Data Presentation: Key Themes and Analysis Care The embodied experiences between farmers and the animals, plants and insects with which they cohabit shape subjectivities rooted in an ethics of care. For Kothari, Demaria & Acosta (2014), care is a central notion around which to centre a degrowth transition and there is a common emphasis on re-valourising the often unpaid care and reproductive work that supports the mainstream economy (Kallis, 2018). Natalie described the affective experience of planting trees and the relationship of responsibility and care that is created: You’re part of this whole amazing process . . . and somehow just the process of doing it makes you more connected because you’re digging in the soil . . . and also you’ve gotta go and water that tree, you know you’re creating a kind of a link and a bond with your environment.

Many of the activities carried out by the farmers involve responding to the needs of non-human others. Moving across their farm, Sara observed each crop and responded intuitively. In the greenhouse they noticed some cucumber plants getting too big for their pots and set about transplanting them. They asked the plants when they had finished – ‘Are you ok?’, indicating their sense of relationship to the plants and concern for their well-being. Before Jake’s interview they first brought their courgette plants out into the sun after a night indoors to keep them protected from the cold. They

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stated that: ‘For me it’s very much a two-way relationship, not just something that I receive from the plants – and I think that relationship becomes deeper over time.’ Miguel demonstrated a similar sense of reciprocity in relation to the beneficial insects on their farm, which minimise harm to their crop by predating on pests. In return, they keep the edges of their fields uncultivated to provide them with a refuge. Miriam described how their experience of farming has instilled a sense of reciprocity with the rest of nature: Through being and producing food on the land there are certain values that I think that I need to pass on to my children . . . .For instance there was one time when my son was in the garden – he was with a friend . . . and there were nests in the tree and he said – ‘If I show you where this nest is you mustn’t disturb it, you mustn’t destroy it’ . . . And that care that he had for that creature in the tree was something that I had encouraged in him and that he saw for himself by having a connection with nature. So, even as a little boy, those values come over that we are part of it all and we need to take care of it and it will take care of us.

It was common amongst the farmers to employ a language of care when describing their relationship to non-human others. Vera described ‘looking after the seeds,’ whilst Giulia and Vincent both referred to ‘looking after’ the land. For Maya care is central to agroecological farming: You should be caring about the land, about the people you are working with, about everything that is living really on the land. Even the things that are attacking your plants – and you should get to know them . . . really know what they are doing, to understand them.

Maya runs a commercial farm which is also dedicated to the integration of migrants and refugees, supporting them to learn about farming. In a separate project, Miguel is teaching agroecology at a local school that supports unaccompanied minors arriving in Spain. They are helping the young people to cultivate a plot of land, skilling them up in agroecological practices and enhancing their prospective labour opportunities. These projects demonstrate how the ethics of care embedded in agroecology also translate to acts of solidarity within the human community.

Well-Being A number of interviews revealed non-material sources of life-satisfaction, often arising from a sense of connectedness with the rest of nature. This aligns with degrowth’s search for materially sustainable experiences of well-being that encompass meaning and purpose (described as eudaemonic), going beyond the hedonism entrenched by the growth economy in which living well is synonymous with material affluence (Helne & Hirvilammi, 2017; Kallis, 2017). Vincent stated that: You know if you go to the bottom of things and you think about things clearly, happiness is not owning many things and keeping on acquiring things and wealth, happiness is something

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completely different. Happiness can be just sitting down or leaning down on your field and looking at the world . . . it’s a question of being in symbiosis with what’s around you.

Natalie described the sense of awe they feel at being in active relationship with the land, which enables them to feel a part of its ongoing processes of becoming: ‘When you’re planting a tree, it actually is an amazing thing . . . you know the landscape is changing, and it’s like you’re part of a whole creative, growing, blossoming process, which is quite incredible really.’ It was common for the participants to describe having discovered a sense of belonging through farming. Miriam described the emotional resilience and perspective this has brought them: If my head’s all over the place . . . I can go to the land, work with the soil, work with the plants . . . . It really does take that pressure off . . . and makes me just feel like well I’m just part of it all . . . It grounds me, it gives me some sense of belonging. . . . I don’t feel lost anymore. I feel like yeah, I’ve found the place where I belong.

Carolina similarly stated that ‘there’s a very strong but subtle sensation . . . that this is the place where I belong – a feeling of harmony, of satisfaction.’ For Jake, growing food brings them into ‘deep relationship’ with the land and they described how living a life defined by these experiences of interconnectedness has brought them a sense of purpose: ‘I myself when I was growing up . . . felt quite lost . . . and the worth and the value that I’ve experienced whilst being here . . . it’s so powerful, it’s so, so valuable and can make you just feel like, there’s a reason that you’re here.’ These experiences suggest that opportunities for integrating with the rest of nature could provide a source of meaning and purpose in life that might enhance wellbeing and mitigate against possible adverse effects resulting from material downscaling in a degrowth transition.

Voluntary Simplicity Of the 11 participants, seven claimed to depend on low levels of consumption in order to meet their needs, revealing a prevalence of careful attitudes towards consumption that often centred around making do with less. This reflects the key degrowth ideals of voluntary simplicity and frugal abundance, which characterise the vision for a society in which well-being is decoupled from resource-intensive consumption (Latouche, 2009; Alexander, 2015). Reflecting on their sense of what feels necessary to lead a good life, Natalie stated: ‘I feel like I don’t really lack any comforts. I don’t need to have central heating; I don’t need to have air-conditioning and a television and Wi-Fi. I don’t need or even really want those things.’

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Maya expressed simply: ‘I have to say I don’t consume very much in general ever,’ whilst Sara said: ‘I don’t need a lot of money to survive . . . I don’t spend a lot of money on myself.’ Six out of seven felt their approach to consumption had shifted as a direct result of adopting agroecological farming. Vincent stated: I cannot say, ‘Well I’m gonna start farming ecologically, but I’m not gonna change my consuming’ . . . You know, everything interacts, so it changes you. You start looking at what you’re buying in supermarkets . . . You’ve got to make choices that are coherent with your lifestyle, your beliefs, renounce some things that are not necessary.

For Giulia, the adoption of an agroecological lifestyle enables them to live with less and demonstrate to others the benefits of a frugal life: I think to me it’s quite important to show that things can be done in a different way, and still have a fulfilling life. You don’t have to always try to go for more . . . this kind of craving for more is what I think is destroying us really.

Reproductive and Meaningful Work When discussing their approach to work, many of the participants expressed attitudes diverging from the capitalist norm of profit maximisation that drives economic growth. Five of the 11 participants practice agroecology exclusively as subsistence farming, whilst the remaining six also sell their produce. The fact of depending on farming as a source of income however did not equate to a prioritisation of profit extraction. Five of the six commercial farmers highlighted non-monetary values as important motivation for their work. When asked whether farming was for them a financial imperative, Miguel responded by saying: ‘Financial and quality of life – dignity, that you can live from what you’re doing . . . that you feel good, eat well and those you’re providing with food eat well too. Sometimes that’s a lot more satisfying than the financial part.’ Vincent similarly granted greater importance to producing good quality food which they can sell at a fair price: My approach is not an approach of a big money business, it’s more self-sufficiency, getting good produce for my family . . . For the olive oil I produce I created a network of people where I sell my extra production and . . . that I’m trying to do on the basis of maintaining a price which is reasonable both for them and for me.

For Maya, agroecology is a direct statement against what they perceive to be the impoverished pursuit of profit in growth-driven enterprise: All those people who have very hectic jobs and just have half an hour to go to the supermarket to buy a plastic box with the salad that doesn’t have any taste . . . I think what we are trying to do through agroecology is to change this. If you have time for

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food, you have time for your life, you have time for yourself. And it’s not . . . just about producing . . . to accumulate money. There is also an unwillingness to partake in unappealing work or to increase productivity for mere economic motivation. Vera stated that: ‘You want to be doing things that you enjoy, whether it’s for money or not, I don’t want to be doing something that I don’t enjoy just for money, just to pay bills.’ This was echoed by Giulia who said: I’m doing what I like, not being frustrated doing something else for money. Instead of having a job that makes me have some of the things I want in life through money, I don’t have money to be honest. We have very, very little money, but we have the things that we like to do.

These attitudes demonstrate a significant resistance to the social organisation of labour within the capitalist political economy, which creates ever-greater dependencies on waged work that in turn comes to be the dominating feature of people’s lives (Büchs & Koch, 2019; Barca, 2019). In a further inversion of the capitalist logic, Giulia’s approach to work is guided not by ever-greater efficiency, but by sufficiency – a concept central to degrowth’s reimagining of labour (Kallis, 2018). Giulia produces a chilli sauce which they sell predominantly in the region of Andalucía and in spite of achieving great success, they have chosen not to expand production: I used to rent a place from a guy that’s become quite a big producer of hot sauces in Granada, and he says ‘You’ve got a really good product, you should like push it and go for it!’ . . . And it’s like, yeah but I don’t want to, you know . . . I enjoy doing it, I enjoy seeing it, I enjoy talking about it, and it’s great. But it needs to be a little niche market . . . It’s like, do I wanna do that every day? Are you mad? What for? Because I need to have stacks? . . . I don’t want to have stacks.

For Giulia the value of their work is not merely financial but also social and relational. They are able to see their product on the shelves, feel a connection to it and engage with people about it. Similarly, Natalie regarded the benefits of their work in terms of the social and environmental value it produces: What I do to sustain myself, and provide for my basic needs, feels like the right thing. It feels worthwhile, it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, it doesn’t feel like it’s harming anybody else, or hopefully, not harming the planet or the environment that I’m living in . . . .It’s about people working towards the same aim . . . doing something that’s beneficial and creative.

Personal fulfilment in the dominant growth imaginary is often shaped by ideas of status and career success. For Natalie, however, fulfilling one’s potential is derived from creating alternatives to capitalist employment that centre on cooperation, purpose and creativity. Natalie’s relationship to work also diverges from the capitalist norm in which the private and public realms of life remain separate (Singh, 2019): ‘I don’t really have a definition, a distinction between what is work and what is my life in a way . . . It’s not like there’s a line drawn between work, play, rest – it’s all kind of the same.’

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This was echoed by Vincent who stated: Sometimes people say ‘What, all your life you work and you’re working all the time.’ And it’s like yeah but do I really call it work or am I just living my life the way I want it? And if it means that I’m waking up early and I’m going back home and it’s quite late – it’s because I’ve had an interesting day.

These examples demonstrate how agroecology provides the farmers with an alternative to alienated wage labour in the capitalist system, producing not only material goods but social, relational and environmental value that brings purpose and meaning in life.

Eco-Localisation Localised production and consumption circuits are a central tenet of agroecology, mirroring degrowth’s concern with ‘eco-localisation’ as a means to minimise the environmental impacts of international trade (Dittmer, 2013). Autonomy, self-reliance and decentralisation emerged as key organising principles defining the farmers’ localisation efforts and in this respect their experience reflects Lloveras et al.’s conception of eco-localisation as a degrowth strategy not solely for the curbing of material consumption, but as a ‘radical democratic project’ (Lloveras et al., 2021, p. 1). Indicative of agroecology’s positioning against the monopoly of industrial agribusiness, many of the farmers are focused on minimising external inputs in order to meet their own resource requirements. Maya talked explicitly about undermining the monopoly of corporate agri-giants in nearby Almería by producing seedlings for local distribution, whilst Vera described working with a closed-loop system typical of agroecological farming, involving planting from seed, harvesting, preserving the produce, saving seed and working with animals to replenish soil fertility. Miguel transitioned to agroecology in recent years having previously worked with industrial monocultures and they emphasised the sense of autonomy they had gained: ‘I used to think that if I wasn’t controlling everything, and [working] with the agricultural technician, I wasn’t going to have a successful crop. But now I’ve realised I can do it – I can do it and it’s better every day.’

Participatory Certification Scheme Many of the farmers are also working together on initiatives to enhance the autonomy of their local network. Eight of the 11 farmers are part of participatory certification schemes which enable them to forego expensive certification seals (e.g., organic, fair trade) designed primarily for agro-export (Altieri & Toledo, 2011). There’s no financial requirement for joining the schemes and they are based on a principle of trust. Vera explained:

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You have to have a visit every year to your own farm and you have to do a minimum of two visits to other people’s farms. And we walk around and see what they’re doing, look at their principles and practices and then we’ll certificate them, so basically we say ‘yeah we vouch for them, they’re completely ecological and we agree with their practices and their principles.’

They went on to describe how the farm visits also serve as an opportunity to learn from one another and exchange resources, demonstrating how peer-to-peer learning and sharing can enhance collective autonomy and minimise dependencies on capitalist systems of provision: It’s really nice, it’s social and you learn loads from each other as well, you can ask – ‘Why do you do that? What are you doing here?’ And you can learn a lot, and obviously take cuttings and swap a few seeds on the way.

The group also joins together to sell their produce at a market stall in the region’s capital and take it in turns to go: I like to go, but if I don’t go, I’ll just send my little box of seeds that I sell there . . . I don’t have to go every single time, so we really support each other, share the costs. It’s really great.

Maya is part of an initiative to extend the participatory guarantee system to farmers across the country in a bid to establish a state level network. This indicates that a focus on the local does not necessarily imply closing-off and becoming atomised – a criticism that has often been levelled at localist perspectives (Mocca, 2020). This example demonstrates how the local can instead signify a link within a horizontal solidarity network that strengthens collective autonomy from the capitalist system. Inter-local networks such as this are put forward within the degrowth literature as a fundamental means to overcome local atomisation (Cattaneo, 2015).

Seed Bank Six of the 11 participants are also involved in a seed bank initiated by Miriam and Vera. The project arose from a desire to reduce the costs and dependencies of farming and subsequently to encourage others to save their own seed too. Vera also emphasised the importance of the seed bank for ensuring local resilience and adaptation capacity: ‘With environmental changes and climactic changes, you know different varieties perform in different circumstances, and it’s really important that we’ve got diversity, so that . . . anything that the world throws at us we’ll be able to grow something.’ In line with this goal, the organisers of the seed bank place a strong emphasis on knowledge-sharing: ‘You have the means of survival if you have your seed. Because then you can grow – you don’t need to go to the shops to buy your seed.’ The seed bank operates on the basis of exchange, whereby those taking from the bank are expected to save and add seed to the store, so that it never expires. Nonethe-

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less, it’s possible to obtain seeds and leave a donation. During the Coronavirus lockdown when local garden centres closed down, the seed bank experienced a huge surge in people taking this option. Vera described the impact this had: ‘Someone called me and said you better come and get your donation tin because there’s an awful lot of money in it. And that’s when I went over and I was like: “The seeds are gone.”’ When others from the organising group suggested putting out more seeds, Vera responded saying: ‘No, we’re not putting any more seeds out – I’m gonna put a sign up saying if you don’t bring seeds back this year, there won’t be any next year.’ That the local seed bank became such a vital source of support at a time when capitalist systems of provision became temporarily unavailable is perhaps the starkest indicator of the importance such an initiative might hold in the context of degrowth. The group subsequently organised a series of seed saving workshops and reflecting on the experience Vera stated, ‘I think it was quite a wake up call for people to think they need to learn to look after themselves.’ For Vera it was a matter of ‘responsibility to share with people, to show them,’ but also an imperative to encourage others to take on a similar sense of responsibility and to have the capacity to do so. This indicates how the experience of farming and seed saving informs a sense of urgency and duty in relation to self-provisioning, highlighting the possible role such experiences might play in shaping the skills and attitudes for self-reliance that could support the implementation of eco-localisation as a radical democratic project.

Skills and Attitude for Self-Reliance Beyond Agriculture In many instances, the skills and determination of the farmers to enhance autonomy and self-reliance translate beyond their farming activities. Miriam observed that following an agroecological lifestyle compels them to find creative solutions to the problems they encounter: It can be hard not to be able to go – I can rely on this, or I can just go to the bank and spend my way out of this problem. You can’t do that – there are no shortcuts . . . It makes you think in a certain way, and it makes you apply that not just to the fact that you’re producing food . . . but also to any other aspect that comes up.

Natalie, whose farm also operates as an eco-community where they have built their own house and installed solar energy systems, described the anti-capitalist sentiment at the heart of their do-it-yourself ethos: ‘It is also about rejecting a lot of things that we’ve been offered and trying to find alternatives to them . . . .trying to take the power away from the multinationals and the big corporations and get people to do it themselves.’ Both Jake and Carolina expressed a knowledge of wild plants and the ability to forage and Carolina uses them to make their own cosmetics and medicine. Miriam

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and their partner Chris have not used the healthcare system in 30 years, depending on herbal treatments they make themselves. This is of particular relevance to the degrowth critique of centralised health systems that operate in part for-profit and is line with calls for alternative models centred on traditional medicine and open-source health technologies (Borowy & Aillon, 2017). On Natalie’s farm much of the infrastructure is built using recycled and local renewable materials and in Giulia’s household it is the norm to repair things. Both they and their partner are competent with a sewing machine and their partner is also able to fix their car and electrical appliances. ‘It’s good to have multiple skills’ they said, ‘because then you can kind of make do with what you’ve got.’ The willingness and skills to repair broken goods rather than buy new ones is cited by Kallis (2017) as key for minimising material throughput in a degrowth economy. For Vincent, the option of making something for themselves rather than obtaining it from a shop is also a source of enjoyment: Is [sic] there things I can do myself and I don’t have to buy because I can create myself . . . and I’ll probably be happier using it because it’ll be my creation . . . The shop is good, but you have to reserve it for what is really necessary.

These examples suggest that as well as being important for minimising material throughput, learning the skills for repair and self-provisioning could also contribute to peoples’ sense of well-being in the context of degrowth.

Sharing and the Commons Seven of the 11 farmers described participating in swapping, sharing and mutual aid, creating alternative forms of (moneyless) value within the community. For Kallis, sharing is the core organising principle of degrowth and ‘goes hand in hand with the idea of reclaiming the commons’ (Kallis, 2018, p. 2090). All of the participants in the study rely on communal irrigation systems installed under Moorish rule from the seventh century onwards in the region of Andalucía. The water channels are still in place today and continue to be managed as a common resource, with each farmer assigned a set number of hours watering each week according to the size of their land. Chris described the cooperation required for the system to function and acknowledged that it stands in opposition to the capitalist principle of competition: A system of watering like this will only work if people cooperate. So, they get together and they clean it, make sure it operates. And secondly, that everyone respects their turn on the water and doesn’t steal. And if people don’t do that, the system doesn’t work . . . It’s a system of cooperation and not competition.

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This spirit of collaboration defines numerous exchanges between the farmers. Giulia is part of a producers’ association through which members partake in workdays on one another’s farms, whilst Maya is part of an assembly that shares tools and knowledge. Vera explained that: We do a lot of swapping things, like you know I went and helped someone recently, just helped him to clear out his strawberry patch and in return he gave me a load of runners, which then I took away and planted up and some of them I sold, some of them I swapped for other things. And because we’re in contact a lot with each other, we know who’s got what, and you can swap this for that.

They have a rotovator which is used for starting vegetable gardens. Similar to the seed bank it has been in high demand since the pandemic started, but rather than charge a price for loaning it out they are happy to receive whatever is offered in return: It’s really nice to work that way – it’s not about putting a value on this, you know a day with the rotovator is worth this much . . . A day with a rotovator is worth that somebody gets their garden opened up and can get started.

Having recently lost their own farm, Vera has been able to continue growing food after being invited to use the land of friends and other farmers: People have invited me, because I had my stall in Órgiva, so people know what I can grow, because I’ve been selling my produce. I don’t have the stall anymore, I don’t have the farm anymore, but I’ve been invited to other people’s places to grow.

This indicates the emergence of an ‘actual commons, where participants define the rules and rewards of sharing together’ (Kallis, 2018, p. 2383) and also demonstrates how social relationships rooted in sharing can enhance resilience and adaptive capacity to sudden changes – characteristics that would likely be important in a transition to degrowth. For Vera this opportunity emerged from the strength of what they termed their ‘social capital.’ They used economistic terms in other instances: ‘investments in people, or places’ come back in unexpected ways; seeds, roots and cuttings passed on to others serve as an ‘insurance.’ The use of these words signals the presence of value, yet the value they represent is distinctly non-capitalist. Miriam, in turn, described their community as their ‘safety net,’ a term commonly applied to state welfare: I think the safety net – people do care about each other . . . if you ask, they will find solutions for you, or help you find solutions. As I’ve helped other people, I hope that they would help me. So that is my security net really, my community. And I’d much rather have that than a pension . . . that’s not security, you know, it’s not.

This also signals Miriam’s preference for contributing to and receiving from their local community rather than an external state system of provision which they per-

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ceive to be comparatively fragile. This demonstrates how a sense of local, communitylevel abundance can serve to minimise dependencies on government welfare systems that are broadly financed through economic growth. In contrast to the money orientation of value within the growth imaginary, there is a strong sense amongst the farmers that true wealth is derived not from individual accumulation, but from cooperation, sharing and solidarity.

Discussion The farmers’ experiences point to the existence of an agroecological ethic which shapes subjectivities and ways-of-being that defy the market logic, money-value and human/nature dualism of the dominant growth imaginary, yielding insights for key degrowth discussions on care, well-being, work and voluntary simplicity, whilst also highlighting the importance of ontology in advancing post-growth worlds.

Multi-Species Care Whilst the degrowth literature commonly foregrounds care as a guiding principle in it vision, this tends to be in anthropocentric terms, defined by D’Alisa, Deriu & Demaria (2015, p. 90) as ‘the daily action performed by human beings for the welfare of their community . . . the ensemble of people within proximity.’ However, for the farmers participating in the study, care is an ethic also extended to non-humans and the concern they demonstrate for the well-being of plants, insects and wild creatures indicates an enlarged sense of community. The farmers acknowledged the two-way relationship whereby in order to receive their sustenance and livelihood from their farms, they in turn must provide for the different lifeforms with which they cohabit. These acts of reciprocity produce a relational self which recognises human-nature interdependencies and thus takes responsibility for the well-being of non-human others, diverging from the separate self-produced through capitalism. These experiences suggest that an expanded conception of care within the degrowth discourse could shift its anthropocentric focus on social justice towards a broader vision of justice for all species, whilst also signalling the significant capacity of the material world to shape the farmers’ subjectivities. The role of non-humans in the shaping of social realities has been highlighted as a particular blind spot within the degrowth literature (Demaria, Kallis & Bakker, 2019), yet these data hint at the possibilities for non-human affectivity and embodied practices of care to shape a relational ethics, which could likely foster the degrowth ideals of sharing and conviviality.

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Relational Well-Being The contribution of reciprocal human-nature interactions to the farmers’ sense of meaning and purpose in life also yields insights for degrowth’s theory on well-being. The farmers’ conceptualisation of well-being aligns with the eudaemonic approach favoured by proponents of degrowth, which seeks to transcend the hedonic emphasis on individual happiness in consumerist societies (Demaria et al., 2013). Yet existing degrowth proposals for alternative metrics of well-being, such as universal needs, still assume an individualist ontology (White, 2017; Smith & Reid, 2018). The sense of well-being described by the farmers, on the other hand, is rooted in relationship and arises from experiences of embeddedness, meaning, self-transformation, sense of place, care and kinship. These insights on relational values could enrich degrowth’s vision of well-being and suggest that enhanced opportunities to engage with and care for nature could ensure human and non-human flourishing in the context of material downscaling

Transforming Work Through Ecological Care It has already been acknowledged that significant amounts of labour would likely be absorbed by agroecological farming in the context of material and energy downscaling, given its basis in low input and labour-intensive methods (unlike energy-intensive industrial farming) (Koch, Buch-Hansen & Fritz, 2017). However, the results of this study suggest that agroecology has the potential not only to absorb but also to transform work in the transition to degrowth. Unlike alienated capitalist labour, which is centred primarily on the production of material outputs and separates the private and public spheres, agroecology is centred on the reproduction of life (both human and non-human) – producing food for people rather than profit and prioritising ecosystem health. Many of the farmers also noted that they felt no work-life distinction and considered farming to be a source of purpose and belonging, rather than merely an economic activity. Their experiences suggest that if the emphasis on productivity in the growth paradigm were to be reoriented towards reproductive work in a degrowth transition, it may be harnessed as a means to deliver not only the explicit goal of material downscaling, but the broader degrowth vision of enhanced meaning in life.

Voluntary Simplicity: A Practice Rooted in Ecological Care, Sharing and Skill The precedence granted to ecological care within agroecological farming informs frugal lifestyles that forego the productivity imperative driving capitalist accumulation. Where the farmers’ lives are austere in material terms, they are rich in community,

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sharing, meaningful work, skill and a sense of belonging and purpose. This creates a collective sense of abundance, providing an antidote to the sense of scarcity produced by the ongoing enclosure of common resources and the creation of dependencies on capitalist systems of provision, which work to propel economic growth. The study demonstrates lived examples of ‘frugal abundance,’ supporting the theory of Demaria, Kallis & Bakker (2019) that access to the commons is necessary for living sufficiently within limits, whilst also highlighting the importance of subsistence skills for limiting activity in the growth economy. There is scope within the degrowth literature to explore the potential for a broad skilling-up – including growing food but also repair and traditional crafts, as a means to enhance autonomy and self-reliance as part of its radical democratic project of localisation.

Conclusions The study situates agroecology as an active site of fermentation for degrowth practices, extending far beyond the fields and into the values and relationships of the farmers following its principles. An awareness and embodied understanding of human-nature interdependence form the basis for many of the farmers’ experiences of care-giving, well-being, meaningful work and voluntary simplicity, yielding insights for the importance of ontology in shaping alternatives to the growth paradigm. By actively enhancing people’s opportunities to experience integration with the rest of nature – whether through growing food or through other acts of ecological care – the degrowth movement could make manifest the conditions for relational ways-of-being to emerge. In doing so, degrowth might abandon the remnants of a Western dualist ontology that tether it to the old paradigm, not only adopting in an abstract sense, but effecting in material terms, a commitment to ontological diversity and the affective power of non-human natures. This ontological shift could signal the end of an age in which (an external) nature is exploited at will and could provide fertile ground for the distinctly relational degrowth ideals of conviviality, sharing and care to be articulated.

References Alexander, S. (2015) ‘Simplicity’ in Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis (ed.) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, New York: Routledge, pp. 162–166. Altieri, M. & Rosset, P. (2017). Agroecology: Science & politics. Fernwood Publishing. Altieri, M. & Toledo, V.M (2011) ‘The agroecological revolution in Latin America: rescuing nature, ensuring food sovereignty and empowering peasants’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:3, pp. 587–612.

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Bjørn Inge Melås

15 Organising Nature Through Urban Gardening Abstract: Capitalism is not just an economic system, it is a way of organising nature (Moore, 2015). It depends on an external, cheap nature to grow and a constant search for new spaces to exhaust and dispose of its debris. Nature must work harder and this can be achieved through homogenisation – by transforming rainforests into plantations, but also through a similar flattening of our inner landscapes. Capitalism is not just globalised, it is also integrated in our minds and the way we think, act and relate (Guattari, 2000). The ecological crisis must be approached not just by its physical manifestations, but also its mental and social ecologies. Through artistic research I explore urban gardening as a transversal practice able to work on all three ecologies simultaneously. If capitalism is a way of organising nature, degrowth must have other ways. By using experiences from my research, I will explore how practices of urban gardening involve other ways of relating to and organising nature. The proposition of degrowth might involve what Félix Guattari calls heterogenesis – the production of diversity. Gardens replace parking lots and provide habitats for a variety of species, but also open up for a diversity of ways-of-being, sensing, thinking, knowing, caring, relating and living together. The environments we make, how we make them and who we include in the process matters – not just for the environments, but also for us, since we are reproducing ourselves in the process. Urban gardening might change both material and immaterial production and through practicing and developing alternatives the imaginaries of the future are expanded. Keywords: degrowth, urban gardening, Félix Guattari, ecosophy, cheap nature, soil, human-nature relations

Bjørn Inge Melås, Independent Researcher https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-020

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Where are the new vitamins of meaning? How to repolarize the socius and the psyche? Perhaps by opening our eyes and beginning to take stock of the thousands of initiatives – sometimes microscopic – which teem, stagnating or proliferating, within the social fabric: all the attempts to change life in certain areas, imagine a different urbanism, create a different kind of school, a different kind of business, a less desperate old age – not to forget, certainly, the prisons or the psychiatric lock-up. In short, always, and now more than ever: the molecular revolution. (Guattari,1990, p. 2, quoted in Genosko, 2002, p. 22)

Cheap Nature Trondheim, Norway, May 2018 I am standing in a field in the outskirts of the city. In the middle of the field, separating it in two, lays a large heap of dirt. I walk towards the heap, climb halfway and grab a handful. I look at the crumbly, clayish lump in my hand. I am now holding sediments, crushed by the glaciers during the last ice age. Rocks have become stones, have become gravel, dirt and clay, have co-evolved with microbes and animals and humans into a complex ecosystem – an ecology of soil organisms fit to this particular place, a fertile area that developed into one of the earliest agricultural settlements in the region. In the background I hear the noise of excavators and cranes. Soil is dug up and loaded onto trucks. Engines roar, trucks are beeping as they back up. A parking garage for a new apartment complex is being constructed and the soil is going to get a new life, as embankments for the expansion of the new main road south of the city. In a year or two this field will be a new address in the so-called ‘garden city’ – leaving no trace of the agricultural landscape that used to stretch across everything the new settlers can see from their balconies. As I climb the heap of soil, my boots and hands get dirty with cheapened nature. The complex, living ecology of the soil is not worth enough as grain production for animal fodder in industrial agriculture. According to the developers this land needs to be developed. In this case, this is not something that the city needs. The only ‘needs’ involved are the developers desire for more, a manifestation of capitalism’s endless hunger for growth. Capitalism is not just an economic or social system, it is a way of organising nature and it grows by making nature work harder (Moore, 2015). This land is not working hard enough and the agricultural soil is turned into a peri-urban enclave of generic housing. The fields surrounding the city look backwards and nostalgic in contrast to the developers’ glossy, urban visions of the future. Urbanisation is seen as inevitable, an unstoppable force. Every city needs to grow, no city is big enough and the process cannot stop until the world is fully urbanised. To slow urbanisation down is seen as luddite, anti-modern – an attack on the evolution of humanity. Urbanisation is one of the spatial manifestations of development. The urban life is the only alternative and

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the countryside should be left for a few large agribusinesses that produce the food or done automatically by self-driving tractors and drones. An agriculture decoupled from humans. From this ecomodernist perspective the producers, peasants and farmers living in the countryside are also outdated and are expected to move into cities to become consumers in the global growth economy. For this development to happen the soil needs to be perceived as cheap, without value seen against the economic value that could be created if the field is developed. This perception rests upon a mental and social construction necessary for capitalist growth, where humans are believed to be separate from, external to or above, the rest of nature – where the destruction of soil doesn’t really concern us. A second, and connected, dynamic is an abstraction from food. Food production is something we are alienated from and are not supposed to understand or partake in. Our food comes from ‘somewhere else,’ magically emerging in the supermarket. This magic is often based upon what Brand and Wissen call the imperial mode of living (Brand & Wissen, 2017), dependent on exploitation of ecologies elsewhere. For every fertile field being destroyed in the North we make ourselves dependent on the land and labour of someone, somewhere else, which is neither ethical nor smart in a food security perspective. The capitalist way of organising nature rests upon continuously externalising and cheapening nature, so that it can be exploited, a constant search for new places to exhaust and dispose of its debris. The destruction of soil, atmosphere, oceans are natural consequences of the capitalist operating systems of our society.

Production of Monoculture – Homogenesis One of the ways capitalism organises nature is by reducing diversity, the making of monocultures. Space after space the world is monocultured. Capitalism sacrifices diversity, variation and flexibility for scale, simplification, concentration and standardisation. A forest is clear cut, a swamp is drained to become monocultural agriculture and agricultural soil is developed into another shopping mall. Monoculture has a diversity of expressions. It is monoculture when large parts of the city are owned by one person or one company, when Starbucks replaces the local cafe, when all the waterfronts of European cities look the same or when an area is developed from a variety of uses, for a variety of species into an area used for the narrow interests of profit. The soil being destroyed is just one out of millions of projects that kill life on the planet while trying to keep the growth economy alive. These developments are movements towards less diversity, which also means a reduction of possibilities in the future. The overall result is clearly reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services detailing how biodiversity is lost on Earth:

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The health of the ecosystems on which we and other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. (IPBES, 2019)

The insatiable thirst for economic growth shapes the environment and our spaces in a certain way – by reducing the amount of diversity in the system as it expands. Capitalist agriculture has excelled at forcing nature into monocultures. When humans interact in nature through the capitalist, industrial agricultural system it is often by transforming rich, diverse ecosystems into something simpler. Factory farm chicken, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), salmon farming and industrial vegetable production guzzles energy, demands minerals, causes pollution, exhausts ecosystems, exploits labour and expands the industrial way of production into new areas. Large fields of grain, huge concentration of power in agribusinesses, rainforests turned into plantations, a monopolisation of the supermarket logic that outcompetes other distribution and valuation systems. There are striking parallels between the loss of biological diversity and loss of cultural diversity: as rainforests are burned down and cleared it is not just the physical ecology of the forest that burns – the cosmologies, practices and worldviews, the ways of knowing, relating and thinking of the people living there also goes up in the smoke. Capitalogenic hostile weather melts the ice under their feet, dries up their soils, drowns their islands or floods their fields. Capitalism’s continuous struggle to make nature work harder drives Indigenous people and peasants out of their environments like red-listed species – a grinding and flattening of the cultural and biological diversity on the planet. Every day we get lonelier, both because of the loss of richness around us, a physical consequence of capitalism, but also because our capacities to relate to human and more-than-human life are threatened by extinction. The inner simplification makes it easier to ignore the catastrophes happening around us – to react with a shrug as the world is burning. The radical psychoanalyst, philosopher and activist Félix Guattari calls this production of sameness homogenesis. Capitalism depends upon a ‘transcendent, universalizing and reductionist homogenization.’ (Guattari, 2000, p. 90) and this reduction of diversity is not just physical, it is also a monoculture in how we think, act and feel. As we adapt to the capitalist system we are cultivated into limited ways of thinking, relating and being with each other. This is a homogenisation of both the ecological landscapes we depend on for our survival and our inner landscapes – our capacities to think and feel differently. It is not just the outer environment that is threatened, it is also ‘human modes of life, both individual and collective’ (Guattari, 2000, p. 27). Rainforests, human subjectivity and culture are organised through a capitalist paradigm that exhausts and exploits our physical world, our society and our inner mental life, creating a monoculture in social relations and ways of living on the planet. The capitalist value system is characterised by ‘a general equivalence, which flattens out all other forms of value, alienating them in its hegemony’ (Guattari, 2000, p. 65). The de-

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pleted soils of the industrial agriculture finds a resemblance in the mental and social soils in the capitalist society. We seem to be trapped in the same linear thoughts about the future, to project the present situation indefinitely – there is no alternative. Our utopian consciousness, prospects, hopes, visions, are drained – reduced to a narrow scope of growths and possibilities.

The Ecological Crisis It is obvious that the capitalist ways of organising nature is not working out very well for the planet or most of the people living here. However, if there are capitalist ways of organising nature and creating environments degrowth must have other ways. This should start with the realisation that nature is not something external to humans or society, it is not an outside to be exploited, it begins with the revelation that ‘[h]umans relate to nature from within’ (Moore, 2015, p. 91). Humans do not organise nature or produce nature, we are co-producers in nature and in this process, we are co-producing and reorganising ourselves. In the artistic research project Ecologies of Urban Gardening (Melås, 2022) I argue that some of the spores of such organising principles, habits and practices might be developed in urban gardens. Through looking at the diverse environments produced in urban gardens it is possible to understand how gardens produce counter-hegemonic space, food, nature and culture, glimpses of a degrowth future. The project departs from Félix Guattari’s ecosophy. Guattari argues that the ecological crisis, the way we experience it, as droughts, fires and floods, are only symptoms of a much deeper crisis. According to Guattari, the warming climate, the mass extinction of species and the destruction of the living world is only the tip of the iceberg and cannot be separated from an interwoven social and mental crisis in how we feel, act and think, in how we relate and cooperate with human and non-human nature, including our tools, technologies and institutions. The health of the planet depends on the relations between the ecologies and to be able to deal with the interrelated crisis of environment, society and subjectivity, these three perspectives need to be approached together. The driving force behind this expanded ecological crisis is not humanity, but what Guattari coins integrated world capitalism, a force that stretches horizontally all over the planet, digs deep into the ground and fills the atmosphere with its debris. However, it also drills deep into our minds and changes how we think, act and relate. It is integrated, shaping our subjectivities all the way into our unconscious. It restricts our thinking, our dreams and fantasies, it limits our lifestyles and choices, what we can or cannot do, our opportunities and potentials. The capitalist system makes up the world around us, affects what we surround ourselves with, how we spend our time and live our lives and what we smell, taste and feel. These experiences have an impact on who we are as creatures as we struggle to adapt to our surroundings.

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Since capitalist logic is integrated in ourselves and built into our surroundings, the transition to non-capitalist alternatives becomes challenging. However, the expansion of an ecocidal system like capitalism is not possible unless it is constantly reproduced by social and mental ecologies and this provides an opportunity. Even though it is convenient to think that it is easier to imagine an end of the world than an end to capitalism, this is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy (Fisher, 2009, p. 8). The material and immaterial production could be done differently – and if the transformation happens across all three ecologies (mental, social, physical) it creates a stronger bulwark against the forces of capitalism that will always struggle to break down and strangle alternatives or co-opt them for its own sake.

Guattarian Ecosophy I read Guattari as a degrowth thinker. Their ecosophy is a multidimensional attack on capitalist growth, not just by pointing to the environmental crisis it creates, but also by including and connecting the growth economy to social crises like inequality, poverty and degraded relations and mental crises like loneliness, neurosis and anxiety. This critique is combined with an insistence that there are alternatives that would be better for both people and planet. Guattarian ecosophy posits that humans need to ‘recouple’ to nature in contrast to ecomodernist calls for decoupling (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015; Caradonna et al., 2015). It rests upon a faith in humanity, a belief that we can change our way of thinking, relating, feeling and acting, as well as the social and physical structures we are part of. Instead of individualising the responsibility, Guattari insists that it is possible to undermine the destructive system of capitalism. To withstand the pressure of sameness, carelessness and passivity and instead develop and experiment with creative resistance, which opens up new and revived visions, desires, practices, politics and ways of relating – that sketch paths beyond the status quo. Guattari’s ecosophy is radical in the sense that it seeks to go to the roots of the problem, to change the subjectivities that constantly reproduce capitalism, the ways humans relate to each other and to the world, and to change the structures that make up, limit and control our everyday life, and to do so from our own positions, our own situations, our own desire and creativity. It offers ways of handling the environmental crisis that are not oriented around lack or reduction, but rather emerges out of fun, play, struggles and constant construction of worlds that we want to live in. Guattarian ecosophy offers lenses for seeing this kind of experimentation and acknowledging the revolutionary and transformative potential of everyday practices and actions. To be able to create lasting change it is necessary to confront the three ecologies together and understand them as part of the same integrated problem since ‘solutions at one level entail changes at the others: earthly spheres, social issues, and worlds of

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ideas are not compartmentalized’ (Genosko, 2009, p. 104). Dealing with the ecological crisis is not possible unless its mental, social and environmental ecological dimensions are confronted. This would not just give a chance of survival for many species, it might also offer a better future in which we could thrive, develop and find meaning in a myriad of ways. A key principle of Guattari’s ecosophy is heterogenesis – the production of diversity as a way of resisting capitalist homogenisation of the inner and outer world. A wide range of alternatives needs to be developed to be able to respond to the ecological crisis, a polyphony of people, practices and propositions emerging out of countless diverse spaces. Since capitalism depends on homogenisation to grow, the production of diversity becomes an important counterforce. There is a plethora of ideas on how to organise places, communities, societies or an Earth without economic growth. The degrowth movement has contributed to lifting these alternatives forward, richly documented in volumes like Degrowth in Movement(s) (Burkhart et al., 2020), Pluriverse: A Post-development Dictionary (Kothari et al., 2019) or Food for Degrowth (Nelson & Edwards, 2020). These are real examples of living, viable alternatives to capitalism, which represent a diversity of approaches to counter the monoculture of growth.

Ecologies of Urban Gardening Through the artistic research project Ecologies of Urban Gardening (Melås, 2022) I explore how urban gardening might be one initiative producing ‘vitamins of meaning’ (Guattari, 1990, p. 2), showing how something can be done in the desperate situation we find ourselves in. In the project I look at urban gardening as a set of practices happening inside a Western, overdeveloped capitalist city, centred around ways of organising nature that are radically different from capitalist ways of organising nature. Guattari’s three ecologies are used as lenses to explore urban gardening as a transversal practice, able to work across all three ecologies, affecting the mental, social and physical at the same time. I argue that the practices of urban gardening have a potential to change the way we think, the way we relate to others and to the rest of nature, dealing with the ecological crisis at its roots by trying to create and envision a world where the way we feed ourselves doesn’t threaten our existence. This offers a hopeful way of looking at the future, not just as thick clouds of smoke looming in the horizon and shows how dealing with the ecological crisis at a fundamental level could offer joy, meaning and real and lasting change. It might help us imagine not just that we can avoid the most catastrophic prospects, but at the same time struggle to create a better society to live in.

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The Physical Ecology The most obvious effect on the physical ecology is the production of food. Urban gardening produces food that does not depend on destruction elsewhere. There is no need for pesticides, fertiliser, packaging, cooling, storage or transport. The un-travelled food can be produced by engaging the urban population and by redirecting urban waste streams. As an urban gardener I go from being a passive consumer to a creative producer, playing a small part in this local ecosystem. For many in the Global South or in food deserts in the North this is an important subsistence strategy, a source of nutritious food in the many blindsides of the capitalist food system. But for many, as for me, urban gardening is done primarily for other reasons – to create communities, other types of spaces, to learn about the ecologies that need to function to keep us alive, for fun or for the joy of eating delicious food that we are able to produce locally. This has a global effect in less pollution and emissions, but maybe more important in projects in overdeveloped countries is the effect in the local environment since food is produced by appropriating and transforming urban space. Urban gardening is a place-making technology. Gardeners become directly involved in the creation and recreation of a space. Parking lots, roof tops, lawns and parks are transformed to make local, sustainable, healthy food for urban citizens. The production of space that happens in urban gardens can be seen as a way of claiming our right to the city (Purcell & Tyman, 2015). Gardening is not just a de-alienation from the food we eat, but also from the means of producing space. When I replace some of the calories from the supermarket with calories grown myself in the garden, I drain some of the energy out of the capitalist agricultural system, but it is more transformative than that. Urban gardening is a way of co-producing spaces that are different from many other urban spaces and other ways of organising nature than in the industrial way of feeding ourselves. In the gardens people cooperate in making, maintaining and developing a shared space – a commons (Eizenberg, 2012), where use-value is more important than exchange-value, where the needs of urban citizens are more important than the needs of the market.

The Social Ecology Gardening both demands and makes habits. To succeed the plants must be watered, weeded and cared for regularly and this also makes the gardens into potential social spaces where new communities can grow. Since the production of food is a basic human activity, it attracts a wide range of people – across cultural boundaries. The social ecology is about the relations and cultures that are created in the garden. Urban gardening, the way I understand the practice, has a social component, growing vegetables by yourself in your own private garden, even if it’s in the city, is just gardening. Urban gardening is about doing something together. Finding out how a place

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should be made, maintained and developed, learning from each other and finding ways of cooperating. According to Guattari, the social ecology is about developing practices that modify and reinvent the way we live together (Guattari, 2000, p. 34). In my project the social ecology is expanded to include also more-than-humans. It involves learning how to build relations with soil, with plants, with all the other beings that are essential parts of our ecology and finding practices of working together, which have an impact on both the physical ecology and the mental ecology.

The Mental Ecology To be able to produce food in a garden, it is crucial to take care of its physical ecology. The direct relationship with the life in the garden offers aesthetic experiences that work on our senses. It touches us, as we taste a fresh, self-grown tomato or potato, when the damp heat of the compost hits us in the face on a cold December morning or when we gather around the table with our fellow gardeners to celebrate this season’s yield. A seed must be sown, the plant must be watered, weeded, nurtured and its fruits must be harvested. The food must be prepared or conserved and seeds must be saved, stored and shared before the cycle starts all over again. It is a repetitive work, which increases the frequency of aesthetic experiences. It is hard to ignore the power of the soil waking up in the spring, the force immanent in a seed, or the beauty of a single plant evolving in collaboration with soil, sun, rain, air, microbes, insects, earthworms and humans from a seed to a flower that creates hundreds of new seeds that are spread all over. The smell of herbs and flowers, the taste of the first sugar snap peas or the sensation of starting to recognise plants and know how they function in the ecosystems or in the body. Gardeners take on another role in the ecosystem, as they directly depend on their relations to the rest of the ecology in the garden. In contrast to the industrial farmer, whose primary relationship to the plants and the soil happens through handles and touchscreens in the air-conditioned coupe of the tractor, urban gardeners touch each seed they sow, they feed the soil with their own compost, they see the earthworms crawling when they harvest the potatoes in the autumn and lay awake in the night worrying about snails eating their sugar snap peas in the summer. Gardening is a way to get close to these life-creative processes. The experiences and knowledges situate gardeners to better understand and care for the ecologies we depend on. This contributes to an understanding of where our food comes from and what our food production rests upon (Artmann et al., 2021). A stable climate, pollinating insects, a good soil where the plants roots might thrive, enough water and regular attention and care. When plants and soil and the rest of the ecology of urban gardens become our conditions for life, as they do to a small extent for an urban gardener, ‘nature’ goes

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from being external, to something we need to care for. A diversity above ground depends on a diversity of life below and vice versa. Instead of feeding the soil artificial fertilisers, it is fed with compost, food waste, broken down plants, animal manure and urine from humans. Gardening practices requires and creates a new web of relations to the world around us. The co-production of space in urban gardens is special because it gives people a chance to change their environment and at the same time allow the environment to change them back. The dirty hands and the soil under the nails represent a transformation of both people and place, a practice that might start to break down the strict boundary between nature and society. Reconnecting to nature in urban gardens is not about a return to a pristine nature, but instead offers ways of learning to live in the messy, complex, humanly impacted environment without destroying ourselves and the world around us. Being in the urban garden is not about being in nature, it means to produce a socio-natural environment more inclusive of other species – a production system without world-breaking consequences, an opportunity to make other worlds that break with the capitalist production of monoculture. There is a lot for alienated urban citizens to learn in urban gardens. The complexity of the living ecology of soil, the force of a seed, how plants rely on each other, on good soil, on all kinds of care from their surroundings – and how we depend on this immense labour, just to be able to breathe. But equally important is the unlearning that may happen in the garden. The experience of failure, the feeling that we are not in control, that we are fragile and dependent, that we cannot know and master everything. This unlearning and unravelling is the piercing of small holes in the artificially constructed wall between nature and culture.

Potential of Peri-Urban Fields Urban gardening can contribute by making counter-hegemonic spaces, subjects and cultures (Alkon & Agyeman, 2011; Eizenberg, 2012; Sbicca, 2013, 2016) and creating commons by occupying, appropriating and transforming space and using it for usevalue instead of exchange-value. Gardening can be a political practice, (Certomà & Tornaghi, 2015; McKay, 2011) a way to claim the rights to the city (Passidomo, 2016; Purcell & Tyman, 2015; Schmelzkopf, 2002) and have a revolutionary potential (Classens, 2015; McClintock, 2014). It can create new links between consumers and producers in alternative food networks (Nelson & Edwards, 2020) at the margins or outside of the capitalist growth economy or, as I argue in this text, by creating different urban ecologies, where humans work together and with other species to create diverse, inclusive and empowering spaces. However, as everyone who has been involved in urban gardening knows, it doesn’t always work like this. Urban gardening might lead to an individualisation of

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the problems with the industrial food system, (Ernwein, 2017; Guthman, 2008) it might reproduce neoliberalist subjectivities (Allen & Guthman, 2006) and create spaces of neoliberal governmentality (Pudup, 2008). It might relieve the capitalist state from their responsibility and serve as flanking mechanisms (Rosol, 2012) or be recuperated and used as a tool for gentrification (Quastel, 2009), privatisation of public space (Pudup, 2008; Tornaghi, 2014), reinforce oppression, racism, and exclusion (Ramírez, 2015; Safransky, 2014) and increase inequalities (McClintock, 2018; Reynolds, 2015). Urban gardening is indeed a contradictory practice, often neoliberal and radical at the same time, (McClintock, 2014) both resisting and contributing to capitalist development (Ghose & Pettygrove, 2014). As a practice it operates in a system of integrated world capitalism, shaping both the gardeners and the forces they claim to be fighting, which (often unwittingly) produces inconsistent, complex and contradictory outcomes. Michael Classens argues in his framework for the political ecology of urban gardening (Classens, 2015), that the contradictions of urban gardening should neither lead to unequivocal celebration or refusal of the transformative potential of urban gardens, but rather to a better analysis of how gardening practices can challenge conventional configurations and how it is reinforcing them. Urban gardening could be consciously used for both capitalist and subversive developments.

Political Moments This takes us back to the peri-urban fields, to the heaps of soil, the construction site, the cheapened nature and monocultural grain fields threatened in the outskirts of the city. In this situation, space is transformed in order to speed up capital flows, as ‘every effort to accelerate turnover time implies a simultaneous restructuring of space’ (Moore, 2015, p. 21). For the developers it is crucial that the fields are cheapened. Nature needs to be externalised, exchange-value needs to be put before usevalue, the need for food in the future must be ignored and the work of glaciers, microbes, plants and humans for thousands of years needs to be undervalued. To get the project through, the developers depend upon the politicians and public not to care or convince us that their plans make sense. Mostly the developers succeed and win through with their plans, and the fertile fields surrounding Trondheim are destroyed at a dazzling pace, compared to the time it took to make these unique conditions. The development of the city is left in the hands of the developers, who decide where the city will spread, how it will look like, who it is built for and even more crucial – what happens with irreplaceable, non-renewable ecosystems such as soil. In situations like this, urban gardening might contribute to make political moments (Becher, 2012;) where grassroots mobilisation has a potential to ‘trickle up’ (Passidomo, 2016, p. 274) spatial and political scales (Certomà and Tornaghi, 2018, p3). Urban gardening might help to engage a political force, by making urban people care about the future of these fields, by making us understand that this is not outside

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of our considerations, that this soil is necessary for our conditions of existence. The practices of urban gardening can create or strengthen relations between humans and the living beings we depend upon (Artmann et al., 2021) and make us better equipped to understand the dependencies between the soil and the food on our plate. This love, for the more-than-human life in the garden could also generate a rage when it faces destruction (Vetlesen, 2012). Urban gardening might re-politicise issues like periurban soil, by making evident the ‘forgotten or ignored environmental relations’ (Certomà, 2011, p. 982). In this crucial political moment, urban gardeners might intervene and put pressure on politicians and developers, which makes it possible to stop destructive projects. The protection of agricultural land is not just a fight for places to produce food in the future. It also throws a stick in the wheel of the growth machinery. It halts the progress and forces the developers to find other ways of accumulating capital that are (hopefully) less damaging or more reversible. If we understand the protection of peri-urban soil as a degrowth practice, it becomes clear that halting the engine is not enough. Criticising and protesting are important, but there is also a need for alternatives. Seeing urban gardening as a possibility for developing peri-urban land seeks not only to halt the expansion of, but to dismantle the dominant structures of oppression (Holt Giménez & Shattuck, 2011). Urban gardening fills the peri-urban land with possible alternatives and shows how these alternatives are more desirable, viable and achievable, which is important for getting closer to a degrowth future (Schmelzer et al., 2022). Urban gardening does not only provide the care needed to stop destructive and unethical projects, it might also develop the skills, imagination and political power to create alternatives for these fields. The monocultural field waiting for ‘development’ could become transformed into a feast of biodiversity, a thriving, productive park, a vibrant edible landscape, where citizens become a crucial part of the urban ecosystem services in a new kind of densification of the area. This is not just another way of farming the land, of protecting the soil, of producing food, of developing the city – it is another way of thinking with and relating to nature and other people. As the landscape grows richer and wilder, so does the mental and social soils and landscapes of the gardeners – opening new ways of imagining and thinking about the future. Urban farmers might become a stronger political force, fighting for other kinds of development of the peri-urban land, a force of producing consumers that know the difference between an industrially produced carrot and one grown by a healthy system, a force that knows that there are more varieties of potatoes than the three kinds in the supermarket and a force able to envision the supermarkets as superfluous, in a food system with much closer relations between producers and consumers, urban and rural, nature and culture. By showing that there are many alternatives that are economically viable, ecologically sound and provide lots of healthy local food, the capitalist reasoning collapses. If the alternatives provided suddenly looks better than the developer’s visions, it might be possible to protect the soil and develop it in new ways.

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Urban gardening can offer subversive ways of interacting in nature. In urban gardens it is essential to cooperate with the soil, with the plants, insects and all the other beings we co-produce the space with. The cultural landscape of the urban garden is very different from the monocultural fields surrounding the city. One is an attempt to control and dominate nature, whereas the other seeks to learn how to work with the life in the soil and the plants. Practices based around care, reparation and regeneration rather than exhaustion and domination. Urban gardens offer pedagogical potential for understanding interdependence and co-creation. We become involved in the production of space, of food and ourselves. Everything we do creates a certain environment, but there are different ways of making an environment and the environments we make, how we make them and who we include in the process matters – not just for the spaces, but also for us, since we are reproducing ourselves in the process.

Conclusion / Garden People The growing interest in growing your own food in overdeveloped countries is a sign that people want to get closer to lifegiving processes. For now, this happens at a small-scale. Still, it says something about a direction. Urban gardening might help to ‘educate a desire’ (Abensour, 1999) for a better food system, a better future. Small changes can spread and since cities are full of people, they might become really productive if parking lots, parks, lawns, rooftops and peri-urban fields are transformed. This would not just produce lots of local and sustainable food, it might also make another culture. In Lawn People (Robbins, 2012), Paul Robbins documents how people are shaped by their lawns, how the lawns demand practices like constant mowing, fertilising and use of pesticides. The lawn produces its lawn people and forces them to make and maintain a monoculture. In the same way it is possible to think that a garden makes its own people, but instead of making monocultures with lawn mowers and chemicals, the garden people contribute to producing diversity with their practices. Urban gardens are often highly diverse production systems, where a variety of plants are grown together by many different people. This diversity is a striking contrast to the endless monocultures of industrial food production. The process of growing a variety of plants and building diversity in the soil is crucial to becoming a successful urban gardener and it requires skills, experience and conscious choices. It is essential to establish other kinds of relations with the soil, with the plants, with all the other beings that co-produce the space. Urban gardeners do not just weaken the force of destruction and expansion of supermarkets, monocultures and plantations, they also produce alternatives. As we plant our seeds, as we let plants grow, as we build soil, as we care for and cooperate with the ecology of the garden, we invite diversity to happen. This becomes especially visible in urban gardens, since it often in-

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volves transforming monofunctional spaces like parking lots and lawns into more complex ecosystems. The practice shows that it is possible to make other kinds of environments, that it is possible to produce diversity. Humans can, together with the place and its soil, plants, insects and other humans make a diverse and self-enriching nature. This difference is not only physical, as seen in the contrast between a lawn and a garden, it is mental and social. The production of diversity in urban gardens can be understood through the lenses of Guattari’s three ecologies: physical (plants, soil, biological diversity) social (cultural diversity, ways of relating to humans and more-than-humans) and mental (creativity, play, imagination) and these three perspectives are tightly woven together. All these ecological changes might allow the garden culture to spread, just like the lawn culture spread rhizomatically in the Western part of the world. This production of diversity, in the psychological, social and physical realm is needed to counter the notion that there is no alternative. Guattari’s ecosophy posits that through heterogenesis, in ways of thinking, relating, dreaming and hoping, capitalist homogeneity is challenged. This means the ability to see the realities of capitalism, the toll it has on people and ecologies, today and in the future. And not just the capacity to feel, to get angry and sad and furious and mad, but also the ability to respond, to resist, to do something about it, to be able to react in our own situations. To identify which practices are spores of alternatives, practices of resistance – islands of rainforest in large monocultural fields. Importantly, these visions of the future do not offer ‘one weird trick’ (Sparrow, 2021) but present a variety of approaches, practices and possibilities. Urban gardening is by no means enough, but could be part of a diversity of approaches, what Guattari called a molecular revolution where millions of small movements, coming out of different places, people and passions could change the world. Urban gardening is one of these revolutionary forces that are available to urban citizens. By using these forces, the main focus is not abstract and impossible goals of ‘saving the world.’ It is about changing and protecting our local environments, it is about making small parts of our everyday life a little less alienating, a little less boring and meaningless, a little more democratic and enjoyable. To find meaning and joy, to make fun in the cracks of the capitalist system – to play with alternatives and enjoy breaking it ‘in as many ways as we can.’ (Holloway, 2010, p. 11)

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Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. (2019, 5 May). Nature’s dangerous decline ‘unprecedented’; species extinction rates ‘accelerating’ https://www.ipbes.net/news/ Media-Release-Global-Assessment [Accessed: 16 February 2023]. Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Acosta, A., & Demaria, F. (Eds.). (2019). Pluriverse: A post-development dictionary. Tulika Books and Authorsupfront. https://books.google.no/books?id=w6uFvwEACAAJ. McClintock, N. (2014). Radical, reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal: coming to terms with urban agriculture’s contradictions. Local Environment, 19(2), 147–171. McClintock, N. (2018). Cultivating (a) sustainability capital: Urban agriculture, ecogentrification, and the uneven valorization of social reproduction. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2), 579–590. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1365582 McKay, G. (2011). Radical gardening: Politics, idealism & rebellion in the garden – Introduction: The ‘plot’ of radical gardening. Frances Lincoln. Melås, B. I. (2022). Ecologies of urban gardening [Artistic Research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)]. Trondheim. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. Verso Books. Nelson, A., & Edwards, F. (Eds.). (2020). Food for degrowth: Perspectives and practices. Taylor and Francis Group. Passidomo, C. (2016). Community gardening and governance over urban nature in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 19, 271–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.01.001 Pudup, M. B. (2008). It takes a garden: Cultivating citizen-subjects in organized garden projects. Geoforum, 39(3), 1228–1240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.06.012 Purcell, M., & Tyman, S. K. (2015). Cultivating food as a right to the city. Local Environment, 20(10), 1132–1147. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2014.903236 Quastel, N. (2009). Political ecologies of gentrification. Urban Geography, 30(7), 694–725. https://doi.org/ 10.2747/0272-3638.30.7.694 Ramírez, M. M. (2015). The elusive inclusive: Black food geographies and racialized food spaces. Antipode, 47(3), 748–769. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12131 Reynolds, K. (2015). Disparity despite diversity: Social injustice in New York City’s urban agriculture system. Antipode, 47(1), 240–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12098 Robbins, P. (2012). Lawn people: How grasses, weeds, and chemicals make us who we are. Temple University Press. Rosol, M. (2012). Community volunteering as neoliberal strategy? Green space production in Berlin. Antipode, 44(1), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00861.x Safransky, S. (2014). Greening the urban frontier: Race, property, and resettlement in Detroit. Geoforum, 56, 237–248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.06.003 Sbicca, J. (2013). The need to feed: Urban metabolic struggles of actually existing radical projects. Critical Sociology, 40(6), 817–834. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920513497375 Sbicca, J. (2016). These bars can’t hold us back: Plowing incarcerated geographies with restorative food justice. Antipode, 48(5), 1359–1379. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12247 Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A., & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism. Verso. Schmelzkopf, K. (2002). Incommensurability, land use, and the right to space: Community gardens in New York City. Urban Geography, 23(4), 323–343. Sparrow, J. (2021). An introduction to some of the themes and thinking behind our ECOLOGIES edition. New Socialist. https://newsocialist.org.uk/there-no-one-weird-trick/ [Accessed: 23 February 2023]. Tornaghi, C. (2014). Critical geography of urban agriculture. Progress in Human Geography, 38(4), 551–567. Vetlesen, A. J. (2012). Viktigere enn håp. In Å. Seierstad, S. Ekern, N. Ceciliedatter Nerdrum, & A. Melli (Eds.), SNU – Brev til klimagenerasjonen (pp. 50–56). Cappelen Damm.

Part IV: Critical Connections

The penultimate part of the handbook features essays that each bring an outside theoretical perspective to bear on degrowth’s proposition and prospects. In so doing, they bring to light interesting points of tension and seek to encourage further investigation. Anna-Maria Köhnke, Aino Ursula Mäki and Sherilyn MacGregor’s contribution opens the part by critically appraising degrowth from an ecofeminist perspective. Much of the degrowth literature, they suggest, has either overlooked or misunderstood the contributions that ecofeminist scholarship has been making to areas of concern to degrowth for decades. Unless degrowth scholarship incorporates these lessons, these authors argue, it risks perpetuating the same racialised and gendered inequalities that prompted degrowth’s development to begin with. Next, with reference to Argentina, Mariano Feliz considers degrowth from the vantage point of Marxist dependency theory. For Feliz, degrowth is compatible with emancipatory projects in the Global South providing that it is understood as a synonym for anti-imperialist delinking from the capitalist world economy. Shivani Kaul and Julien-Francois Gerber show how degrowth has unexplored connections with the psychoanalytic tradition and ask how bringing these to the fore could transform degrowth’s research and practice into subjects such as psychological burnout and climate grief. Alf Hornborg then launches a critique of Marxism from a degrowth perspective, suggesting that Marxism adheres to a fallacious theory of value and the incorrect assumption that the development of the productive forces is politically neutral. For Hornborg, degrowth must state clearly that it disagrees with Marxism on these important topics. Part four’s final essay, penned by James Jackson, takes a very different path by seeking to reconcile some of the underlying assumptions of degrowth and productivist ecomodernism. Jackson proposes that a degrowth transition should be concerned with the principle of ‘newer but fewer’, which entails superseding carbon intensive technologies with low carbon alternatives while ensuring a planned reduction in aggregate economic activity. Lauren Eastwood and Kai Heron

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-021

Anna-Maria Köhnke, Aino Ursula Mäki and Sherilyn MacGregor

16 Interlocking Crises, Intersectional Visions: Ecofeminist Political Economy in Conversation with Degrowth Abstract: This chapter discusses the theoretical and practical implications of bringing ecofeminist political economy together into critical engagement with degrowth. We demonstrate how insights from ecofeminist political economy (EPE), a field with a long but often overlooked and misrecognised history, can inform research into the concepts and practices that are necessary for comprehensive socio-ecological transformation. Our aim is to explain how overlooking questions of gender injustice and socially necessary reproductive labour in visions for alternative futures such as degrowth risks perpetuating the same racialised and gendered inequalities which prompted such visions in the first place. We begin by discussing what an ecofeminist approach to political economy looks like by introducing its key ideas and history. We then discuss four main areas where insights from EPE contribute to degrowth perspectives. Throughout, we return to the central argument that EPE scholars have been making for decades: environmental sustainability must not be achieved by exploiting feminised and racialised caring labour any more than gender equality should be achieved at the expense of ecological degradation or the exploitation of nature and other species. Keywords: ecofeminism, social reproduction, environmental justice, care work, housewifisation, sustainability

Introduction Although often unacknowledged within the field, degrowth has feminist roots (Gregoratti & Raphael, 2019). Many of its core ideas find their origins in feminist scholarship and activism. As demonstrated by the 2016 founding of the Feminism and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA), the interconnections between feminist and ecological goals for rethinking capitalism are becoming ever more prevalent, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (see FaDA, 2020; Paulson, 2020). Feminist scholars participate in degrowth debates from positions grounded in social reproduction, provisioning and subsistence, insisting that care perspectives, commoning as a democratic strategy and egalitarianism in public and private spheres must be part of the visioning process. Many have stressed the necessity of including feminist economic insights if programs for changing the nature of work and consumption are to be truly transformative. Anna-Maria Köhnke, Aino Ursula Mäki, Sherilyn MacGregor, University of Manchester, UK https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-022

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In what follows, we discuss the specific debt that all degrowth scholars, including feminists, owe to ecofeminist theory. Ecofeminism is the only tradition of thought that has consistently integrated environmental and intersectional gender justice concerns into political economy – and has done so for many decades (MacGregor, 2021), well before degrowth emerged as a movement. Ecofeminist critiques of capitalist growth, theorising of social reproduction, troubling of dualisms and concepts such as care and subsistence have much to offer to debates on post-growth futures. It is evident, however, that within degrowth as an academic field, there remains a lack of deep and sustained engagement with self-identified ecofeminist perspectives. Although engagement with/by feminist and ecological economists is growing, there is a curious relegation of a tradition that offers systematic theoretical and practical integration of the insights of gender and environmental critique to the side-lines of degrowth scholarship. Saave and Muraca (2021) observe that ‘the conceptualization of work and labour within the degrowth discourse is overall still lacking the thorough analysis that materialist ecofeminism has to offer regarding the structural link between capitalist growth imperatives, the ecological crisis, and the devaluation and subalternization of (re)productive work’ (p. 755, see also Perkins 2017). This is surprising – and disappointing – for an approach which at its most radical self-proclaims to be committed to social justice and socio-ecological transformation as a way out of the destructive growth paradigm that has resulted in the global climate crisis and deep social inequality. We suggest that there is much to be learnt from longstanding ecofeminist insights by all who seek genuinely just socio-ecological transformations that can sustain and regenerate human and more-than-human life. In line with a broader trend in social sciences and beyond towards a contemporary resurgence of ecofeminist ideas, we argue that an ecofeminist approach to degrowth is necessary in order to ensure that environmental sustainability is not achieved by exploiting feminised and racialised caring labour any more than gender equality is achieved at the expense of the exploitation of nature and other species. To elaborate this claim, this chapter discusses theoretical and practical implications of bringing green and feminist political economy together in a critical EPE engagement with degrowth. Recognising that environmental and intersectional gender issues cannot be assessed separately, we show how theoretical engagement between these two fields can be translated into ecofeminist policymaking and theorising critical of capitalism. We begin with a brief introduction to EPE as an approach, summarising its history and signature insights. After laying these foundations we discuss four areas of where EPE makes significant contributions to degrowth studies. We conclude with final comments on the need for a shift in values away from the ‘master model’ that informs various economic reasoning (degrowth included) toward alternative solutions to the interlocking crises of environmental destruction, economic insecurity and social inequality that are informed by intersectional and decolonial ecofeminist praxis.

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What is Ecofeminist Political Economy? Simply stated, ecofeminism is a political tradition broadly concerned with connections between the exploitation of the living environment and the oppression of humans under the interconnected systems of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. It encompasses diverse forms of theory and praxis and draws on more than three decades of scholarship on the gender-environment nexus that challenges the hierarchical binaries in Western philosophical thought which legitimise those oppressive and destructive systems (for an overview see MacGregor 2017). These binaries, including reason-emotion, culture-nature, individual-collective and man-woman have shaped and sustained not only big social structures but also the micro-politics of everyday life. A core aim of ecofeminist thinking is to find strategies for transcending binaries to create integrated and egalitarian alternatives (Plumwood, 1992; Barca, 2021). Predating the establishment of the term, critical ecofeminist scholarship is inherently intersectional in its ideas and principles precisely because of its foundational concern with the interdependence and mutual constitution of different oppressive systems. Drawing from socialist feminism and Marxist political economy, the subfield of EPE is one example of intersectional and critical ecofeminist scholarship. EPE focuses on the material links between the domination of feminised social reproduction, care work and the biophysical environment and positions its analytical approach in the context of a broader structural critique of capitalism, white supremacy and colonialism (Mellor, 2017, 2006; Salleh, 1995, 1997). Problematising unequal patriarchal and racial divisions of labour along with destructive nature-society relations, the approach regards capitalist racist patriarchy as a unified system of exploitation and oppression. This gendered and racialised system naturalises the exploitation of women and people of colour by defining their labour as feminine, non-economic and unproductive, but it also depends on value extraction from the environment (Merchant, 1989; Mies, 1998; see Saave, 2022 for a contemporary overview). In other words, capitalist racist patriarchy is equally contingent on the exploitation of waged labour as well as the appropriation of unpaid work and natural resources. Committed to a holistic account of gendered, racialised and sexual domination, a critical materialist-ecofeminist perspective regards these phenomena of exploitation and appropriation of human and more-than-human nature as intrinsically deeply intertwined and maintains that they need to be challenged in unison to overcome the unsustainable and unjust hegemonic paradigm of Western capitalist modernity.

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Critical Conversation: Tensions and Synergies between EPE and Degrowth Visions EPE has much in common with and much to contribute to degrowth studies. We will focus on what we consider to be four of the richest strands of discussion: i) the need to reorient the economy in the service of well-being; ii) the strategic necessity to avoid ‘housewifising’ social reproduction; iii) the importance of centring a holistic understanding of work and iv) the need for a global intersectional perspective connected to social movements. Within each of these strands we note synergies as well as tensions between ecofeminist and degrowth positions and we aim to show how incorporating EPE insights can increase the transformative potential of degrowth visions. i) Re-orienting the economy in the service of well-being Degrowth theories usually criticise both economic growth as a prioritised socioeconomic policy goal and the excessive reliance on gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of prosperity. Both also have a long history of being criticised from feminist viewpoints, many of these critiques centred around the gendered division of labour and the concept of social reproduction (Dengler & Lang, 2022, p. 5). Hence, intersections of feminist and degrowth perspectives share the demands that economies must not aim for economic growth over well-being, which is largely upheld by reproductive labour, and that well-being cannot be adequately expressed by GDP due to large parts of this labour being informal, thus not being accounted for in calculations of annual growth. This latter critique is often associated with the work of Marilyn Waring (1989) who pointed out that GDP does not include any unpaid activities such as household work and taking care of people, but instead includes other activities that actively harm human beings as well as the environment. Criticisms of GDP have been voiced more broadly within economics ever since Waring’s pioneering EPE analysis. For example, Coyle (2014) has argued that the importance of GDP as a measurement of prosperity has been overestimated and that even paid reproductive activities cannot be accounted for within the paradigm it stipulates because there is no universally applicable definition of ‘productivity’ for reproductive tasks (p. 135). Hence, the indicator GDP cannot be significantly improved by simply adding activities to the equation. Yet, it remains the most important guiding indicator for policymaking: ‘GDP is universally used as a shorthand for national wellbeing. Economic policies are justified, or lobbied for, on the basis of whether or not they will increase GDP growth’ (Coyle, 2017, p. 4). The heavy reliance on GDP as an internationally respected measure of prosperity has led to the marginalisation of alternative expressions, definitions and theories of human well-being, which are not inherently founded on economic growth. Nevertheless, such theories have emerged out of more heterodox traditions within the social sciences.

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While a key demand of feminist and ecofeminist political economists has been to increase the visibility and valuation of reproductive labour in the economy, numerous differing strategies for this have emerged (Dengler & Lang, 2022). One strategy is to shift care work out of the often invisible, private sphere into the public sphere by increasing the percentage of care work that is commodified since, in capitalist societies, commodification and monetisation are vital modes of recognition of labour. Dengler and Lang, like many other feminist scholars of the degrowth tradition, reject this on the grounds that commodification of feminised work activities often does not lead to improved recognition or more equal distributions of care work among different genders, ethnicities and classes (2022, p. 5). They also reject a public (or state) provision of such work, which could be monetised without being commodified, because of the historic patriarchal, colonial and heteronormative principles that underpin the welfare state. Instead, they suggest that the dichotomy of public/private, formal/informal and paid/unpaid needs to be overcome, for example, by communitarian organisation of a caring commons (2022, p. 15). Approaches like this, which challenge the gendered division of labour and its expressions through the separation of formal versus informal economy, are on the rise especially in newer feminist degrowth scholarship which seeks to reorient the economy towards care and well-being. However, while there have been empirical cases of well-functioning caring commons, the bulk of this literature seems to engage in what Tummers and MacGregor (2019) have called ‘wishful thinking.’ Drawing on a much older body of ecofeminist literature, they highlight the risks of assuming that social experiments in communal living will automatically lead to egalitarian politics or the resolution of deeply entrenched gender hierarchies that makes care work women’s work. Moreover, it remains to be seen how commoning reproduction can happen on a larger societal scale. Some of the benefits of monetisation and commodification of care work have included the infrastructure of training, guidance and equipment that professionalisation of care work allowed, which have become possible through economies of scale – for example by the welfare state. Such social infrastructure would currently be difficult to reproduce in settings that aim to be relatively independent of the market sphere. And, as Tummers and MacGregor (2019) point out, unless greater attention is paid to the spatial and material dimensions of commoning care in degrowth visions, it will be difficult for them to move beyond wishful thinking. An EPE account includes a strong element of caution when assessing the treatment of care work in degrowth scholarship, a point we explain next. ii) Avoiding the housewifisation of social reproduction To date, the majority of feminist discussions of degrowth focus on the importance of accounting for gendered divisions of labour, the reproductive economy and women’s disproportionate responsibility for care work. It is an oft-cited slogan that ‘the degrowth imaginary centres around the reproductive economy of care’ (Kallis et al., 2015, p. 4). However, many contributors have noted that increased recognition of the

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importance of care alone is not enough. As Akbulut (2017) has argued, even though care and social reproduction have recently gained more attention in degrowth debates, ‘[w]hat is largely missing from the celebration of care as the cornerstone of the post-growth transition is how care work is to be organised in a socio-ecologically just future.’ They go on to state that ‘re-centering a society around care does not imply gender justice.’ As others have noted in the same vein, ‘degrowth by disaster, but possibly also by design, can be very risky for women and likely to contribute to a retraditionalization of social reproduction and care work’ (Saave-Harnack & Dengler, 2019, p. 1). Similarly, Bauhardt (2014) laments that degrowth proposals tend not to recognise the gendered nature of the care economy, which may inadvertently lead to increasing women’s workloads instead of a positive revaluation of reproductive labour. Proposals such as esarroll care, work-sharing, lowering production or reduction of waged work in the monetised economy do not automatically lead to more equal divisions of labour between men, women and others, even if they may be more environmentally friendly (Dengler & Strunk, 2018; Dengler & Lang, 2021). To further gender equality, they would need to take into account the unpaid reproductive labour taking place outside formal employment, as well as the deeply segregated nature of employment in paid reproductive labour in areas such as health and social care. On the other hand, as feminists have argued previously, the growth of some aspects of the economy is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary. As captured in various contemporary versions of a feminist green new deal (FGND), rising demand for care presents an opportunity for investments in infrastructures which are both caring and green (FGND, 2021a, 2021b). From an EPE perspective, these dilemmas emerge in a new light. Socialist ecofeminists like Maria Mies (1998) have long argued that capitalist patriarchy with its pursuit of endless growth is premised less on the exploitation of the working class than it is on the appropriation of unwaged reproductive labour in the form of housework, care and subsistence agriculture, which form the ‘foundations’ of capital accumulation. Mies maintains that capitalism relies on naturalising the exploitation of women and colonised people, and in observing that Western modernity has ‘defined [them] into nature’ while feminising the environment itself (p. 75), they identified ‘housewifisation’ as a central strategy through which land and labour are devalued, made invisible and readily available for exploitation. In this account, the perpetuation of patriarchal and racial divisions of labour is an indivisible structural feature of a system of capital accumulation that is premised on unpaid appropriation, upheld by concomitant processes of housewifisation as well as colonisation. In other words, for EPE, the parallel devaluation of women and nature in modern thought crystallises in the naturalisation of reproductive labour performed by women and other feminised subjects, with their labour regarded as ‘a natural resource, freely available like air and water’ (Mies, 1998, p. 110). In order to function, this naturalisation hinges on binary foundational assumptions which group care and the environment together with femininity and regard both as

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less valuable and secondary to the masculine-coded realm of paid work, economic growth and monetary exchange. From this perspective, any gender-just post-growth imaginary needs to confront the specific mechanisms through which care and other forms of reproductive labour are left out, not accounted for, or taken for granted; in short, feminised and devalued. It needs to interrogate the ways in which radical forms of thinking and alternative spaces may still be complicit in upholding patriarchal roles and responsibilities, even where they have confronted some biased understandings of nature as expendable and inferior. Moreover, it is necessary to address how to actively counter any further housewifisation of the labour of women, other marginalised groups and of the environment. This means considering more equitable divisions of paid as well as unpaid labour, but also resisting any romanticisation of social reproduction and avoiding uncritically idealising care at the expense of learning practical strategies for organising it in a just and sustainable manner – something that feminists have been researching for decades. As Saave and Muraca (2021) state, ‘[t]he goal of an ecofeminist degrowth has to be de-privatizing and de-feminizing the responsibility of sustaining life,’ both in the short-term through increased visibility and social relevance and in the longterm through ‘redistribution of all necessary activities and forms of work . . . across the social and geographical spectrum’ (p. 761; see also Pérez Orozco, 2022). In terms of concrete strategies for socio-ecological transformation, degrowth would do well to adopt anti-housewifisation planning at the forefront of tactical approaches to models and policy proposals (see Barlow et al., 2022). iii) Centring a holistic understanding of work Focusing on both present conditions as well as potential alternative scenarios of care work is a key contribution ecofeminist scholars have made to degrowth studies. While degrowth, unlike some other traditions of environmental social sciences, explicitly aims to re-centre human well-being and quality of life in discussions of socioeconomic restructuring needed to combat climate change, Bauhardt (2014) argues that it has likewise failed to take ecofeminist economic principles, especially regarding the links between exploitation of women’s work and exploitation of natural resources, into proper consideration. They highlight this intersectional understanding of crises as a core lesson degrowth scholars can draw from ecofeminist theory and research to improve their analyses of capitalism’s shortcomings. By pointing out the links between the crisis of social reproduction, the climate crisis and other crises of capitalist economies, EPE makes a continuous effort to challenge the logic by which dominant divisions of labour are maintained – including those divisions that otherwise often go unmentioned even within degrowth and inequality literature. Such an understanding is, however, crucial for degrowth to achieve its proclaimed aims of improving human well-being. Centring an intersectional and holistic analysis of work that includes reproductive and productive, visible and invisible work activities is crucial not just for envisioning fairer futures but also for reaching these futures in the

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first place. Understanding and addressing gender inequality should not be seen as an added luxury within, but a necessary condition for, a just transition. Velicu and Barca (2020) argue that this transition, usually referring to the transition away from fossil fuels, would be conceptualised more comprehensively as a transition out of unequal relations which are created, maintained and mediated by work. They see the democratisation of work through participatory approaches as the dynamic that needs to underpin a just transition and point out that organised labour, as represented for example by the International Trade Union Confederation and the International Labour Organization, has characterised this democratisation inadequately by discursively reproducing a ‘post-political notion of sustainability as a consensual, techno-managerial type of politics’ (2020, p. 264). As such, EPE scholars conceptualise interlocking capitalist crises as crises of work – but of all types of work, instead of just those immediately tied to fossil fuels. Alternative futures, such as those advocated for by the degrowth movement, hence need a nuanced analysis of the inequalities work produces and reproduces; they must not assume that such inequalities will be automatically eliminated by justly transitioning out of fossil fuels or that such a transition is even possible without this analysis. Designing processes that democratise work and enable all working people to participate in envisioning alternative futures have to be seen as necessarily preceding the socio-economic changes environmental scholars and policymakers have argued are necessary to counter climate change. Centring work, comprehensively understood, is necessary for green economic restructuring. In the past, the beginnings of such restructuring have often come at a cost – shifting away from coal, for example, has left entire townships and regions behind economically and socially. With high unemployment rates and poor living conditions, former mining areas now often belong to the most deprived areas of otherwise comparatively wealthy Western European countries. Developments like this, and moreover the resulting nationalist tendencies especially prevalent in some of these areas, have strengthened the public instinct that work and employment opportunities matter for aggregate socio-economic well-being. Environmental policymakers as well as researchers have, at times, attempted to respond to this instinct by demanding that governments generate as many so-called ‘green jobs’ as possible to prevent mass unemployment and civil unrest. The attempt to reconcile economy and ecology through the creation of ‘green jobs’ within the existing capitalist economic order has led to the development of what Littig calls an ‘international credo about a brave new green world’ (2017, p. 318). Littig’s reference to Huxley’s dystopian novel (1932) illustrates the concerns that ecofeminists have repeatedly voiced about a ‘green growth future.’ Brave New World describes a society in which, at first glance, everyone seems happy and cheerful. Well-being, in this society, is conceptualised from a hedonistic (or epicurean) perspective – pleasure is maximised and pain is minimised. This well-being ideal is maintained through an extremely hierarchical division of labour maintained in the form

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of a caste system, with babies being trained to like or dislike certain things so that they be content in their respective jobs later in life. Well-being and work, in Huxley’s world, are mediated by consumption. Drugs, entertainment and manipulation lead to a stable system in which occupational choice and independent thinking are eliminated not by direct coercion but by deliberate shaping of preferences which make it possible for people to tolerate adverse working conditions. This includes, ironically, that lower-caste workers are trained to hate (freely accessible) nature so that they prefer commodified consumption goods and thereby maintain the economy. Littig, among others, criticises visions of green futures that ignore the systemic division of labour. The reference to Huxley’s book, while itself far from being feminist literature, serves here as a strong illustration of why, to ecofeminists, it is not acceptable to generate economic growth, no matter how green, on the backs of those providing lowpaid or unpaid labour to maintain the wealth of others – even if they provide their labour consensually. Understanding who engages in which forms of work under which conditions, therefore, needs to become part of the academic and political repertoire of anyone who wants to prevent such a future. Yet, as Littig writes, ‘The quality of green jobs remains of little relevance in either the political debate or in research. [. . .] In many cases, the debate simply holds to the (unqualified) blanket assumption that green jobs equal higher quality work’ (2017, p. 322). From an EPE perspective, in order to be truly ‘degrowth,’ any academic or political movement needs to consider who works in which jobs and under which conditions. A reduction in consumption of commodified goods cannot ethically be funded by the low-paid or unpaid labour of those who already consume less. This means the necessary green restructuring of the formalised, ‘productive’ side of the economy should not be pursued by outsourcing part of this economy to those in care work. An example of such outsourcing is the increase in what Glucksmann and Wheeler have called ‘consumption work’ (2013). Likewise, ecofeminist thinkers maintain that the ethical and social aims of the feminist movement must not and, in fact, cannot be achieved at the expense of the environment. An intersectional understanding of capitalist crises, including crises of climate and social reproduction, as produced and reproduced through work is the core insight degrowth scholarship can gain from engaging with ecofeminist research. iv) Thinking intersectionally An EPE perspective on degrowth offers tools for dismantling the perception that degrowth is rooted in, and exclusive to, the Global North. In addition to stopping the neglect of gendered aspects of the reproductive economy at the expense of focusing on waged work and idealising care, degrowth scholarship also needs to be cognisant of its Western biases and the global implications of its proposals and how the two are interlinked. By considering degrowth visions through the lens of intersectionality, it is possible to challenge interlocking power relations en route to a commitment to decoloniality.

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Concerned by ‘the continuing dominance of Western/Northern economic and political theory at the intellectual heart of this academic movement,’ ecofeminists Nirmal and Rocheleau (2019) report ‘a dearth of engagement with ontological, epistemological, and cultural difference as well as gender, class, ethnic, racial, religious, and colonial differences’ in degrowth studies (p. 466). Flagging the need for more engagement with ecofeminist, decolonial and Indigenous thought, they criticise the economistic and rationalistic, techno-managerialist and individualist character of many existing degrowth proposals and suggest an environmental justice framing of degrowth as a transition discourse. Similarly, proposing a ‘research-agenda from the margins,’ Hanaček et al. (2020) call for a systematic exploration of critical feminist and decolonial perspectives in degrowth scholarship and show the need for, inter alia, further interrogation of dichotomic understandings of North-South relations. Singh (2019; see also Akbulut, 2019) argues for building alliances between environmental justice struggles in the Global South and degrowth in the Global North as challenges to ideology of growth, and suggests that this can be done based on the ontological continuities between the two as opposing extractive capitalism and striving for well-being and relational connections beyond the homo economicus, maintaining that the movements must learn from each other to build alternative epistemologies and world-making practices. Also advocating for a feminist decolonial degrowth perspective, Dengler and Seebacher (2019) discuss the ‘desirability and difficulty’ of building alliances between degrowth discourse and social movements, writing that ‘the global dimension’ of the degrowth transformation is under-theorised in the Global North, and caution against reproducing colonial continuities in order to promote intragenerational socio-ecological justice. Specifically, they propose that their understanding of degrowth ‘must not be misunderstood as a blueprint for a global transformation proposed by the Global North and imposed on the Global South, but rather as a Northern supplement to Southern ideas and movements, which already exist’ (p. 249). They state that a ‘feminist decolonial degrowth approach must be critically aware of putatively “natural” (in fact: socially constructed but embodied) social categories that shape capitalist society-nature relationships’ (p. 250). Moreover, they acknowledge that current nature/culture and men/ women dichotomies are a by-product of colonialism that need to be de-ontologised, urging the movement to go beyond specific research agendas and foregrounding the necessity of building an inherently feminist and decolonial metatheoretical foundation which can build North-South bridges ‘at an equal footing.’ While these are valid points, and there is an aspiration within degrowth discourse to decolonise and to be more feminist, at the same time it is also true that ‘degrowth has largely failed so far to connect with a wider social movement’ (Akbulut et al., 2019). Perkins notes that ‘[d]egrowth activists generally maintain that they want degrowth with equity, but the movement itself to date largely lacks participation and input from marginalised workers from either the global North or the global South,

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who might be able to represent and integrate those concerns’ (p. 3).1 They go on to argue for the need to uproot settler understanding without appropriating Indigenous concepts. An EPE approach is well suited to both of these aspirations – to the building of both metatheoretical foundations and alliances – due to its intersectional sensibility to the mutual constitution of oppressions. Firstly, an intersectional EPE lens can contribute to this project of alliance building between degrowth, environmental justice and other social movements, because it is clear that ecofeminist ideas currently resonate with a wide range of activists, groups and spaces. As evidenced by the recent endogenous adoption of the term by a new generation of activists and a global renewed interest in ecofeminist theory (shown for example by republication and translation of work such as D’Eaubonne 2022; Pérez Orozco 2022), the appeal of approaches encompassing intersectional values of ecofeminism and foregrounding the connections between patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism and settler-colonialism in the form of queer, decolonial ecofeminist politics is high. For degrowth, often viewed as a Western middle-class movement excessively focusing on the Global North and lacking a global perspective, extending solidarity and bridges towards different ecofeminist organisations and ideas is clearly beneficial in terms of political integrity and theoretical soundness. After Pérez Orozco and Mason-Deese (2022), writing from the perspective of Indigenous ecofeminisms, ecofeminism ‘brings together those perspectives that center sustaining life.’ For them, ‘an ecofeminist degrowth could be, for the global North, the path for channelling the eco-social transition along the path of buen convivir,’ providing means of resistance to as well as transition away from the current paradigm (p. 227) Secondly, EPE scholarship has contended throughout its own history with the negotiation of tensions between academic, activist, settler and Indigenous perspectives and come out on the other side better for it, as is indicated by the use of the term by a wide range of different actors across the North-South divide. Moreover, many of the ideas outlined above, such as ontological and epistemological critiques of the androcentrism, rationalism and universalism of Western modernity, have been a canonical part of ecofeminist thinking for decades. A well-rounded body of work with a sophisticated analytical toolkit, this tradition of thinking is lending itself well to constructing the metatheoretical foundations of a critical social movement pursuing social as well as climate justice.

 Of course, there is a lack of this engagement with social movements in most parts of academia, and in some streams more than others. Degrowth is perhaps less guilty than some, with far more evidence of various participatory approaches in degrowth than in other areas of scholarship.

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Conclusion We have established the importance of undoing the gendered codification of reproductive labour as well as building bridges between different movements and decolonising the imaginary of degrowth. These concerns show that in addition to practical proposals and strategic considerations, there is more work to be done with regards to deep normative change and transformation of gendered and racialised understandings within degrowth. Advancing an ecofeminist approach, Ruder and Sanniti (2019) maintain that many post-growth proposals continue holding on to some of the biases of ecological economics unnecessary? stating that ‘the discipline of ecological economics is inhibited by a pervasive ignorance regarding power differentials and a limited epistemology rooted in Western, androcentric, anthropocentric thinking,’ and that ‘the logics of extractivist capitalism that justify gender biased and antiecological structures of power in the dominant growth-oriented economic paradigm also directly inform the theoretical basis of ecological economics and its subsequent post-growth proposals’ (p. 2). Challenging the ‘predatory ontologies’ of degrowth’s mother discipline of ecological economics, Ruder and Sanniti (2019) point out continuities between ecological and neoclassical economics and show that many problematic impulses criticised by EPE persist in degrowth scholarship, such as dichotomous thinking, depoliticised understandings of care and an objectifying view of nature, which abstract from relational and creative aspects of socio-ecological reproductivity (pp. 11–14; see also Biesecker and Hofmeister, 2010). For example, implicit in both degrowth as well as capitalist logic is the tendency to regard capacities for social reproduction as limitless, even when the finiteness of the rest of the socio-ecological metabolism is acknowledged. While acknowledging the limits to growth and environmental resources, the position of ecological economics curiously converges with that of neoclassical models by assuming reproductive labour and care to be infinitely elastic, of endless supply. Moreover, some degrowth discourse is deeply masculinist and maintains the foundational separation between humanity and nature, paid and unpaid work, as well as social and ecological reproduction. These problems speak to broader concerns within ecofeminist thinking with regards to the interconnectedness of different forms of domination and oppression and their political and environmental consequences. The gendered dualisms which form the ontological underpinning of our problematic current system have been extensively critiqued by ecofeminist thinkers for decades, who have problematised their consequences and proposed solutions. As Val Plumwood (1992) and, more recently, Stefania Barca (2021) have argued, Western modernity is fashioned after a dualistic ‘master model’ of identity which functions according to a logic of colonisation. This logic governs a broader interconnected structure that encompasses gender, colonial, class and species relations by subjugating them into a system of hierarchical valuation that divides humanity from nature, man from woman, straight from queer and mind

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from the body. Oriented towards extracting value from these ‘forces of reproduction’ (Barca, 2021), the master model is not only an unjust and degrading system, but in fact constitutes the origin of the current environmental, social and political crisis because it demands the boundless exploitation of both human and more-than-human nature in order to satisfy demands for endless growth. In this schema, the subordination of life in the form of socio-ecological reproduction to capital is not an accidental byproduct of classical economics, but a constitutive feature of a worldview which denies the biological and ecological ‘embeddedness and embodiedness’ of economic processes in (eco)systems of care (Mellor, 1997). As a result, overthrowing the current hegemonic growth paradigm requires challenging each aspect of this structure of domination and confronting its denial of its own dependency on what it has deemed as ‘non-economic.’ Hence, an EPE account amends degrowth proposals by acknowledging that not only does the pursuit of endless growth lead to unsavoury social outcomes, but that unjust social relations are themselves the source of environmental destruction, economic and political inequality and other consequences usually attributed to negative externalities of capital accumulation. For example, patriarchy has historically led to unsustainable agricultural patterns (D’Eaubonne, 2022), while domination has been proven to lead to suboptimal energy outcomes (Daggett, 2021). Going further, an EPE perspective reminds us that ‘not all roads lead to capitalism’ (as Nancy Fraser contends, see Fraser, 2016) and alerts us to the possibility of a green future where women bake bread while men build windmills (to paraphrase the classic quote from German Green Party founder Petra Kelly [see Mellor, 1992, p. 243]) – or better yet, where men dedicate their time to pondering the essence of degrowth while women do the dishes. Moreover, an EPE perspective urges us to steer clear of ecocidal forms of whiteliberal feminisms and white-green utopias, where the thriving of the privileged few is premised on the destruction of the living environments of the majority of the planet’s population. In so doing, it calls for a holistic and deep-seated interrogation of the values underpinning the master model as a requirement for just post-growth futures. In and outside academia, there is a contemporary renaissance of ecofeminist politics, which has historically brought together concerns for social, ecological and economic justice and continues to expose patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism as the root causes of environmental destruction and social inequality (see Bahaffou & Gorecki, 2022). A recent product of this rekindled politics is ‘global decolonial feminist green new deal,’ which calls for: a rebalancing of the global economy with more vibrant, inclusive and circular local/national economies; promoting decent work and responsible business conduct; advancing ecological resilience; reducing resource consumption; restoring biodiversity; and moving away from extractive, discriminatory, military, racist and androcentric economies that erode the ecological basis of our collective well-being. (Women and Environment Development Organisation 2020, p. 9)

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Such alternative visions are more relevant today than perhaps ever before for a world facing interlocking global crises of climate, care and COVID-19 (Sultana, 2021; Kallis et al., 2020). The coronavirus pandemic has further demonstrated the failings of capitalism and the need for alternative systems and imaginaries. There is now widespread recognition on the progressive left that practical proposals must be developed that do not depend any more on exploitative social relations than they do on unsustainable economic practices and destruction of the environment. Degrowth is an important alternative vision that is also gaining traction in many societies the world over. It has much to gain by engaging in a sustained and serious way with EPE insights and visions.

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Pérez Orozco, A. (2022). The feminist subversion of the economy: Contributions for a dignified life against capital. Translated by L. Mason-Deese. Common Notions. Pérez Orozco, A., & Mason-Deese, L. (2022). Ecofeminist degrowth for sustaining buen convivir. Hypatia, 37(2), 223–240. Perkins, P. E. (2017). Degrowth, commons and climate justice: Ecofeminist insights and Indigenous political traditions. Paper proposal for the workshop on ‘Climate ethics and climate economics: Economic growth and climate justice.’ https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/climateethicseconomics/documents/pa pers-workshop-4/perkins.pdf [Accessed: 15 September 2022]. Perkins, P. E. (2019). Climate justice, commons, and degrowth. Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics, 160, 183–190. Plumwood, V. (1992). Feminism and the mastery of nature. Routledge. Prieto, L. & Domínguez-Serrano, M. (2017). An ecofeminist analysis of degrowth: The Spanish case. Feministische Studien, 35(2), 223–242. Ruder, S. L., & Sanniti, S. (2019). Transcending the learned ignorance of predatory ontologies: A research agenda for an ecofeminist-informed ecological economics. Sustainability, 11(5), 1479, 1–29. Saave-Harnack, A. & Dengler, C. (2019). Feminisms and degrowth alliance or foundational relation? https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/articles/feminisms-and-degrowth-alliance-or-foundationalrelation [Accessed: 15 September 2022]. Saave, S. (2022). Ecofeminism now. In W. Baier, E. Canepa, & H. Golemis, (Eds.), Left strategies in the Covid pandemic and its aftermath (pp. 335–350). Merlin Press. Saave, A. & Muraca, B. (2021). Rethinking labour/work in a degrowth society. In N. Räthzel, D. Stevis, & D. Uzzell (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of environmental labour studies (pp. 743–767). Springer. Salleh, A. (1995). Nature, woman, labor, capital: Living the deepest contradiction, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 6(1), 21–39. Salleh, A. (1997). Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx, and the postmodern. Zed Books. Singh, N. M. (2019). Environmental justice, degrowth and post-capitalist futures. Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics, 163, 138–142. Sultana, F. (2021). Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: A feminist reading of overlapping crises. Social and Cultural Geography, 22(4), 447–60. Thompson, C. M. & MacGregor, S. (2017). The death of nature: Foundations of ecological feminist thought. In S. MacGregor (Ed.), Routledge handbook of gender and environment (pp 43–53). Routledge. Tummers, L. & MacGregor, S. (2019). Beyond wishful thinking: A feminist political economy perspective on esarroll, care and the promise of co-housing. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1), 62–83. Van Woerden, V. (2021). Wanted for planetary health: A degrowth transformation rooted in caring esarroll practices. https://degrowth.info/en/blog/wanted-for-planetary-health-a-degrowth-transformationrooted-in-caring-commoning-practices [Accessed: 15 September 2022]. Velicu, I., & Barca, S. (2020). The just transition and its work of inequality. Sustainability: Science Practice and Policy, 16(1), 263–273. Waring, M. (1989). If women counted: A new feminist economics. Macmillan. Women and Environment Development Organisation (2020). Global feminist frameworks for climate justice town hall (Frameworks Reader). https://wedo.org/global-feminist-frameworks-for-climate-justicetown-hall-reader/ [Accessed: 17 March 2022]. Wheeler, K. & Glucksmann, M. (2015). Household recycling and consumption work. Social and moral economies. Palgrave Macmillan. Wichterich, C. (n.d.). Searching for socio-ecological and socio-economic transformation: A feminist perspective on the 4th degrowth conference in Leipzig. https://www.femme-global.de/fileadmin/user_upload/ femme-global/themen/English/Care_degrowth_AEPF10.pdf [Accessed: 15 September 2022].

Mariano Féliz

17 Dependency, Delinking and Degrowth in a New Developmental Era: Debates from Argentina Abstract: The degrowth debate in the North can and must be linked to debates in peripheral, dependent economies. In Argentina, the hegemony of development-oriented, pro-growth strategies has been confronted by Marxian dependency theory. MDT can fruitfully engage with the degrowth proposal in that both assume that a radical transformation of economies and policies is needed to overcome the current global capitalist crisis. MDT shows that new green development policy initiatives in the peripheries only reproduce the growth imperative and the destruction of life sustainability on a broader scale. In the tradition of Marxian dependency theory, this paper argues how degrowth in the peripheries is synonymous with decoupling. Indeed, the unbundling of dependent economies is the only path to radical social change. However, unbundling not only involves confronting current green development initiatives, but also requires the elaboration of new goals and policies. These proposals, in line with delinking and degrowth, should completely change the way our societies are organised. These initiatives must cut the ties that plunder territories and peoples on the margins, putting an end to unequal exchange and super-exploitation while creating a new form of social reproduction centred on life. In this way, the current dialogue between MDT and radical ecological and feminist traditions has the power to strengthen some of the elements put forward by degrowth literature. Keywords: dependency, degrowth, delinking, development, social reproduction The developmentalist approach fostered by the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) since the 1950s has had state-led industrial growth at the centre of strategy for economic development in peripheral economies (Prebisch, 2012). According to this approach, the state can and should push for economic growth with the help and leadership of public policies, investments and regulations. Traditionally, this strategy fostered industrialisation-led growth, where a growing domestic market and national capital had a key role. This strategy can be described as development towards the inside (Sunkel, 1991). This model of development competed with the modernisation approach promoted by core countries, especially the United States, since the Second World War (Preston, 1999). These promoted

Mariano Féliz, Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (IdIHCS/CONICETUNLP), Argentina https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-023

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the transformation of so-called ‘backward’ economies through structural reforms that would extend capitalist markets and the privatisation of broader areas of the economy. The developmentalist approach entered a crisis period in the late sixties, but after neoliberalism in the Global South encountered its own crisis in the mid-nineties, the developmentalist strategy re-emerged and has moved towards a more export-led approach that can be called development from the inside (Sunkel, 1991), or neodevelopmentalism (Féliz, 2015). The hidden and denied underside of the developmentalist approach of capitalist development is a relationship of ‘dependency’ between the world system’s core and periphery that subordinates the latter to the interests and development of the former (Amin, 2005). As Ruy Mauro Marini argues, this significantly constrains the periphery’s development strategies (Marini, 1994). Indeed, the broader Latin American tradition of Marxian dependency theory has shown repeatedly that capitalist development (especially in Latin America) cannot succeed just by promoting a suis generis version of core countries’ development strategies (Gunder Frank, 1967; Marini, 2022; Osorio, 2016). Even while attempting to depart from the core´s modernisation approach to development (Preston, 1999) in the form of ECLAC’s developmentalist strategy (Prebisch, 2012), dependent economies have been unable to escape those unequal ties. MDT shows how the developmentalist strategy of capitalist development heightens contradictions within dependent economies and blocks the chance of progressive social change without radical initiatives (Féliz, 2019). In Argentina, a clear example of a dependent economy (Féliz, 2019), the relation of dependency tends to create additional pressures. Not only must the country produce to satisfy the material needs of core countries, but it must do so at the cost of superexploiting its common goods and labour, including care and reproductive labour (Féliz & Haro, 2019; Féliz & Migliaro, 2018; Marini, 2022). Since the 1970s, increasing foreign debt has also put demands for growth on dependent economies since they must acquire foreign currency to repay indebtedness or to advance structural reforms to receive the benefits of debt rollover (Machado Aráoz, 2020). These excessive, mutually compounding and growing demands put the reproduction of life itself at risk in the periphery of the world system (Féliz, 2023). Since dependent economies face a loss of value and much-needed resources through forms of unequal exchange (Féliz, 2021b), they must multiply the production of commodities to be exported, which in turn spurs economic growth. In a nutshell, the process of unequal exchange means that low levels of productivity (and higher unit costs of production) within dependent economies reduce local capital’s profitability since a sizeable fraction of the value produced is lost in competition in global markets. To compensate for this loss, dependent economies are forced to multiply efforts to increase value production and appropriation through heightened exports, especially of primary commodities produced through extractive activities (Machado Aráoz, 2015). As Argentina remains on the ‘bad side’ of unequal exchange (while enterprises in core countries gain from it), it persistently loses value and absorbs the environmental and social costs of extractive activities (Svampa, 2018).

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In recent years, MDT has widened its critique of this situation by including many of the ideas put forth by socio-ecological and feminist traditions (Féliz, 2021b). In this paper, I argue that a degrowth perspective can also mingle with the MDT and produce a new radical synthesis. This can be achieved by integrating degrowth’s insight that a liveable planet for all requires radical reductions in material and energetic throughputs with Marxian dependency theory’s attention to uneven ecological exchange and relations of economic dependence between core and periphery. Since economic growth becomes a heightened macroeconomic imperative in a dependent economy, slowing down capital accumulation becomes a more significant challenge. Dependency amplifies the contradictions of a degrowth agenda that proposes to gear down into a new steady state with slower social metabolism (growth) (Kallis et al., 2020). While in core economies growth is part of the capitalist imperative but can be complemented (within limits) with some redistribution of income/wealth through state intervention (as we could see during the lockdowns or the current war/ inflation crisis), in dependent economies in the peripheries economic growth has been set forth as the main solution to poverty and inequality. Even if the growthdistribution debate is part of global discussions, in dependent economies the idea that growth will then trickle down to solve social conundrums has greater consensus across dominant political forces. Income/wealth redistribution appears is only marginally in dependent economies as it is presented as an impossible option in underdeveloped economies. In fact, when it comes to the fore in the political debate it does so in a minimalist fashion; unconditional income-transfer programs (such as Bolsa Familia in Brazil, or the Potenciar Trabajo in Argentina) are very limited in terms of providing adequate standards of living to the recipients. Degrowth has become an essential theory within development debates in the North (D’Alisa et al., 2013; Kothari et al., 2014). Since the 2008 global economic crisis, this movement has strengthened, especially in core countries. However, the main proposals of the degrowth approach have not yet been thoroughly debated with the local theoretical and policy traditions in countries and territories in the peripheries (Dengler & Seebacher, 2019). Degrowth literature realises that cutting down growth is a significant political and social issue, especially outside core countries (Martínez-Alier, 2012). In this sense, the question for a dependent economy includes how to cut down on unequal exchange that exacerbates the demands for economic growth. Since the loss of value to the world market is a crucial issue in a dependent economy, degrowth could only be achieved by ‘delinking’ the economy from the international process of value-formation (Amin, 1987). Within the global tradition of dependency studies, Amin explains that the creation of value is an international process and is directly tied to the imperatives of growth and capital accumulation worldwide. Unequal exchange is the result of global inequalities in productive capacities in the framework of the global process of constitution of value. Delinking implies introducing a political wedge between global values and local values and thus, between global investment strategies and local needs for investment and production. Argentina’s economy provides a clear example of the dangers

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of the growth imperative in a dependent economy and thus is a very relevant case for a fruitful debate on how degrowth framework can help create political alternatives.

The Developmental Approach and Its Dependency Critique in Argentina At first glance, the idea of degrowth collides head-on with the main concepts of the Latin American ECLAC-led developmentalist tradition. After the 1990s, this tenet was widened to include a strategy for green developmentalism (a form of the general proposal of ‘development from the inside’), where growth should be pushed through by expanding a country’s extractivist export base (Sánchez, 2019) in line with the need for a new green energy matrix, especially in core countries in the Global North (Féliz & Melón, 2022). In this renewed developmentalist strategy, economic growth has to allow the economies in the periphery to provide core countries with the commodities they needed to engage in their green transitions. In the case of Argentina, since the 2008 global crisis this so-called green developmentalist strategy has gained momentum, especially as the national economy has entered into a process of general instability, inflation and stagnation (Kulfas, 2021). Since the demise of the neoliberal hegemony in the late 1990s, Argentina’s economy has entered a new phase where developmentalist ideas have again become the centre of the hegemonic discourse (Féliz, 2019; Treacy, 2022). In the last 20 years, the hegemonic consensus has consolidated around promoting an extractivist strategy tied to the policies for greener growth in the core countries. This new developmentalist approach in Argentina has become a sort of green developmentalism (Kulfas, 2021), in which the green side of the equation is mainly led by supplying core countries with the commodities they need for their green transition (Barragán, 2022). Even if there could be significant costs in this strategy for the countries exporting those commodities, the hegemonic discourse is that they may be compensated or reduced with strict regulations (Mohle & Schteingart, 2021). In Argentina, this new approach to development saw its first steps in promoting mega-mining activities in the early 2000s (Antonelli, 2011). However, it wasn’t until the state recovered control of the privatised oil and gas firm YPF in 2012 to exploit massive shale oil and gas deposits in the southern province of Neuquén (Bilmes, 2018; García Zanotti, 2020) that the idea of green developmentalism took off. Argentina’s developmental strategy has promoted increasing the production of shale gas (García Zanotti, 2020), lithium (Aráoz, 2021), gold (Ortiz, 2007) and other minerals related to new, green technologies. In particular, shale gas exports are presented as an opportunity to help core countries divert from the use of coal and oil to produce energy. At the same time, the production of biofuels from soya has been promoted and more recently, the production of ‘green’ hydrogen, too (Cabaña Alvear, 2022). Most of these initiatives are controlled by transnational corpora-

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tions and focus on producing and extracting essential commodities to be exported in the raw with little or no manufacturing. This is an expression of the renewed imperialist drive of capital at core countries’, recreating the imperialist/dependency ties with peripheral economies. As Harvey has stressed, many of these initiatives require some form of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) as they imply the appropriation of territories by displacing communities and destroying and polluting native environments, as if they were second-grade peoples and dispensable territories (Pulido & De Lara, 2018). As ever, the territories of the Global South get used as sinks for waste and pollutants (Harcourt & Nelson, 2015, p. 75). Besides, extractivist initiatives tend to favour white and male employment while attacking the social organisation of care and reproduction centred around racialised women’s work (Cielo & Vega, 2015; Féliz & Díaz Lozano, 2020).

Marxian Dependency Theory and Degrowth in Argentina. Some Issues for Debate The tie between degrowth and the reduction in the pillaging of common goods needs to foster alliances between Northern and Southern initiatives for radical social change (Martínez-Alier, 2012, p. 64). For degrowth to succeed in dependent countries, social and political movements in the core must also radically transform the core’s patterns of production and consumption. This means that a successful degrowth transition hinges on acts of international solidarity. A requisite for this is that movements in the core grasp the fact that their so-called green transitions have a huge cost for peoples and territories in the peripheries. In this sense, due to unequal exchange, dependent economies tend to have a very high-income (and property) inequality (Marini, 2022). As capital in a dependent economy must compensate for the losses of unequal exchange, a sizeable fraction of labour is paid below its value and is hence not just exploited (i.e., paid below the value they produce) but ‘super-exploited’ (Marini, 2022). This means that in dependent economies many workers are paid under the cost of their reproduction (i.e., below minimum wages) so that capitalist corporations remain competitive and don’t fail. This creates a more unequal income distribution since workers appropriate a lower fraction of income compared to core countries. Thus, inequality tends to be much more significant, reducing workers’ consumption demand. In the degrowth debate, this situation of high inequality could facilitate a strategy that simultaneously reduces growth at the top of the distributional ladder while at the same time giving room for increased consumption and spending at the bottom (i.e., less super-exploitation). In the case of Argentina, in late 2022 the bottom half of the population received less than 22.5% of total income, while the upper 10% accrued more than 30.8%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and the Census (INDEC, 2023b). In these conditions, re-

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ducing growth (even absolute mean income) for this last fraction of the population would be feasible while significantly multiplying the bottom half’s income. Given that the concentration of property is even higher than that of income, the reduction of growth at the top could include just five percent or even one percent of the richest. The fact that growth reduction could be concentrated in a small but politically powerful part of the population is a political asset in the making of a coalition to promote degrowth while lessening dependency. It’s important to stress that in dependent economies where green developmentalism dominates, like Argentina, a chunk of aggregate income is appropriated by rentaccruing, extractivist sectors such as oil and gas, mining or agribusiness. The property is highly concentrated in those sectors and generally, income concentration is higher than in the service or manufacturing sectors. This is due to the appropriation of ground-rent by a few big transnational corporations controlling the critical points in the value chains. This also means that these sectors are highly profitable and tend to concentrate much of the available capital and so credit is funnelled towards these very profitable corporations. As the green developmental strategy consolidates, these sectors tend to attract more and more of the available resources for investment (Caffentzis, 2017). In many cases, expanding projects within these sectors also requires significant public investment in infrastructure and subsidies. These projects therefore require the full-blown deployment of the developmental state, displacing other socially urgent initiatives such as the expansion of public care services, education or health. In most cases, those projects are part of the geopolitical agenda of the leading hegemonic powers (e.g., the US, EU, China, and Russia), so any movement to deescalate these initiatives would involve significant international political conflicts. In this context, and to divert from its dependency path in the road to a possible degrowth strategy, Argentina would have to begin by reducing the production and export of those primary commodities, which provide a substantial part of much-needed foreign currency. By putting a cap on these initiatives, the country would be set on a path to degrowth, reducing the pillage of common goods and its negative impact on communities and the environment. As explained, a reduction in exports would fetter the availability of foreign currency and thus put a lid on economic growth in the economy as a whole. A reduction in exports would harden the external constraints (Frenkel & Rozenwurcel, 1989), demanding additional initiatives to replace or reduce excess foreign currency demand. With the reduction in average economic growth due to slower exports and reduced income in foreign currency, we could expect the local labour market to face some strain. This would be especially significant in Argentina, where the need for foreign currency operates at many levels of the economy. While high economic growth has not solved the lack of adequate incomes and employment for most of the population, it is clear that additional initiatives would be required to compensate for the immediate effect of degrowth on employment and the living conditions of the working people. Any just degrowth initiative must contemplate the need for a transitional path (Dengler & Seebacher, 2019; Martínez-Alier, 2012).

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There are, however, things that could be done to hasten degrowth in the periphery. Disarming extractivist initiatives might simultaneously work in favour of stepping down from dependency and moving forward into a just degrowth path. Just degrowth would require dependent economies to delink from global investment processes (Amin, 1987) and redirect public resources into areas usually outside capitalist interest. According to Amin, delinking implies ‘the refusal to submit national-development strategy to the imperatives of “globalization.” . . . the organization of a system of criteria for the rationality of economic choices based on a law of value, which has a national foundation and a popular content, independent of the criteria of economic rationality that emerges from the domination of the law of capitalist value that operates on a world scale’ (pp. 435–436). This means creating not just ‘a society with a smaller metabolism (the energy and material throughput of the economy), but more importantly, a society with a metabolism which has a different structure and serves new functions’ (Kothari et al., 2014, p. 369). Primarily, it will require a new approach to the production of popular housing, public services (education, health, transport), food, care and reproductive work and environmental initiatives. In a way, this re-orienting of the economy could shift ‘degrowth from being a negative downscaling of production and consumption . . . to being a set of ethical practices that allow human and environmental wellbeing to flourish’ (Mehta & Harcourt, 2021, p. 2). As many degrowthers point out (Kallis et al., 2020), these underdeveloped areas could generate jobs and income and multiply what, in Argentina, has been called the popular economy (Féliz, 2021a; Stratta & Mazzeo, 2015) with the possibility of vastly improving working conditions through public investment. The popular economy includes a vast amount of super-exploited employment in many areas of production of essential services in popular neighbourhoods (i.e., soup-kitchens, street cleaning, caring for elderly people and children, etc.) and could serve as the social and institutional foundation of a degrowth transition in Argentina. As these areas of the economy grow while extractivist initiatives degrow, manufacturing and service production could also increase to satisfy workers’ immediate needs. By delinking the economy from the main transnational processes of capital accumulation that demand investments in ‘green’ initiatives to satisfy demands from the North, an economy such as Argentina could deploy a new strategy for development, increasing the production of much need care activities (for people and nature) together with a significant reduction in the production and consumption of luxury and sumptuary goods and services for the rich. To be clear, a just degrowth initiative in a dependent economy must expand consumption of the popular classes. For example, in late 2022 in Argentina, according to INDEC, about 39.2% of the population (and 54.2% of children) lived with incomes below the official poverty line and 2.3 million people suffer from hunger (INDEC, 2023a). This situation results from a decade of economic stagnation in a dependent economy and the consolidation of the extractivist, green developmental strategy. Even in 2022, when the economy grew steadily at a six percent yearly rate, poverty did not fall and incomes still crawled behind high inflation. This has been combined with increasing costs of ex-

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tractivism: polluting water by mining companies, drought in areas where lithium is being extracted, pollution and quakes in territories where fracking for gas is multiplying. To sort this out, a degrowth strategy must allow most of the population in Argentina to increase consumption of essential commodities and non-commodities (e.g., free public services or self-organised community services). For this to happen, extractivist development must be halted. However, this must be done in a transitional path where the state finances a novel set of initiatives that generate alternative employment.

Preliminary Conclusions The degrowth debate in the North can and must be connected with debates in peripheral, dependent economies. In Argentina, the hegemony of developmentalist strategy for development, pro-growth strategies has been confronted by Marxian dependency theory. MDT can fruitfully engage with the degrowth proposal in as much as both assume a radical transformation of the economies and policies are required to transcend the current global capitalist crisis. MDT shows that new green developmentalist initiatives in the peripheries only reproduce the imperatives for growth and destruction of life’s sustainability on a wider scale. Writing within the tradition of Marxian dependency theory, this paper has explained how degrowth in the peripheries is tantamount to delinking. In fact, delinking dependent economies is the only path to radical social change. However, delinking involves not just confronting current green developmental initiatives but also requires producing a new set of goals and policy strategies. These proposals, coherent with delinking and degrowth, should completely transform the way our societies are organised. These initiatives must cut the ties that plunder territories and peoples in the peripheries, thus ending unequal exchange and super-exploitation, while at the same time creating a new form of social reproduction where life is at the centre. In this way, the current dialogue between MDT and ecological and feminist radical traditions has the power to strengthen some of the elements put forth by degrowthers.

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Shivani Kaul and Julien-François Gerber

18 Degrowth and Psychoanalysis: From Transition to Transformation Abstract: Multiple foundational concepts and authors cited as precursors to degrowth have roots in psychoanalysis – from statements like ‘decolonising the imaginary’ to assumptions about alienation, fantasies or desire. Today these strains are faint, as the contemporary degrowth research programme flourishes among ecological economists. What could a return to the psychoanalytic roots of degrowth do for research and praxis in an era of ‘bullshit jobs,’ burnout, and climate grief? In this chapter, we return to the multiple, and at times opposed, repertoires of psychoanalysis that have informed degrowth thinking to deepen its analysis of growthist society. In doing so, we differentiate between discourses of human nature and offer tools for enriching post-growth subjectivities. We review three psychoanalytic contributions to degrowth from established Vienna, Frankfurt and Paris repertoires and amplify the contributions of psychoanalytic theory situated in London, Zurich and Martinique. The aim is to help understand the persistence of repression, alienation and repetition compulsion in personal and collective life – as well as the possibility of their transformation towards post-growth subjectivities. From this position, we observe that the psychodynamics of growthism are more complex than what many ecological economists (and some degrowthers) tend to acknowledge. We argue for the urgency of regenerating degrowth authors’ images of human nature through the repertoires of feminist, ecosocial and anti-colonial psychoanalytic authors – in service of a more reflexive, radical and sustainable pace of degrowth transformation, including in academia. Keywords: psychoanalysis, degrowth, human nature, subjectivity, alienation, consumption, decolonising the imaginary

Introduction Psychoanalytic concepts have had a significant but unacknowledged subterranean influence in degrowth. Key and often-misunderstood degrowth concepts build from work on unconscious processes and emerge from psychoanalysis as a tool for critique and potentially for liberation. A recent French compendium of ‘fifty degrowth thinkers’ gestures towards the influence of psychoanalytic authors like Herbert Marcuse, Christopher Lasch, Paul Goodman and Cornelius Castoriadis (Biagini et al., 2017). Yet psychoanalysis is

Shivani Kaul, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Julien-François Gerber, International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-024

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absent presence in today’s debates on degrowth. The latter are largely led by ecological economists, a situation that has increased the respectability of degrowth in many circles, but also undermines its countercultural gist and its everyday behavioural affordances. What could a return to repressed psychoanalytic inquiry do for degrowth research and movement-building among the exploited and oppressed in an era of self-devouring growth, ‘bullshit jobs,’ burnout and climate grief? This chapter tends to this question as it opens up how growthism – and images of human nature – might be transformed. A psychoanalytic stance in degrowth affords engagement with unconscious motivations, latent emotional content and human unpredictability, in contrast to the simple volitional and cognitive models found in much of economics and other social sciences. Freud (1920) hypothesised that unconscious relational patterns rooted in intersubjective early childhood experience generate misinformation about oneself, with oftensurprising and far-reaching consequences. Rather than presume unrestricted growth and progression, psychoanalytic theories suggest humans are equally capable of regressing (Zaretsky, 2015). Many contemporary psychoanalysts would argue these processes apply as much to individuals as to groups and societies. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the dynamics of economic growth are thus more complex than what economists (and some degrowthers) acknowledge. Growthist discourses mobilise powerful, conflicting unconscious dynamics and ‘mental infrastructures’ (Welzer, 2011). These discourses are, as postcolonial scholar Ilan Kapoor (2014) suggests, replete with disavowed memories (colonialism), traumatic prohibitions (economic recession), fantasies (green growth) and obsessions (GDP must increase). If human behaviour is often erratic and irrational, changing policies and institutions isn’t sufficient. Examining collective blind spots, wounds, desires, internalised ‘laws’ and unwitting investments in the harmful dynamics degrowth authors consciously seek to change becomes necessary to liberating the project from capitalist, colonial and patriarchal continuities. One simple example here is the paradoxical growthist race for production and recognition that secures the positions of individuals in academic degrowth circles. The authoritarian risk associated with central planning for a degrowth society is another. But more generally, degrowth authors often emphasise ‘systems change’ by focusing on production relations or reducing resource throughput. This approach targets policy and state-level action and fiats that behavioural changes would follow suit. A psychoanalytic stance would turn this approach inside out: dismantling those ‘systems’ and regenerating post-growth alternatives from below (Gerber and Raina, 2018) would also require transformation in intrapersonal, interpersonal and transpersonal practices (Calmon et al., 2021). If this is not done, the disruptive ambiguities of the ‘libidinal economy’ will undermine any effort at a radical transformation (Lyotard, 1974; McGowan, 2016). Thus, this chapter answers the call of some degrowth researchers to generate counter-hegemony by devoting ‘much greater attention to political subjectivity and strategy’ (Chertovskaya et al., 2019, p. 6). Though neurology and experimental cognitive psychology have reanimated psychoanalytic hypotheses (Westen, 1999), psychoanalysis has declined in clinical and so-

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cial sciences while expanding in the humanities and psychological anthropology (Hollan, 2016). We are wary of the universalising and biologically reductionist claims of some psychoanalysts and don’t consider psychoanalytic theory inherently therapeutic or revolutionary. The personal process of clinical diagnosis lends itself to troubling potential for oppression as much as healing (Bakhtin, 2009). Clinical tools of psychoanalysis have historically been applied to violent disciplinary (Foucault, 1988; Illouz, 2007), phallocentric (Irigaray, 1985), universalising (Kakar, 1997) and individualising projects (Chancer & Andrews, 2014). However, psychoanalytic stances are heterogeneous and have changed over time – generating fresh critical, feminist and anticolonial analytical approaches as we will see below. As pragmatists and practitioners in search of models of human motivation more plausible than rationalistic visions of human nature, we still ask what psychoanalytic concepts might afford towards intersubjective projects of liberation. We start with different discourses of human nature around economic (de)growth. We then review three established repertoires of psychoanalysis to understand how their debates about human natures1 have contributed to critiques and persistence of growthism. Finally, we foreground post-growth techniques of repair, reanimation and refusal generated from less-established relational-feminist, eco-social and anti-colonial psychoanalytic repertoires.

Multiplying Human Natures Green growth storytellers assume that ‘time is so short, and human nature so rigid, that we have no other choice’ than to invest in green technologies and geoengineering based in extractive activities (Mann, 2022). This faith in ‘healthy growth’ is based in the conviction that ‘denying the human psyche its subconscious yearning for growth’ would be cataclysmic even if ‘the current version of capitalism might be wreaking havoc’ (Stoknes, 2021, quoted in Mann, 2022). This image of human nature naturalises and reduces individual desire to national economy metrics. In contrast, degrowth scholars have sought to denaturalise these growthist discourses of the human (Kallis et al., 2020, p. 15). This is because ‘like capitalist realism, growth realism does not operate by claiming that growth is the perfect system – but that it is the only system compatible with human nature and economics’ (Chertov-

 One of the legacies of humanist philosophy is heated debate about human nature. Are we all good? All bad? Both? A blank slate? A totalising approach to this question risks universalising the answer from a European and transcendental position without articulating the empirical, historical or political stakes. We seek instead to multiply human natures, situate them in psychoanalytic repertoires over time and weigh in on their political affordances. In so doing, we draw from feminist empirical philosophers who observe that different material semiotic practices enact different versions of reality (Mol, 2021).

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skaya et al., 2020, p. 1). Recent works about degrowth sketch what could be seen as three alternative discourses on human nature. The Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales (MAUSS) informs one discourse of human nature in degrowth. MAUSS social scientists first mobilised the influence of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi to critique then-dominant economistic and Freudian assumptions that instrumental self-interest is the only rational human motivation (Romano, 2014, p. 50). This school of anthropologists universalises the paradigm of the gift and rejects the self-interest of homo economicus, observing that many commodities circulate through networks of gift relations (Caillé, 2004). They insist on the fundamental interdependence of people and non-humans (Adloff, 2016). A second discourse of contemporary degrowth and post-growth authors emphasises the historical determination of human motivations, citing Frankfurt-based authors Horkheimer and Adorno and ontological anthropologists like Viveiros de Castro (e.g., Hickel, 2020). They locate the urge for growth in macroeconomic processes, arguing ‘principles of homo economicus that we assume to be engraved in human nature were instituted during the enclosure process’ (Hickel, 2020, p. 55). People in capitalist societies are taught to believe in fundamental distinction between humans and nature due to a dualist philosophy to the radical extent that they cannot understand ‘others’ like Indigenous animists. For some degrowthers, this divide falls along essentialised lines – Western humans divide nature and culture, while non-Western humans do not (Latouche, 2009, p. 99). Countering growth and historical determinism and distinct from anti-utilitarianism, a third discourse of contemporary degrowth scholars proposes underdetermined human natures. Their constructivist approach stresses that ‘human nature offers many possibilities: we can be selfish and we can be altruistic’ (Kallis et al., 2020, p. 43). Some degrowth authors in this tendency advocate the need to iteratively question ‘power asymmetries embedded, produced, or naturalized in the degrowth imaginaries and practices’ from a position of ‘nomadic utopianism’ in pursuit of an unfulfilled future that is also nonhierarchical, plural and self-questioning (Chertovskaya et al., 2020, p. 7). We note that they cite this ‘nomadic’ approach from the work of philosopher of Deleuzean ethics David Bell (2013), as part of their anti-essentialist move away from structuralist theories. Neoclassical economists’ deterministic models of human nature deduce behaviours based on a set of universal axioms. In contrast, contemporary degrowth discourses of human natures are prosocially determined, historically determined or underdetermined. This conceptual multiplicity opens up differing theoretical and tactical affordances. MAUSS pro-social human natures are a liberating corrective to older assumptions among economists, psychologists and sociologists. But they risk erasing the mixed motivations and complex interactions that economic anthropologists like Mauss himself argued characterise human relations of production (Hann & Hart, 2011). Anti-utilitarian insistence also risks romanticising and erasing emic perspectives of gift relations (Demmer & Hummel, 2017). For their part, the historically determined conceptions of human nature mentioned above reflect a valuable attempt

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to politically situate Freud’s conservative assumptions about the need to transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. But they inherit from FreudoMarxism a tendency towards Eurocentrism. Reliance on ontological anthropology in degrowth and adopting its philosophical idealism (Graeber, 2015) also risks reifying human difference along national and racialised lines. Finally, what we referred to as underdetermined conceptions of human nature in degrowth create a productive tension against more structuralist explanations, but they risk erasing shared human characteristics that make collective degrowth organising meaningful. The differences between degrowth discourses of human nature parallel the tensions between images of human motivation that have emerged in different streams of psychoanalysis. Before tracing these different streams, we will briefly discuss how early degrowth-oriented authors drew from psychoanalytic repertoires in their critiques of growthist marketing, wage labour and mental illness epidemics. Contemporary references to their conceptual contributions to degrowth miss this psychoanalytic context in a way that hobbles degrowth research and ecological politics.

Early Degrowthers on Psychoanalysis Two key figures in the emergence of degrowth in continental Europe are André Gorz and Serge Latouche. Both wrote in a time when psychoanalytic discourses were circulating widely in France. Both acknowledged their relationship to Freudo-Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, though these two approaches come to different conclusions about the possibility of breaking with capitalist productivism. The political ecologist André Gorz , who first used the term ‘degrowth’ (décroissance) in its modern sense in 1972 (Demaria et al., 2013), was deeply influenced by the psychoanalytic critique of capitalist modernity and in touch with Marcuse. His early critique of the ‘hidden costs’ of growth and productivism and case for ‘productive shrinking’ is based in the observation that capitalist growth relies on ‘strategists who are capable of manipulating our most intimate desires in order to impose their products upon us by means of the symbols with which they are charged’ (Gorz, 2001, p. 120). His articulation of décroissance revolved around the Freudo-Marxist notions of autonomy and authenticity, where the influence of Marcuse on alienation is palpable (Zin, 2007). However, the Lacanian psychoanalyst and degrowth sympathiser Jean Zin also noted Gorz never deeply engaged with psychoanalysis, and ‘this is perhaps why he was able to keep a conception of autonomy that was a little too idealistic, as well as a notion of authenticity apparently free from contradictions!’ (Zin, 2007, p. 174). Serge Latouche, prolific degrowth author, began his critique of economics with two key figures: Marx and Freud (Latouche, 1973). The psychoanalytic dimension then unfortunately disappeared from his writing after 1980, though his 1970s work was ‘mixing Fromm, Reich and Lacan’ (Latouche, 2011b, p. 305), and he was particularly

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influenced by Norman Brown’s book on civilisation and death drive (1959). French universities in the post-1968 era were rustling with the influence of Reich, Fromm, Marcuse – and in a complex relation to Lacan and structural Marxism of Althusser (Pietikainen, 2007). Latouche relied on psychoanalysis as a ‘science atypique’ to stay clear of the religiosity of some Marxists (Latouche 2011b, p. 293). He illustrates the centrality of psychoanalysis in décroissance by offering the example of Castoriadis, a primary degrowth precursor who was also a practicing psychoanalyst. Latouche (2011b, p. 293) observes that though Castoriadis did not write his clinical material into his theory, his major book on The Imaginary Institution of Society (1987) ‘would be unconceivable without passing through psychoanalysis.’ For Castoriadis, psychoanalytic concepts are tools to probe the mental weight of capitalism and its psychological cost. He strongly believed in the emancipatory potential of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic repertoires have multiplied over time beyond the Freudo-Marxist or Lacanian positions. How have the psychoanalytic discourses influenced degrowth authors and how might new ones inform degrowth praxis? To situate these repertoires in their sociohistorical contexts, we infuse our intellectual history here with a pinch of Indian aesthetics.

Established Gharanas of Degrowth and Psychoanalysis Psychoanalytic listening practices taught through training analysis resemble embodied skills like pitch or hue recognition. The resulting poised attention develops from ‘listening with the third ear’ (Laplanche & Pontalis, 2018, p. 43). Instead of the textuallinguistic approach normalised in defining psychoanalytic schools, we apply a modified genealogical method of intellectual history that follows the development of psychoanalytic-economic theory as musical gharanas, a Hindustani concept of musical repertoires. A gharana is the Hindustani term for a kinship network or social organisation that links musicians and dancers of shared lineage, musical style and repertoire. We observe that the conceptual tool of gharana, in contrast to ‘school,’ affords situating psychoanalytic theory in its aesthetic context – in what philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers would call an ecology of practice (2005). It is a category at once historical, physical, relational and enactive. Each gharana generates a particular style of performative practice that both exceeds the authority of one guru or individual and can travel. Tracing psychoanalytic gharanas emphasises the sociohistorical setting in which clinicians develop theory and the embodied, relational and mobile character of apprenticeship – as distinct from the stationary conception embedded in Greek etymology of school. In our review we discern six gharanas of psychoanalytic writing on the economy.

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These six gharanas, as we will see, are not watertight boxes but relational affinities we trace. We consider each gharana to be a partial perspective and do not try to champion any one. That said, one of the authors (S. K.) received clinical training in the London object relations gharana and works with instruments of the Frankfurt and Martinique gharanas, particularly the Caribbean epistemology of Sylvia Wynter (Lewis, 2021). The other author (J.-F. G.) has been influenced by Freudo-Marxist and Jungian approaches to the psyche and ecopsychology. Nonetheless we offer a mapping of ideas in time/space here for degrowthers to make use of these concepts as they and their communities see fit.

Vienna Gharana: Growthist Subjectivity Represses Marx, Weber, Tarde and Simmel wrote extensively about 19th century industrialisation and the expanding circulation of money as quantified value. Freud too lived through this period and theorised, among other things, about his Viennese patients’ monetary behaviours. Freud (1920) thought that the life force of the libido (‘Eros’), rooted in the id (the instinctual forces), fundamentally seeks pleasure, play, love and avoids pain. But this ‘pleasure principle,’ he argued, soon clashes with the ‘reality principle’ of the economic conditions and social norms, partly reflected in the superego (the cultural and ideological influences). As a result, the subject elaborates various unconscious ‘defence mechanisms’ like repression, projection or denial to avoid being hurt. Some of Freud’s early followers have had a profound influence on the deployment of capitalist growth in the 20th century. Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew, applied psychoanalytic theories to increase corporate commodity sales and economic growth (Bernays, 2021). Ernst Dichter explicitly shaped a new cultural superego by offering consumers moral permission to embrace sex and commodities in the post-war mass consumption era (Dichter, 1960). Marketing drawing on psychoanalysis is still alive today (e.g., Samuel, 2010). Anti-utilitarian influences in degrowth have emerged in response to this growthfriendly image of human nature, which is one direction this gharana has been applied – but not the only one. Socialist psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel, for example, wrote an early psychoanalytic critique of accumulation as ‘the drive to amass wealth’ (Fenichel, 1938). He argued bourgeois toilet training marked by tidiness, parsimony and money-hoarding was adapted to capitalist economies, but that this ‘anal character’ driven to accumulate wealth would change in the future (Fenichel, 1938, p. 95) – opening the door to post-growth subjectivities. Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich argued that capitalist societies are fundamentally sustained by the authoritarian model of the sexually repressive, patriarchal family (Reich, 1930). Post-war circles which later influenced degrowth theorists circulated his work (Latouche, 2011b). Reich’s student, Gestalt therapist and degrowth precursor Paul Goodman (1964) stressed that the Freudian human nature brings conflict and pleasure to life in a way that makes visible

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the repressive violence of industrial schooling and science done in the name of economic growth (see also García, 2017). Degrowth authors invoking prosocially determined human natures had a point in rejecting the determinism of Freudian theories. The Vienna gharana generated an image of human nature that universalised psychosexual stages in a teleological and reductionist manner. But Freud, Fenichel and Reich’s attention to early infant practices around hygiene and feeding also inverted the dichotomy between individual and socioeconomic order in a radical way. This approach has informed a tradition of psychological anthropologists working on early childhood experience in socialist, capitalist or increasingly market-oriented non-Western contexts (Bock, 1994). This is an empirical approach that might still be useful for degrowth researchers interested in cultivation of post-growth subjectivities. There is a need, we contend, to better grasp the sociopsychological construction of growthism – and, by extension, of post-growth alternatives. These early psychoanalytic attempts can offer helpful tools, provided they are updated. Meanwhile marketing practitioners have long applied psychoanalytic human natures to shape commodity desires. It is thus not surprising that advertising bans appeared consistently in early décroissance action agendas, such as in Gorz (2001).

Frankfurt Gharana: Growthist Subjectivity Alienates In the post-WWII period, philosophers and analysts applied psychoanalytic theories to critique the reduction of human experience under capitalist overproduction. A group associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt left Europe for the US, later becoming influential in the 1960s–1970s through students’ movements. We turn to Freudo-Marxist critiques of productivism from this period to trace affordances of historically determined understandings of human nature for degrowth research and praxis. This gharana explores the psychological violence of industrial society and historical conditions of alienation – not growth per se. But Marcuse and Fromm, as we have seen, directly influenced early degrowth authors Gorz, Latouche and Illich, among others (Latouche, 2011b; Vassort, 2017). Early Frankfurt theorists were interested in the abolition of alienated labour, a primary root of capitalist relations and industrial growth. They drew from young Marx, who argued that in capitalist relations, workers experience alienation from the act of production, from the production itself, from fellow workers and, crucially, from their own human nature that he called ‘speciesbeing’ or Gattungswesen (Geras, 1988). Frankfurt authors sought to refine Marx’s analysis of ideological ‘superstructure’ with findings from sociology and psychoanalysis – and to historicise Freud along the way. The common Frankfurt gharana thesis is that capitalist accumulation alienates people from being human. Social psychoanalyst Erich Fromm abandoned Freud’s biological drives but retained the idea of an ambivalent human nature, which, he argued,

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a new ‘productive orientation’ of capitalist social character reductively violated (1955). Philosopher Herbert Marcuse showed that Freud’s ‘reality principle’ has been supplanted by a ‘performance principle’(Leistungsprinzip), a competitive growth society that prevented capitalist subjects from sublimating libidinal energy in creative ways due to one-dimensional commodified pleasure or ‘repressive desublimation’ (1964). Growth-critical psychoanalytic economist Walter Weisskopf observed that neoclassical economics served as a defence mechanism against the ego’s fears of an uncertain, complex and irrational world (1955; 1973; Gerber, 2022). Weisskopf was close to post-growth circles and was invited by Herman Daly to contribute to a volume on steady-state economics (Weisskopf, 1973). Classical historian Norman Brown (1959, p. 285), for his part, argued that economies have always been ‘ultimately driven by the flight from death which turns life into death-in-life’ via restless exploitation of land and labour. After his predecessor Walter Benjamin, Brown observed that ‘the process of producing an ever-expanding surplus,’ or growth itself had become a new capitalist God in the US (1959, p. 269). This gharana contributed novel critiques of mid-century acceleration and productivist wage labour in the US but did not leave a clear Freudo-Marxist legacy in degrowth. However, patches of critical theory survived. Post-growth sociologist Hartmut Rosa, for example, reanimates this gharana by arguing that growthist society makes the world available, accessible and attainable, but results in greater alienation or hostile selfworld relations – and burnout (Rosa, 2019). He poses the ability to resonate with people, things, non-human nature – not our ‘species-being’ per se – as the opposite of alienation, updating Marcuse’s arguments about Eros with an acoustic relational term borrowed from contemporary psychotherapeutic practice. Rosa argues capitalist growthaddiction destroys the mutual trust that resonance requires by generating acceleration, chronic exhaustion, fear and time pressure. Metallurgist-philosopher Byung-Chul Han abandons alienation, arguing that in today’s ‘achievement society’ workers are not alienated but enthusiastic about early stages of burnout (2015). His Freudo-Marxist, Bataille-influenced twist on death drive begins by observing that in growthist societies, repressed fears of personal death and fantasy that more money equals more life spurs the need to accumulate more capital (Han, 2021). Both revise Freudo-Marxist analysis for growth-obsessed societies in valuable ways, though like previous Frankfurt authors (Marcuse, 1964; Brown, 1959), they can essentialise differences between EuroAmericans ‘moderns’ and ‘traditional’ non-Europeans in ways that obscure worldsystemic entanglements. Frankfurt gharana authors differed on the biological basis of our species-being but shared the premise that capitalist pressures to perform and produce violently reduce this image of human nature and create historical conditions for alienation (Pietikainen, 2007). Its legacy survives in contemporary degrowth application of critical theory (Brownhill et al., 2012; Gunderson, 2018; Meissner, 2019; Soper, 2020) and Rosa’s contemporary post-growth sociology of resonance. Yet the explicit influence of Freudo-Marxism has waned. Its authors can depict capitalist subjects in a paternalistic

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way and tend towards Eurocentrism in their analysis. In response, some anthropologists emphasise consumers as active and critical agents, instead of manipulated ones (e.g., Appadurai, 1986; Miller, 2001) – although this risks romanticising industrial consumption as creativity (Graeber, 2011). Shifting the focus from consumption to how industrial society produces humans in workplaces might still be a worthwhile goal for degrowth authors interested in how a growthist conception of human nature replicate or are resisted – such as in ethnographic work on the spiritual violence of ‘bullshit jobs’ (Graeber, 2018). Degrowth interest in abolition/transformation of wage labour through universal basic income or four-day weeks are legacies of this gharana, as is interest in creative play and aesthetic activity. Returning to the Frankfurt repertoire can be instrumental to degrowth authors interested in the cultivation of productivism in human subjects, the psychodynamics of its alternatives – as well as those interested in the psychoanalytic critique of neoclassical economics and the puzzling persistence of self-destructive growthist behaviours – to which we will now turn.

Paris Gharana: Growthist Subjectivity Repeats Alongside student and anti-racist movements in the US, feminist and decolonisation struggles shook university spaces in the 1960s–80s. In 1971, Nixon ended the US dollarto-gold convertability, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system and leaving fixed currencies floating. The Paris gharana reflected responses to this shift in economic valuation and linguistic turn to Saussure and Levi-Strauss’ structuralism in the academy. The Frankfurt gharana’s attachment to Marx’s Gattungswesen triggered criticism from this circle. Alongside debates about Althusser’s structural Marxism (Althusser, 2005; Thompson, 1996; Hartsock, 1991), Lacan and authors influenced by him differed with Frankfurt gharana critiques of alienation (Tomšič, 2015). They argued alienation is constitutive of human nature. Libidinal investments have an addictive ambiguity that capitalism structures. Understanding the Lacanian image of human nature can deepen the understanding of otherwise-perplexing dynamics of growthism that sustain capitalist expansion. Jacques Lacan was a psychoanalyst interested in Freud’s concept of trieb or drives that cannot be fulfilled. For Lacan, every infant experiences a lack or loss when they realise they cannot keep their mother for themselves and again when they acquire language and internalise a given cultural order that cannot fully signify their experiences (Lacan, 1978). Both generate perpetual desire and frustration that shape human pursuits. Lacan also sought to explain the endless motion of the capitalist discourse in the late 1960s (Tomšič, 2015; Vanheule, 2016). The neoliberal growthist superego doesn’t repress desires like for Vienna analysts, but commands to satisfy them. The ‘genius’ of capitalism is to have incorporated the lack at its core with unceasing commodity fetish (McGowan, 2016). The repetition of the failure to find full satisfaction is

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a hidden source of enjoyment, or jouissance. Thus, the Frankfurt gharana conclusion that capitalism ‘creates’ false needs is inaccurate – it organises them (Stavrakakis, 2006). Furthermore, GDP growth has been politically instrumental because it functions as an ‘empty screen’ onto which people project their dreams for a better future (Bjerg, 2016, p. 343). Relief from repeating consumption from a Lacanian stance sounds difficult. But exit might be possible with ‘recognition of a necessary limit’ that ‘function[s] as a boundary to [economic] growth’ (McGowan, 2016, p. 156) – this limit would define a collectivity’s core. Thus, interest in constructing limits among some degrowth authors (Kallis, 2019) – as generative boundaries rather than violations of growthist instincts – becomes psychoanalytically relevant and illustrative of an alternative to jouissance. In tension with Lacan, the ‘nomadic’ underdetermined image of human nature circulating among degrowth authors emerges from philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Lacan-trained psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972). They theorised humans not as subjects but assemblages of desiring machines – for whom libido can be potentially expressed everywhere, revisiting Reich in some ways (1972, p. 378). Lacanian authors like the philosopher and degrowth sympathiser Dany-Robert Dufour have critiqued them for condoning proliferation of desires that match the ‘schizoid’ subjectivity logics of neoliberal capitalist relations (2008). But Deleuze and Guattari’s ideal sounds not far from degrowth: in the appendix of L’Anti-Oedipe, they call for a ‘convivial revolution’ generating a post-capitalist society – ‘desiring’ but not driven by any primordial lack – that would rely on small production units and convivial technologies, referencing Ivan Illich (1972, p. 479). Contemporary degrowth author Serge Latouche (2011b) has popularised Castoriadis’ concept of the social imaginary in degrowth. He argues that the growthist imaginary is made up of ‘representations that mobilise feelings’ and need decolonising with reversal of the quasi-religious mental invasion by Eurocentric development, progress and economic growth (Latouche, 2011a). But ‘decolonising the imaginary’ remains a vague concept in degrowth research (Feola, 2019). Psychological anthropologist Claudia Strauss (2006), also points out that Castoriadis’ focus is on the unity rather than multiplicity of ‘imaginaries’: one per bounded society, an essentialising abstraction of culture that, according to her, denotes nothing and connotes ‘just about everything.’ Strauss suggests that Castoriadis is a bit clearer when he uses Lacan’s concept of the imaginary, understood as one’s self-image, paradigmatically launched when the child for the first time recognises themself in the mirror (2006, p. 327). Lacan’s imaginary is typically based on unconscious identifications and it can be analysed through particular case studies of people rather than abstract cultural subjects like in Castoriadis. Strauss argues person-centred methods or ‘studying real people will help counter the tendency to see imaginaries as more homogeneous or fixed than they are’ (2006, p. 339). She cautions researchers about collapsing individual psychological and public culture, which are both complex and entangled in practice – and advises them to reconnect to the missing psychological, psychoanalytic and anthropological theories that initially gener-

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ated terms like ‘social imaginary.’ Our point is that degrowthers seeking to ‘decolonise the imaginary’ could productively bring in psychoanalytic theories and person-centred methods, to confront superegoic injunctions and to tune into the creative potential of the unconscious on an everyday material and semiotic basis. Paris gharana authors distanced themselves from biologically and historically determined human natures circulating from Vienna and Frankfurt, with an impact on the possibility for liberation from growthist drives. The constitutional lack of the Lacanian understanding of human nature makes breaking from the cycle of growth and jouissance sound unlikely. But accepting the satisfaction that capitalist production permits might be the first step to exiting this dynamic and begin setting collective limits, adding an existentially meaningful value to the degrowth project. Lacan’s universalising theories tend, at times, to ‘excuse’ capitalism, which Deleuze and Guattari (1972) sought to disrupt with nomad sciences and the underdetermined natures of people as desiring machines – an approach that risks losing common ground in a neoliberal context of already fragmented social relations (see also Dufour, 2008). For Castoriadis (1987), the capacity to institute collective meaning affords exit from the capitalist injunction to grow the economy. But his ‘social imaginary’ is slippery and might be more useful for degrowth researchers if returned to its psychoanalytic origins. Person-centred ethnographic methods are more useful to study the unconscious sensory-emotional impact of growthist materials over the life course. Studying ritual events of dépense (Bataille, 1988) and conviviality also become significant empirical experiments in practicing post-growth subjectivities. Empirical methods that attend to early childhood rather than discourse alone recall the Vienna gharana – and the London object relations repertoire – which we will now discuss to continue the search for postgrowth human natures in historic, undervalued psychoanalytic gharanas.

Back to the Future Repertoires of Degrowth and Psychoanalysis London Gharana: Post-Growth Subjectivities Repair Psychoanalytic debates about human nature in industrial society echoed from Frankfurt and Paris through London, where questions about family and childhood socialisation became comparatively empirical and feminist. Melanie Klein (1960; 2011), Londonbased analysand of Freud and Ferenczi, proposed that human nature was relational and object-oriented. She shifted the analytical focus from adult discourse to children’s play and newborn behaviours, to a sensory and relational conception of unconscious phantasy shaping adult emotional dispositions. She observed that infants defend themselves against the overwhelming anxiety of post-partum experience by fragmenting perception of ‘objects’ like the mother into extremes: an idealised ‘good object’ and ter-

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rifying ‘bad object.’ But in normal conditions, this love/hate split can be integrated via the desire to repair and the necessity for mourning – a process that can be mobilised in degrowth debates. Degrowth precursor and historian Christopher Lasch centred Klein’s ideas in his critique of industrial US society (García, 2017), but otherwise this gharana doesn’t emerge in degrowth writing. Lasch argued that the capitalist ‘dream of subjugating nature is our culture’s regressive solution to the problem of narcissism – regressive because it seeks to restore the primal illusion of omnipotence and refuses to accept limits on our collective self-sufficiency’ (Lasch, 1991, p. 244). From this stance, growthism is a symptom of infantile narcissistic impulses to reject collective limits that blocks the possibility of emotional development that comes with making reparations. Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe makes a similar critique of capitalist growth for an era of climate emergency. After nearly 500 years of colonisation and anthropocentric expansion of industry, Weintrobe argues the shocking call for limits due to reports of fossil fuel-related warming might have paradoxically propelled neoliberal governments to power in the UK and US (2021, p. 63). Instead of treating the Earth as ‘breast/toilet mother’ like oil executives, to think differently about growth requires mourning the phantasy of human omnipotence, which is not part of the Enlightenment legacy and can be ‘profoundly unsettling’ (Weintrobe, 2021, p. 68). Weintrobe argues facing the climate crisis requires expressing collective feelings of being overwhelmed and enacting reparations. Neoliberal austerity measures shrunk ‘frameworks of care’ that served as emotional containers to facilitate mourning and emotional growth (Weintrobe, 2021, p. 99). Redistributing public funds to support people’s living conditions would provide spaces for mourning necessary to build support for radical planetary changes and degrowth. Repair as debt forgiveness and climate reparations in recognition of colonial, capitalist exploitation might signal growth in emotional maturity in the Global North instead of growth in macroeconomic terms. The London gharana grounds critiques of growth in the material object relations that shape early infancy and childhood – while confirming adult needs for environments that afford emotional containment, mourning of infantile omnipotence and reparative action. From a Kleinian stance, degrowth activists should be wary of unconsciously repeating a saviour position that splits the world into victims and aggressors – a risk of mobilising proclamations that degrowth will save the world (Hickel, 2020). Interrogating the infantile omnipotence phantasy of CEOs becomes as vital as mourning one’s own self-idealisation. Klein’s relational-feminist conception of human nature stresses the need for infrastructures of care that facilitate mourning and the desire to repair planetary damages caused by infantile aggressions. Depending on context, this repair could manifest as debt relief, climate reparations, reparations for slavery and land back initiatives – an opportunity for ‘saviours’ to shift position through reflection on their role as ‘aggressors.’ In addition to opening up the possibilities for research on how child’s play, kinship practices and adult environments afford growthist or post-growth subjectiv-

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ities, a promising future line of degrowth action could be connecting climate reparations to the Kleinian desire to make amends.

Zurich Gharana: Post-Growth Subjectivities Reanimate The psychiatrist and Freud’s student Carl Jung founded analytical psychology in Zurich. Jung (1967) introduced the idea of the ‘soul,’ or ‘anima,’ in psychoanalysis, defined as an embodied Self that includes but exceeds the ego-mind. He was especially interested in the transpersonal layer of the Self that he called the ‘collective unconscious’ and that is often revealed, he argued, through mythology, art and symbols. Unlike Freud or Lacan, but in agreement with Reich or Marcuse, he perceived that the unconscious entails a liberatory potential one can tune into. His phenomenological and hermeneutic approach has yet to emerge among degrowth authors, but some have started using Jungian insights (e.g., Kallis, 2019; Gerber, 2021). Jung (1977) considered human alienation to be rooted in the deanimating tendencies of industrialisation. He thus developed a stark critique of capitalist modernity based on the idea that Western overconfidence in the conscious ego separated subjects from their soul (Gerber, 2021). He argued this form of alienation generates existential disorientation and hinders the process of ‘individuation,’ or one’s developmental unfolding of potential throughout life. From this, it is easy to discern potential links with the degrowth critique of growthist modernity. Jungian authors often turn to the mythological record to examine themes in human history or even in economics – like the fascination and fear of human expansion (Sedláček, 2013). Depth psychologist Luigi Zoja traces the myth of growth and cooccurring myth of limits in Europe back to fifth century Greece, an historical period in which tension between expansion and fear of collapse manifested in the figure of Nemesis, the divine retributer for the sin of hubris or excessive pride. He concludes, from reading Greek mythology through contemporary Euro-American cultural production, an historical conviction in civilisational immortality, which paradoxically ‘contains a superstitious terror of precisely the opposite’ (Zoja, 1995, p. 129). He identifies elements of this hubris-Nemesis model and the ‘myth of punished pride’ in the Limits to Growth report, the work of Illich and catastrophe genres of popular culture (Zoja, 1995, p. 163). Ecological economist Giorgos Kallis (2019) draws on Zoja’s insight to discuss how, in the ontology of Ancient Greeks, limits were taken more seriously than in today’s globalising culture of excesses. Theodor Roszak was a US historian and ecopsychologist synthesising ecology and psychoanalysis from Vienna and Zurich repertoires. Roszak attributed the ecological crisis to a dualist metaphysics of separation between humans and the Earth. Like Jung, he traced in European history a shift from acknowledgement of human emergence in sentient nature to a patriarchal domination of natural resources and people (Roszak, 1989) – a critical social analysis that recalls materialist ecofeminists like Ariel

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Salleh (2017). This ontological rift contributes to the expansion of capitalist exploitation as well as mental illnesses. The id-repression valued in Freud’s Vienna model of human nature suggests his inheritance of patriarchal desire to control nature. Instead, Roszak praised the critique of industrial repression in Reich and Goodman’s work. He also saw the centrality of environment in object relations as an invitation to acknowledge the infant’s perpetual interdependency with its surroundings – human as well as non-human (Roszak, 1992, p 294). But rather than engage in individual therapy, he argued therapists have a public responsibility to question the sanity of unceasing industrial production. Along with ecologists, Roszak suggested a common political agenda echoing principles of degrowth: ‘scale down, slow down, democratize, decentralize’ for the well-being of planet and its peoples (1989, p. 311). The Zurich gharana offers the possibility of developing post-growth subjectivities that acknowledge the inextricable interconnectedness of our psyches, bodies and the more-than-human world, that is, a transformation from ego-centricity to eco-centricity, perhaps what geographer Neera Singh has called ‘becoming a commoner’ (2019). Gendered and racialised essentialisms linger among some ecopsychologists and Jungian authors who work with theories of universal collective unconscious (Fisher, 2013), but anti-colonial analysts like Fanon (1952) have also introduced sociohistorical layers to the concept. In theory, Zurich gharana affords an eco-social human nature that reanimates matter. In practice, the ecopsychology political agenda to consciously decelerate industrial production supports the degrowth policy agenda from a therapeutic position and could amplify ecofeminist degrowth proposals.

Martinique Gharana: Post-Growth Subjectivities Refuse Anti-colonial poet, philosopher and politician Aimé Césaire (2001) founded the Negritude movement, which combined the Black Radical tradition with Surrealist aesthetics inspired by Freud and the Frankfurt gharana. Césaire mentored psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon in Martinique, whose work (2008) in turn inspired Delhi-based psychoanalysts of capitalist development like Ashis Nandy (1983) and Anup Dhar (Chakrabarti & Dhar, 2009). Since the 1990s, philosopher and playwright Sylvia Wynter (1996, 2003) has woven Césaire and Fanon into her transdisciplinary black feminist critique of capitalist development in Africa, economic growth and anthropocentric coloniality. The human nature of Fanon and Wynter is not Marx’s Gattungswesen or the Lacanian lack, but homo narrans – biopoetic beings who engage in autopoietic storytelling and not only biology in creative praxis. We dive into the Martinique gharana to understand its ongoing relevance for degrowth scholars and activists working in situations shaped by histories of racial capitalism and patriarchal colonialism. Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (2001) has influenced degrowth authors who link the rise of capitalist growth to expanding colonisation or ‘thingification’ of humans and non-humans. Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel draws from Césaire to

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argue that if colonisation is a process of turning living beings into things, then reversing the process will require ‘de-thingification’ – what Indigenous philosophers would describe as learning to ‘see ourselves once again as a part of a broader community of living beings’ (2020, p. 271). He argues this animating ethic should be at the heart of any degrowth effort, in some ways resembling reanimation of the Zurich gharana. Wynter describes the ontological struggle of humans against the over-represented bioeconomic and secular-rational image of human nature that drives growthism and that she calls ‘Anthropos.’ Like Bjerg (2016) and degrowth authors, she identifies the naturalised image of homo economicus or ‘bioeconomic Man2’ as a mode of being human that has justified economic expansion and racial capitalism as salvation from overpopulation and ‘Natural Scarcity’ first circulated through the work of Malthus and Darwin (Wynter, 2003, p. 316). Her critique of economics goes back one historical step further to anthropocentric Enlightenment humanists, who conjured a boundless, secular image of ‘Man1’ as a ‘rational political subject of the state’ in opposition to subhuman and irrational Indigenous and African Others. This over-represented image of Anthropos has justified enslavement, dispossession, the modern constitution and the racial-colonial order (2003, p. 263). Wynter thus grounds struggle over race, class, gender, sexuality, climate change and global inequality in an onto-epistemological conflict between securing the well-being of Anthropos and securing the well-being and behavioural autonomy of all humans. Combining Lacan, Kristeva and Fanon, Wynter also identifies in development discourses an epistemological order that creates a metaphysical lack – for which the theological cure has become economic growth (Wynter, 1996, p. 311). She argues for an ‘epistemological revolution’ that would provincialise Eurocentric developmentalism and move beyond economics and mechanistic philosophies altogether. Work on/with alternative knowledges is not uncommon among people working on alternatives to development, Indigenous science studies and the pluriverse (Escobar, 2015; Blaser & de la Cadena 2018; Kaul et al., 2022), but is still-nascent among degrowth researchers (Nirmal and Rocheleau, 2019). Historian and revolutionary C. L. R. James from the Caribbean Black Radical tradition wrote with Castoriadis, Marxist humanist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya and feminist philosopher Grace Lee Boggs to publish early critiques of Soviet state capitalism and productivism (James et al., 1958). Writer and radical doula adrienne maree brown writes from this dialectical humanist context as Boggs’ student. Brown centres pleasure in collective liberation from capitalist productivism and white supremacy in ways that reverse Freud and recall Reich and Marcuse. Afrofuturist principles of emergent strategy start with the observation that linear organising often unconsciously falls back into modelling oppression (brown, 2017, p. 8). She contrasts ‘the capitalistic belief that constant growth and critical mass is the only way to create change’ with also ‘doing deep, slow, intentional work’ of cultivating transformative relationships (brown, 2017, p. 8). Brown and her co-authors explore the political implications of sexuality and joy in a contemporary US setting of industrial excess: ‘learn-

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ing what it means to be satisfiable, to generate, from within and from between us, an abundance from which we can all have enough’ is part of the process of releasing our species from the capitalist ‘delusion that we must accumulate excess’ to achieve success (brown, 2019, p. 10). Though bodies are built for joy, she also argues moderation and generative boundaries are central to creating a sustainable container for feeling good (2019, p. 13). Pleasure activism contrasts with the ‘sober subject’ approach to degrowth (D’Alisa et al., 2014) but aligns with Paris gharana thesis that intersubjective limits can be generative. Another somatic practitioner working with Afrofuturist inspiration to decolonise the body as a site of capitalist productivism or ‘grind culture’ is theologian and poet Tricia Hersey. In her work and writing, she articulates the tenets of what she calls ‘nap ministry’ – that bodies are a site of liberation, rest can manifest resistance to internalised capitalist and white supremacist values, naps are a portal to reimagination and healing, and that the stolen space to dream should be reclaimed (2022, p. 16). She identifies capitalist productivism as a form of ‘spiritual death’ (Hersey, 2022, p. 155), not unlike Fromm (1955) and Graeber (2018). In contrast, rest is ‘soul care’ inspired by the legacy of maroon fugitivity, somatic bodywork and spaces of resistance (Hersey, 2022, p. 111). Instead of growing in profit, growing one’s imagination and resting become acts of refusal – an anti-colonial convergence with the Frankfurt gharana project of abolition from wage labour. This gharana is situated in transatlantic spaces marked by legacies of enslavement and Indigenous dispossession, which should not erase different ways of relating to coloniality. But the images of human nature of Martinique gharana afford an opportunity to shift the methodological emphasis in degrowth research from ‘the world out there’ to how one’s science dialectically produces worlds and their exploitation. Degrowth researchers might sit with the racialising legacy of degodding metanarratives about the modern human – and sharpen their analysis of how capitalist relations are regodding economic growth and generalised exchange-value. They might reflect on their ambivalent relationship to the white supremacist, capitalist ‘grind culture’ that publishing and teaching might be escalating – or slow down for objection to demonstrate an alternative science is possible (Stengers, 2018). Degrowth practitioners amplifying the anti-colonial Martinique gharana might put energy into refusal: emergent strategy in movement-building and conscious experiments with collective rest and refusal – particularly in academic or activist spaces that introject growthist imperatives. An emphasis on emergence sits in productive tension with the climate emergency – a dialectic that could distinguish degrowth movements from statist mobilisation tactics. The ‘slow’ pace of relational work belies the agility with which collectives might move when/where trust is thick. Relational-feminist, eco-social and anti-colonial human natures return to empirical observations over time without Vienna’s biological determinism, Frankfurt’s historical determinism or Paris’s discursive idealism. Humans can and do change – in specific landscapes, over the life course. The challenge is to observe how, as we transform.

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Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we wished to show that psychoanalysis can help clarify a number of fundamental questions posed to the degrowth movement. It can help explain the persistence of growthism and the difficulty to escape it (Paris gharana), the socialisation processes into it (Frankfurt, Vienna), its psychosocial impacts (Frankfurt, Martinique, Zurich), the conditions for constructive change (London, Zurich) and possible transformational paths towards post-growth subjectivities (all gharanas). We traced these questions via the various images of human nature proposed by six gharanas of psychoanalytic thinking. Our goal was to differentiate their affordances and limits, suggest ways to deepen their critiques of growthism and listen for each gharana’s potential significance in contemporary degrowth research and praxis. By amplifying neglected London, Zurich and Martinique gharanas, we also articulated feminist, eco-social and anti-colonial human natures that might be of use for anarchist, materialist-ecofeminist and decolonial degrowth collectives. Our key objective, in short, was to urge degrowthers to unsettle their assumptions about human subjectivity and collective behaviour – in service of a more radical and sustainable scale of movement. We saw that psychoanalysis has both a social-critical and a healing potential. The latter might help foster individual as well as collective flourishing. Its general principle is to strive to expand one’s (group) consciousness and to transform unprocessed emotions and thought-reflexes into a richer landscape of feelings and perceptions. The degrowth movement should thus also take into consideration – besides policy and institutional change – deeper layers of internalised ‘laws,’ blind spots, desires, wounds, but also disturbing investments in the same problematic policies and institutions it openly seeks to change. This could be, in a nutshell, what ‘decolonising the imaginary’ might mean. Yet these tasks are not just about acknowledging and confronting our individual and collective pains, contradictions and fears – and what they tell us. It can also be about reencountering joy, play and fulfilment beyond the constrictive options of alienated work and alienated pleasure (Calmon et al., 2021). This has always been an essential component of the degrowth movement, whenever meaningful and joyful modes of coexisting with the planet have been proposed – for example via intentional acts of convivial dépense.

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Graeber, D. (2015). Radical alterity is just another way of saying “reality” a reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. HAU: journal of ethnographic theory, 5(2), 1–41. Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit jobs. Simon & Schuster. Gunderson, R. (2018). Degrowth and other quiescent futures: Pioneering proponents of an idler society. Journal of Cleaner Production, 198, 1574–1582 Dufour, D. R. (2008). The art of shrinking heads. Polity. Hann, C., & Hart, K. (2011). Economic anthropology. Polity. Han, B.-C. (2015). The burnout society. Stanford University Press. Han, B.-C. (2021). Capitalism and the death drive. John Wiley & Sons. Hartsock, N. C. (1991). Louis Althusser’s structuralist Marxism: Political clarity and theoretical distortions. Rethinking Marxism, 4(4), 10–40. Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is resistance. Little, Brown Spark. Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more. Random House. Hollan, D. (2016). Psychoanalysis and ethnography. Ethos, 44(4), 507–521. Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies. Polity. Irigaray, L. (1985 [1974]). Speculum of the other woman. Cornell University Press. James, C. L. R., Boggs, G. L., & Castoriadis, C. (2006 [1958]). Facing reality. Charles H. Kerr. Jung, C. G. (1967 [1929–1954]). Alchemical studies. Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1977 [1950]). C. G. Jung speaking. Princeton University Press. Kakar, S. (1997). Culture and psyche. Oxford University Press. Kallis, G. (2019). Limits. Stanford University Press. Kallis, G., Paulson, S., D’Alisa, G., & Demaria, F. (2020). The case for degrowth. Polity. Kapoor, I. (2014). Psychoanalysis and development. Third World Quarterly, 35, 1117–1119. Kaul, S., Akbulut, B., Demaria, F., & Gerber, J.-F. (2022). Alternatives to sustainable development: What can we learn from the pluriverse in practice? Sustainability Science, 17(4), 1149–1158. Klein, M. (1960). The psychoanalysis of children. Hogarth Press. Klein, M. (2011 [1977]). Envy and gratitude and other works 1946–1963. Random House. Lacan, J. (1978). Le séminaire. Livre II. Seuil. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (2018 [1973]). The language of psycho-analysis. Routledge. Lasch, C. (1991 [1979]). The culture of narcissism. Norton & Co. Latouche, S. (1973). Épistémologie et économie. Anthropos. Latouche, S. (2009) Farewell to growth. Polity. Latouche, S. (2011a). Oublier Freud? Revue du MAUSS, 1(37), 289–295. Latouche, S. (2011b). Décoloniser l’imaginaire. Parangon. Lewis, L. F. (2021). Exploring the foundation of Caribbean epistemology. Caribbean Studies, 49(2), 121–146. Lyotard, J.-F. (1974). Économie libidinale. Éditions de Minuit. Mann, G. (2022). Reversing the freight train. London Review of Books, 44(16). https://www.lrb.co.uk/thepaper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train [Accessed: 12 April 2023]. Marcuse, H. (1964). One-dimensional man. Routledge. Meissner, M. (2019). Against accumulation: lifestyle minimalism, de-growth and the present postecological condition. Journal of Cultural Economy, 12(3), 185–200. McGowan, T. (2016). Capitalism and desire. Columbia University Press. Miller, D. (2001). Introduction. In D. Miller (ed.), Consumption (pp. 1–6). Taylor & Francis. Mol, A. (2021). Eating in theory. Duke University Press. Murphy, M. (2017). The economization of life. Duke University Press. Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy. Oxford University Press. Nirmal, P., & Rocheleau, D. (2019). Decolonizing degrowth in the post-development convergence: Questions, experiences, and proposals from two Indigenous territories. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2(3), 465–492.

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Alf Hornborg

19 Degrowth Disagreements with Marxism: Critical Perspectives on the Fetishisation of Value and Productivity Abstract: While the degrowth movement shares much of the critique of capitalism voiced by Marxists over the years, it must be explicit and resolute about the disagreements. At the core of these disagreements are two issues which continue to unite orthodox and heterodox economists: the notion of economic value as an objective topic of economic research and the trust in rising productivity as a politically neutral phenomenon. Neither of these premisses is compatible with advocacy of degrowth. Based on Desmond McNeill’s book Fetishism and the Theory of Value (2020), this chapter concludes that Marx’s argument on fetishism was constrained by the use of analogies from natural science, leading to the positing of objective values beyond money. McNeill’s attempts to show how Marxian value theory can illuminate environmental issues and financialisation do not lend support to the labour theory of value. Marx’s naturalism also constrained the understanding of industrial technology by classifying material phenomena as belonging exclusively to nature and precluding the conclusion that they may owe their existence and material properties to social processes of exchange. For the degrowth movement, Marxian theory remains an indispensable but unfinished project, constrained by nineteenth-century ontological assumptions about labour and machinery that can only now be transcended. Keywords: Marxism, value, productivity, fetishism, environmental issues, financialisation, labour theory of value After a century and a half of voluminous discourse and political activism, the Marxist challenge to capitalist civilisation appears to be at an impasse. Its inability to suggest viable ways of redirecting human society away from increasingly severe inequalities and environmental degradation prompts us to critically re-examine some of its fundamental assumptions. This chapter will focus on two such assumptions which Marx shared with contemporaries in mid-nineteenth-century political economy: the labour theory of value and the faith in technological progress. While the degrowth movement shares much of the critique of capitalism voiced by Marxists over the years, it must be explicit and resolute about the disagreements. At the core of these disagreements are precisely the two issues which continue to unite orthodox and heterodox economists: the notion of economic value as an objective topic of economic research and

Alf Hornborg, Lund University, Sweden https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-025

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the trust in rising productivity as a politically neutral phenomenon. I shall argue that neither of these premisses is compatible with advocacy of degrowth. An appropriate point of departure for the examination of these topics is Desmond McNeill’s recent volume Fetishism and the Theory of Value: Reassessing Marx in the 21st Century (2020). Enthusiastically endorsed by Marxist theorists such as Ben Fine, Noel Castree and Erik Swyngedouw, the book can be assumed to represent a widely shared consensus on how to interpret the basics of Marxian value theory. Rather than immerse ourselves in the contested details, it will suffice here to assume that McNeill’s account is adequate enough to serve, by and large, as a valid representation of Marx’s thinking on value. Moreover, it is a commendably clear and readable book that systematically discusses the development of Marx’s theory of fetishism and how it was applied to money, capital and commodities. McNeill shows that Marx’s nineteenth-century efforts to illuminate how illusory conceptions could constitute an unyielding social reality – which at that time would have been a deeply mysterious conundrum – were pioneering. Marx was compelled to develop innovative approaches which today are well-established in the social sciences, but which were revolutionary at that time. Fundamental to the method was the urge to reveal underlying social inequalities that were veiled or mystified by predominant ways of perceiving society. This demanded a systematic scepticism vis-à-vis the categories of mainstream economics and a struggle to expose the unacknowledged asymmetries of exchange that they ignore. In this sense Marx found use for Hegel’s pursuit of a reality beyond empirical experience, although purportedly identifying that reality as material rather than ideational.1 While approaches advocating deconstruction of conventional concepts are commonplace today, Marx ultimately overlooked two concepts that were central to his own theoretical framework but to which his critical method should be extended. Like Trojan horses, the notions of ‘value’ and ‘machinery’ slipped into Marx’s theory of social development, reflecting nineteenth-century assumptions and constraining the potential of Marxism to address the alarming global concerns of the twenty-first century. In both cases, I shall show, Marx’s analysis suffers from a now increasingly contested ontological split between the material and the social – nature and society. These omissions – Marx’s failure to discard the concept of objective economic value and his endorsement of technological progress – are not criticised by McNeill. On the contrary, McNeill basically endorses the Marxian approach to value and never rejects Marx’s optimism about the emancipatory potential of technology. Furthermore, McNeill proposes that Marx’s concept of fetishism also deserves to be applied to recent concerns such as environmental degradation and financialisation. In what follows I shall argue that a truly radical confrontation with capitalism, as signified by

 As we shall see, however, Marx’s notion of a commodity’s value as representing a measure of ‘socially necessary labour time’ is a very abstract idea, detached from the biophysical embodiment of concrete labour-power.

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calls for degrowth, must extend Marxian scepticism to the very concept of economic value and to the delusory promises of increasing productivity. Rather than skirting these issues, degrowth theory must seriously engage Marxian value theory and the productivist and Promethean outlook underlying what has been referred to as ‘left ecomodernism’ (Trainer, 2019). This is where the genuine battle lines between business as usual and its antagonists will be drawn. The Marxian theoretical framework cannot claim monopoly on the critique of global capitalism. The concept of ‘capitalism’ has become a category with which various kinds of evils – economic, social, cultural, environmental and others – can be rejected as contingent and temporary, as if all these evils will evaporate by implementing Marxist agendas such as common ownership of the means of production. The conviction that anti-capitalist critique must comply with the Marxian framework constrains ‘heterodox’ thinking by paradoxically compelling it to subscribe to some central tenets of mainstream economics. The degrowth position is better served by theoretical clarity and rigorous delineation vis-à-vis classical Marxist assumptions than by attempts to avoid such confrontations. Classical Marxism should ultimately be recognised as a product of the industrial capitalism that is ruining the biosphere and human societies. To decisively abandon the Marxist connection to classical political economy, I shall argue, degrowth theory must transcend its references to economic value and technological progress.2

The Fetishisation of Value McNeill reiterates the historical background of the concept of ‘fetish’ and rightly lauds Marx for incorporating into economics a concept previously developed to understand the history of religion. McNeill accounts for this innovative move by referring to Marx’s ‘unusual capacity to stand outside his own culture and view the categories of thought of that culture as an outsider – seeing them as analogous to a religion’ (p.18). Marx viewed modern economic phenomena – money and commodities – as fetishised in the sense that they deceptively ‘veil’ the underlying realities of social exchange. In Marx’s own words, ‘the social connection between persons is transformed into a social relation between things’ (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 35). The commodity can be compared to a religious fetish because ‘in both cases the power of the thing appears to be inherent in the thing itself’ (p. 44). Money does not simply veil relations of exchange but organises them (p. 62).3 In interest-bearing capi-

 I have suggested the concept of ‘meta-Marxism’ (Hornborg 2023) for approaches that share the fundamental Marxian critique of mainstream economics and the commitment to social justice but reject the labour theory of value and the Promethean trust in technological progress.  As we shall see, the pivotal significance of this observation appears to be underestimated by both McNeill and Marx himself.

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tal, finally, Marx recognised how ‘[t]he social relation is consummated as a relation of things (money, commodities) to themselves’ (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 68). To assess Marx’s and McNeill’s references to the phenomenon of fetishism, we must first analytically clarify its essence. It signifies the inclination in human societies for objects to transition from symbols to indexes. A symbol is a sign that refers to something through social agreement, while an index signifies the identity of what it refers to. The paradigmatic instance of fetishism is when a fifteenth-century wooden idol in West Africa symbolising a metaphysical being is perceived as its actual, material manifestation. Similarly, an artefact that symbolises a social relation, such as a gift, tends to be identified with that relation. Although we know that a money token such as a paper bill is just a piece of paper that represents economic value, that piece of paper is simultaneously the value it represents. McNeill (2020, p. 75) believes that the concept of commodity fetishism cannot be appreciated ‘without being very sympathetic towards Marx’s labour theory of value,’ but, as we shall see, this conclusion is unwarranted. The fact that commodities are perceived as autonomous objects dissociated from the various inputs in their production is a valid observation regardless of our approach to value. Commodities are alienated from inputs not only of human labour but also of materials and non-human energy. This observation is foundational to theories of ecologically unequal exchange (Dorninger et al., 2021) and does not require any value theory whatsoever. McNeill’s account of Marx’s labour theory of value (LTV) is sometimes candidly sincere about its lack of lucidity, particularly where Marx struggles to distance himself from Ricardo: [N]ot only does Marx express his ideas in complex ways, his position also seems to vary somewhat, even within a single sentence. . . . It is by no means easy to understand what Marx means . . . (p. 80)

However, the crucial bottom line of the argument is that when labourers sell their labour-power to a capitalist in exchange for wages, ‘the apparently fair exchange between labourer and capitalist masks the exploitation of one by the other’ (p. 88). This is a point where Marx’s LTV decisively diverges from the political economy of Ricardo. In conceptualising value in terms of abstractions such as ‘socially necessary labour time’ (SNLT), Marx struggled to avoid the Hegelian inclination to transform an idea ‘into an independent object’ (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 97). Yet, the identification of objects with intangible ideas is arguably a way to define fetishism, a pivotal element of Marxist theory and the focus of McNeill’s inquiry. It was no doubt inspiration from Hegel that prompted Marx to pursue the veiled realities underlying the empirical phenomena of money and commodities. To propose that commodities have an objective value based on the requisite SNLT is precisely to view objects as transformations of intangible abstractions. Rather than being content with the simple answer that all commodities can be sold for money, Marx derived their exchange-value from their being products of labour. Furthermore, Marx argued, just as commodities are

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expressions of abstract value, concrete labour is a manifestation of abstract human labour. It appears that Marx here confused his own ideas – that is, abstract thoughtprocesses – with the social processes in capitalism: finding that the coat ‘became’ an expression of value and that weaving ‘creates’ the value of linen (p. 98). This inclination to see abstractions as more real than their concrete instantiations suggests ‘just how thin is the line which distinguishes Marx’s own position from the “mysticism” of Hegel’ (p. 99). McNeill notes that Marx’s critique of Hegel’s speculative philosophy is difficult to reconcile with Marx’s own argument on value, but is determined to offer a more sympathetic interpretation. McNeill (2020, p. 109) dismisses the relation between value and price – the so-called Transformation Problem – as being ‘of no significance for Marx’s argument.’ Yet, it is difficult to conceive of a commodity’s value in any other sense than as quantifiable in terms of money.4 This also applies to the surplus value pocketed by capitalists as profits, that is, the difference between the income from sales and the costs of production – all contingent on the market prices of labour-power and other inputs in production. Marx nevertheless theorised value as distinct from monetary flows. He held that human labour creates value ‘when embodied in the form of some object,’ but simultaneously observed that this value exists only in relation to other objects (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 112). It is asserted, on the one hand, that it is embodied labour that grants an object value; yet on the other hand, that value is always relational. The latter is obviously true of objects exchanged on a market, where each commodity is valued in relation to what it can be exchanged for. But the former statement remains an unverified assertion: we are not told why a commodity’s value should derive from this particular input (i.e., labour) in production. McNeill (2020, p. 130) concedes that ‘it is difficult to describe precisely what it was that Marx was trying to grasp in his analysis of value.’ Like so many other students of Marx’s texts, McNeill’s efforts are directed more toward illuminating Marx’s thought-processes than toward the processes of capitalism that Marx was struggling to reveal. This preoccupation is arguably itself a form of fetishism. As McNeill notes, Marx was treading difficult and unfamiliar ground5 when exploring the relationship between the reality of capitalism and its appearance to mainstream economists: What is the relationship between the phenomenon of capitalism and the categories used to describe it? To what extent is the reality separable from the categories? How far do the categories themselves not merely reinforce but even create this reality? (pp. 115–116)

 McNeill writes that abstract labour is measured in socially necessary labour time, ‘which is expressed in terms of exchange-value, money’ (p. 114).  McNeill (2020: 169) writes that Marx ‘was constrained by lack of a vocabulary, lack of appropriate analogies, lack of a methodology – largely because of the dominance in his era of natural science and mechanistic explanations.’

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McNeill’s (2020, p. 122) conclusion is that ‘[t]he categories through which we perceive the economic system are themselves part of that system.’ This may seem evident to anthropologists and other social scientists in the twenty-first century, but it posed a considerable conundrum in Marx’s time. Marx’s position with regard to the ontology of value, says McNeill (p. 125), ‘is rather obscure.’ McNeill suggests that it was to avoid the idealism of Hegel that Marx ‘chose a physical, material model for conceptualising value,’ which in McNeill’s view is inappropriate. This indeed helps to explain how an abstract idea – value – became reified into the foundation of historical materialism. It also illuminates how Marx’s references to fetishism paradoxically fail to fathom its full relevance for political economy. A central problem that animated Marx’s analytical efforts was the question of what made commodities commensurable. What did they have in common that defined their exchange-value? Marx was not content with the simple answer that they had a price, i.e., that they could be exchanged for money on the market. He was convinced that the underlying ‘substance of exchange-value’ is abstract labour (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 132). He mentions that Aristotle had posed the same question about the substance of commensurability but had been unable to answer it because ancient Greek society was founded on slavery rather than capitalism (McNeill, 2020, pp. 208–209, 219).6 In scrutinising Marx’s discussion of the relation between value and price, in which value is referred to as ‘the immanent measure of commodities in exchange’ (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 136), McNeill objects that it is more accurate to observe that ‘money is the measure of value’ (p. 136). In this view, money is to value as temperature is to heat, weight to gravity and area to space. McNeill explains that, in each of these cases, the phenomenon is ‘ontologically prior’ to its measurement. But this statement reveals the limitation of the analogy, because it is in fact perfectly valid to suggest that money is ontologically prior to value (Hornborg, 2019, p. 168).7 Heat, gravity and space are physical phenomena, but value is a social phenomenon. Thermometers, scales and rulers do not create physical reality, but socially constructed phenomena can be produced by our modes of measuring them.8 In applying analogies from natural science, Marx neglected the pioneering insight on social phenomena that was fundamental to much of his thinking and rightly praised by McNeill: that human categories are constitutive of economic systems. This is indeed what

 This would suggest that Marx considered the LTV to be as applicable to ancient Greece as to nineteenth-century Britain. However, what both societies did have in common – and prompted Aristotle and Marx to ask the same question – was all-purpose money and production for exchange.  The concept of value can be traced to fourteenth-century English as referring to ‘the monetary worth of something’ (Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary 2021).  It is ironic that McNeill (2020: 187) explicitly deplores Marx’s use of metaphors based on the material world, whereas value ‘must be understood as a social phenomenon,’ but without reflecting on the fallacy of positing that the phenomenon of value must be ontologically prior to its measurement in money.

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justifies Marx’s use of the concept of fetishism. As David Graeber (2007, p. 141) observes, money in capitalism paradoxically ‘represents the value of labour, but wage labourers work to get money; it thus becomes a representation that brings into being what it represents’ (emphasis added). Marx’s concept of money fetishism is no less incisive when stripped of the LTV – on the contrary, it is only then that its true magic can be fathomed. McNeill (2020) writes that a central question in his book has been: [W]hat is the ontological status of value; what is it that renders something valuable – transmuting it from an object to a commodity? [H]ere the concept of the fetish is a useful analogy; for a fetish is, in a sense, ‘real’; it has real effects, not because of its material but its social qualities: the shared beliefs and practices of society. (p. 248)

This ‘constructionist’ implication of Marx’s thinking suggests that the logical answer to McNeill’s question is money. Money fetishism defines value. There is no need for a LTV. Nevertheless, the clearly obsolete assumption that social beliefs and categories cannot be ontologically prior to economic phenomena continues to constrain Marxist value theory, as when Elke Pirgmaier (2021, p. 6) recently argued that, although ‘the essence of value necessarily manifests and bears a systematic relation to money,’ money cannot explain value. A cornerstone of the Marxian framework is the distinction between use-value and exchange-value. Originally conceptualised by Aristotle as he reflected on the emergence of money and market exchange in ancient Greece, the terms distinguish between an item’s capacity to satisfy a person’s needs or desires on the one hand and its ability to fetch a price on the market on the other. In the context of this contrast, the notion of ‘use-value’ has widely been understood as referring to qualitative features of the object itself, whereas ‘exchange-value’ refers to its quantitative relation to other commodities. On closer scrutiny, however, it is obvious that an object’s usevalue is also relational, rather than inherent in the object (McNeill 2020, p. 227). Usevalue, like the concept of ‘utility’ applied by mainstream economists, is contingent on the social and cultural context. It is not a transhistorical category (p. 47, n7). This has been established by a long line of theorists from Veblen and Weber through Baudrillard and Bourdieu to anthropologists like Mary Douglas, Marshall Sahlins and Daniel Miller.9 Because an item’s use-value is contextual and symbolically constituted, it cannot be objectively determined, let alone quantified or compared with its exchangevalue (Hornborg, 2019, p. 161).10 Whereas the Marxist tradition has largely treated usevalues as concrete and objective attributes of objects, Baudrillard has suggested that

 In the chapter ‘Consumption, Need and Use-Value,’ McNeill (2020: 225–242) observes that this social aspect of consumption is neglected in Marx’s analysis.  To conceptualise use-values as ‘real wealth,’ by virtue of their ‘natural-material’ qualities (Foster 2018; Foster and Burkett 2018), completely misses this point. Even Marx conceded that ‘meat is not food to the Hindu’ (McNeill 2020: 241), although he elsewhere defined use-value simply as ‘material substance’ (Marx cited by Burkett 2003: 147).

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‘use value – indeed utility itself – is a fetishized social relation’ (Baudrillard cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 236). An important aim in McNeill’s book is to show how Marxist theory can be applied to modern environmental issues. Six of the eight endorsements in the beginning of the book praise its application of Marx’s framework to how capitalism shapes the relations between humans and their natural environment. Yet, after mentioning some recent debates in ecological Marxism, McNeill (2020, pp. 264, 269) draws the disappointing conclusion that ‘[t]he main way in which Marx’s theory of value connects with nature is through the concept of rent.’ Ground-rent is the sum of money paid by capitalist entrepreneurs to landowners for the right to exploit a piece of land (p. 265). The discourse on rent is inextricably entangled with the idea that nature can be assigned a price, which McNeill rightly criticises (pp. 260–261). To conclude that rent theory is the main relevance of Marxian value theory for environmental issues is to concede that it does not have much to say on the topic. McNeill (pp. 251–252) notes that several writers have found that Marxian value theory tends to be abandoned when environmental issues are addressed. Over the 50 years since the first Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972, however, there has been a growing literature on ecoMarxism. Much of it has debated the extent to which Marx’s ideas were ‘Promethean’ or ‘ecological’ (p. 253). It is obvious that quotes from Marx can be used in support of both positions, which finally indicates a fundamental contradiction between the trust in the development of new ‘productive forces’ and the commitment to healing the ‘metabolic rifts’ generated by capitalism. To pretend that this contradiction does not exist is simply not credible. Attempts to complement the Marxian LTV with environmental considerations can be traced from James O’Connor to Jason W. Moore (O’Connor, 1998; Moore, 2015; cf. Walker, 2017), but the ensuing debates have demonstrated that the issue is not easily straddled. An illuminating exchange on the topic which clearly implicates degrowth theory is the discussion between Giorgos Kallis and the Marxist geographer Erik Swyngedouw, Do Bees Produce Value? (Kallis and Swyngedouw, 2018; cf. McNeill, 2020, p. 257). Kallis asks Swyngedouw to explain why Marxian value theory privileges human labour (SNLT), among all the inputs in production, as the only source of the kind of Value (with a capital V) that can be appropriated (as surplus value) by capitalists. Swyngedouw responds by providing a standard presentation of the Marxist framework. It is logically coherent and there are points of agreement – for instance, on the assertion that natural resources are ‘undervalued’ (pp. 45, 48) – but Kallis remains unconvinced. He questions why Marxists reckon with the natural environment only in terms of ‘rent’ or ‘productivity increase,’ but not as a source of Value and believes that Marxist theory fetishises ‘productivity’ when it is treated as external to value creation (p. 47). At a more general level, Kallis objects that the ‘proof’ that SNLT is the only thing that two different commodities have in common ultimately rests on an unprovable assertion:

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This is how I understand Marx’s LTV. It starts from an unprovable but reasonable assertion that this is what value is under capitalism and then on the basis of this premise builds a whole edifice, which gives a pretty compelling explanation of how capitalism works. . . . But [the] usefulness of a theory should not be confused for reality. (p. 49)

At this point, Swyngedouw appears to retreat, conceding that several Marxists have ‘abandoned the LTV but argue that the analysis of capitalism as proposed by Marx is largely valid even if one rejects the LTV.’ Swyngedouw dismisses Kallis’s claim that Marx’s LTV is simply based on assertions, but the concession that the Marxist analysis of capitalism is not inextricably founded on the LTV is significant. A recurrent notion in Marxian critiques of capitalism is that labour and natural resources are ‘undervalued’ or ‘underpaid,’ but such a way of conceptualising exploitation is based on the same error as committed by mainstream economists when they assert that market prices ‘externalise costs.’ It seems that the assumption shared by both orthodox and heterodox economists is that labour and natural resources have objectively ‘correct’ monetary values that market prices fail to cover. The notion of objective values, whether based on SNLT or the value of ecosystem services, thus implicitly assumes that everything – including nature – can be evaluated in monetary terms. This follows logically from the previously identified inversion whereby money came to be understood as referring to value, rather than vice versa. It illustrates how the fetishised artefact of all-purpose money (Polanyi, 1968)11 has not only become the measure of all things but also has organised the way we think about biophysical processes. Paradoxically, the length to which this fetishism will go is epitomised in the widespread complaint among Marxists that capitalism does not properly ‘value’ nature (cf. Huber, 2017). Given these conceptual problems, it is unclear how McNeill’s presentation of Marx’s approach should persuade us that Marxist theory can be applied to modern environmental issues.

The Fetishisation of Productivity Besides environmental issues, a topic to which McNeill devotes a separate chapter is financialisation, that is, the increasing derivation of profits from financial income rather than from trade and production. A traditional Marxist approach would define financialisation as deriving from interest-bearing capital. In Marx’s view, interest is ‘part

 It is noteworthy that several meticulous Marxist theorists such as Heinrich (2014), Moseley (2016), and Bellofiore (2018) have recently observed that Marx’s deliberations on capital are essentially concerned with the societal consequences of money. Heinrich (2014) affirms that ‘value cannot exist without money’; Moseley (2016) writes that ‘Marx’s theory is a monetary theory from beginning to end’; and Bellofiore (2018) notes that Marx’s value theory uniquely ‘introduces money in the very initial deduction of value.’

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of the profit which, in its turn, is itself nothing but surplus-value, unpaid labour . . .’ (Marx cited by McNeill, 2020, p. 281). However, the recent ascendancy of financialisation suggests that money fetishism in capitalism (what Marx called ‘Moloch’) finally renders the LTV superfluous. McNeill (p. 279) mentions the rising importance of capital accumulation from financial instruments such as derivatives based on housing mortgages and futures markets for agricultural products. The material agency of money invalidates Marx’s distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fictitious’ capital (pp. 284–294, references to Brett Christophers and Ben Fine). McNeill reviews the argument of Brett Christophers that financial capital is as productive of value as labour, suggesting a complete revision of Marxian value theory (pp. 301, 308), but never lets such doubts shake his conviction that Marx’s theory of value is applicable to current conditions. Yet, financialisation underscores the conclusion in the previous section that there is no need for a LTV. Money begets more money as a result of its own fetishised inertia – there is no need to search for a more ‘real’ source of value than the idea of value itself. How does this fetishised idea of value organise the material world? How do we account for the fact that Marxist theory, while ultimately concerned with the logic of money, is so focused on tangible processes of production and ‘productive forces’? In order to unravel the paradoxes of ‘historical materialism,’ we must examine Marx’s understanding of industrial technology and the pervasive but illusory distinction between the material and the social. Marx appears to have consistently believed in an ultimate divide between material objects and social relations, distinguishing between machinery and the use of machinery (McNeill, 2020, pp. 33, 47). McNeill interprets Marx’s position as implying that ‘an emphasis on the social as opposed to the material necessarily also involves an emphasis on relations as opposed to entities’ (p. 48). But this opposition is questionable, as objects perceived as ‘entities’ generally also prove to consist of relations. This is as evident in the field of ecology as in the study of the global economy: any unit of study can only be accounted for by reference to the wider context of relations. From this perspective, the fact that capital ‘appears to be inherently, or autonomously productive, but it is not’ (p. 70) implicates not only the local relation between worker and capitalist but also the global relations of exchange that have made industrial machinery possible. The machine is a material object but simultaneously a (global) social relation. Industrial technology invalidates McNeill’s assertion, echoing Marx’s assumption, that ‘[m]aterial reality is independent of the beliefs of persons, social reality is not’ (pp. 117, 121–122). It dissolves the conventional distinction between the material and the social. It also reveals the inadequacy of a ‘materialism’ that conceptualises the substance of social exchange in terms of ‘value’ (Hornborg, 2021).12

 McNeill’s account of Marxist theory, for instance, is completely detached from the material substance of production and exchange.

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The industrial technology that coalesced in Britain after the late eighteenthcentury was a global socio-metabolic phenomenon: it was social and material at the same time (Hornborg, 2019, 2023a). The industrial revolution was a product of the eighteenth-century world system of trade dominated by the British colonial empire, which channelled vast volumes of embodied labour and resources to Britain from its global periphery. McNeill (p. 202) attributes to Marx the position that ‘exploitation occurs in production, not in exchange,’ but this assertion raises two objections. First, even the Marxian concept of production is exchange – of labour-power for wages. Second, exploitation occurs also in trade, not only in the colonial trade that engendered capital accumulation and industrialisation in Britain but also in the physically unequal exchange that continues to characterise the modern world. The two objections converge in the insight that industrial production is contingent on unequal exchange: asymmetric global transfers of embodied labour time as well as embodied natural resources (Dorninger et al., 2021; Hickel et al., 2022). The theory of ecologically unequal exchange has disturbing implications for our understanding of modern technology, which must problematise the Marxist understanding of the relation between the material and the social, as evident in the distinction between ‘productive forces’ and ‘relations of production.’ The technical aspects of productive forces in early industrial Britain were not simply products of engineering knowledge applied to nature, as Marx understood the steam engine, but of asymmetric, global social relations. The capitalist drive for increased ‘productivity’ through technological innovation that was celebrated by Marx and Schumpeter is ultimately a way of displacing work and environmental loads to low-wage sectors of the world economy. The heightened productivity of the British worker was thus accomplished at the expense of people and environments in Britain’s colonial periphery. The relations of production had become global, but Marx’s interpretation of the social processes of mid-nineteenth-century Britain remained conceptually confined to the factory. He concluded that the rationality of mechanisation is ‘limited by the requirement that less labour must be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by the employment of that machinery’ (Marx [1867] 1976, p. 515), but appears not to have let the celebration of technology be marred by considering that a machine might embody more labour than it displaces, due to wage disparities between different sectors of the global economy – in other words, that low-wage labour in extraction may subsidise the operation of industrial machines. As the conceptual divide between material objects and social relations continues to govern our thoughts 250 years after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, we must determine precisely in what sense modern technology deludes us. Vast intellectual energy has been invested in attempting to dissolve the boundary between the material and the social aspects of technology, most famously by the so-called ‘material turn’ or ‘new materiality’ championed by Bruno Latour and the proponents of Actor-Network Theory. Conventional accounts of the relation between technology and social theory tend to oppose social constructionism and neomaterialism, understanding the latter’s focus on materiality as a way to grant agency to objects such as artefacts (Matthewman, 2011, p. 19). For Latour,

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the modern boundary between matter and society has defined the division of labour between the natural and the social sciences (Matthewman 2011, p. 109). In other words, matter is equated with nature, as distinct from society. This dualism is no doubt essential to Marx’s position, as he celebrated the progress of the productive forces as free gifts of nature. To genuinely challenge the conventional distinction between the material and the social, however, we must recognise that the materiality of our modern artefacts is itself socially constituted. Rather than simply upgrade the role of materiality in society, as if it implied an ‘agency’ equal to purposive action, we must understand the very stuff of modern technologies as products of social exchange. Artefacts do not just have social consequences stemming from their material properties – they owe their existence and material properties to social processes. The phenomenon of modern technology thus dissolves the boundary between the material and the social in a more profound way than generally imagined by proponents of the material turn. To Marx, dissolving that boundary was even more difficult to imagine: the operation of the steam engine ultimately signified a natural phenomenon rather than a social relation. McNeill (2020, p. 138) remarks that it is strange that Marx on the one hand emphasised that economic categories such as value are social rather than natural phenomena while on the other hand was inclined to use natural analogies to explain concepts. As we showed in the previous section, such analogies prevented him from seeing that money could be ontologically prior to value and reinforced the conviction that value must ultimately be a measure of some objective phenomenon like SNLT. It appears that Marx’s understanding of industrial machinery was similarly biased, fortifying technology against social deconstruction. In both cases, then – the fetishisation of value and the fetishisation of productivity – the Marxian framework has suffered from a Cartesian compulsion to rest on an unquestionable bedrock of objective reality. Such Cartesian fortification of purportedly objective phenomena, uncontaminated by cultural categories and social relations, underlies mainstream accounts of industrial capitalism as well as Marxist critiques. By fully acknowledging the magic of money, degrowth theory must transcend both.

Toward Post-Cartesian Understandings of Value, Money and Technology Although the diverse ideas assembled under the umbrella of the degrowth movement (D’Alisa et al., 2015) all aim at a future society not dominated by the pursuit of money and often inspired by Indigenous, non-capitalist societies, degrowth theorists have shown comparatively little interest in seriously questioning the Cartesian worldview that underpins mainstream understandings of money and technology. They appear to have underestimated the extent to which proposals for degrowth must challenge the ontological foundations of modern civilisation. What are ultimately the implications

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of a disavowal of ‘capitalism’ and the praise for Indigenous ontologies? As Marshall Sahlins has observed, Indigenous societies today almost always contrast their own cultures to ‘the white man’s “living in the way of money”’ (Graeber and Wengrow, 2021, p. 58). At times perhaps unwittingly, the celebration of Indigenous cultures is an implicit critique of the logic of money. In this section, I shall briefly discuss Giorgos Kallis’s (2018) visions for degrowth, indicating the extent to which arguments for degrowth harmonise with the critiques of Marxian value theory and Promethean productivism sketched in the previous sections. Many of the positions expressed by Kallis are unproblematic in the sense that most readers in the degrowth movement will immediately agree: the negative ecological consequences of growth, the unlikelihood of ‘decoupling,’13 the despair about climate change politics, the ecological shortcomings of socialist economies, the desirability of more localised economies, the virtues of basic income and perhaps even the hesitations about renewable energy technologies.14 Kallis’s book Degrowth nevertheless raises several unanswered questions about the ontology of value, money and technology that deserve to be explicitly discussed. Throughout the book there are repeated references to ‘real value’ and ‘use-value,’ reiterating the ubiquitous phrase that ‘money represents value.’ As I have argued above, however, this begs the question of how value is measured, if not in money. Money defines value, rather than merely represents it. The degrowth position would be more consistent if it jettisoned the notion of objective values and instead focused on the cognitive, social and ecological repercussions of the money artefact.15 Money conditions us to think of human work and the natural environment in terms of economic values. If we recognise that the compulsion toward economic growth derives from the artefact of money, we can stop deploring how deluded economists are by the ‘idea’ or ‘concept’ of growth, as Kallis and most other degrowth theorists do. The problem is ultimately not how economists think but the artefact that shapes their thinking. The task of economists has been to understand the logic of all-purpose money, which they have done quite well. To change that logic requires that money be redesigned. This is not something mainstream economists have been asked to do, but it should be a pivotal contribution of degrowth theory (Hornborg, 2019, 2023b). Another essential contribution of degrowth theory should be a reconceptualisation of modern technology. This should mean abandoning the prevalent assumption

 See Schandl et al. 2016; Parrique et al. 2019.  The final point has been highlighted by the contradiction between proponents of degrowth and the ecomodernist faith in ‘green’ growth and ‘green’ technology, as advocated by the proposal for a Green New Deal (Trainer 2014, 2019; Caradonna et al. 2015; Pollin 2018; Lodeiro 2020; Gómez-Baggethun 2020; Nikiforuk 2021; Parrique 2021). This contradiction is of central significance for debates on how we might transcend the unsustainability of globalised capitalism.  In a book published the following year, Kallis (2019) does seem to trace the logic of capitalism to the limitless commensurability imposed by money and refers to Seaford’s (2004) profound examination of the cultural repercussions of money in ancient Greece.

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that technology is exhaustively accounted for as based on engineering knowledge applied to nature. Kallis at times suggests that machines, by harnessing natural energy, ‘do all the work on their own’ (pp. 30, 65, 80, 144–145), but elsewhere acknowledges that technology requires energy and materials ’at low prices,’ which indicates that it is also a matter of how social relations of exchange are organised. The degrowth position would be strengthened by a socio-metabolic understanding of modern technology that transcends the conventional distinction between the social and the material and recognises technology as a manifestation of capital accumulation based on ecologically unequal exchange. Kallis refers to ‘unfair,’ ‘undue,’ and ‘unpaid’ relations of exchange (pp. 39, 67, 71, 126), but never explicitly defines unequal exchange. A related problem is that it is unclear what he means by ‘surplus’ – whether a surplus of money or of energy. Although he clearly believes that surplus can be drawn ‘from the appropriation of nature’ (pp. 44, 51, 57, 59, 83, 105, 129, 179), he does not specify in what metric this surplus extracted from nature can be measured.

Conclusions The degrowth position must finally agree on how to conceptualise its adversary, that is, the driver of economic growth. Critiques of the rising global problems of unsustainability and inequality tend to blame not only growth but also ‘capitalism,’ ‘globalisation,’ ‘the market,’ ‘commodification,’ ‘neoclassical economics,’ or even ‘human nature,’ but the argument in this chapter is that the core of the issue is the artefact of all-purpose money. The imperative of growth is inherent in that artefact and what we call ‘capitalism’ is its aggregate logic. Paradoxically, by obscuring asymmetric material transfers under a veil of fictive reciprocity, the fetishised idea of monetary value propels ecologically unequal exchange. To unravel this destructive socio-metabolic algorithm, we must acknowledge the capacity of human categories to organise material flows and, conversely, that the material properties of what we know as ‘technology’ are socially constituted at the global level. Although an indispensable effort to demystify the injustices and depredations of capitalism, Marxian theory is an unfinished project, constrained by ontological assumptions that were unlikely to be transcended in nineteenth-century Britain. Faced with obscene global injustices, climate change and ecological disaster, the degrowth movement must now ask itself how far we are prepared to go in our rejection of modern civilisation and its foundational beliefs.

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James Jackson

20 Not Just Newer, but Fewer: A Bridge Between Ecomodernism and Degrowth? Abstract: One of the defining features of degrowth’s ascent in the literature in recent years is its opposition to ecomodernism. The point of contention between these approaches centres around the desirability for the economy to grow ad finitum. In this chapter, I offer a site of reconciliation between degrowth and ecomodernism by proposing the Newer but Fewer (NBF) principle wherein degrowing the economy is contingent upon superseding carbon intensive technology with low carbon alternatives at a lower ratio than of its predecessors to ensure a planned reduction in aggregate economic activity. Within this view of degrowth, I present three potential challenges that may be encountered in the transition away from capitalism’s current growth dependency, namely: (i) greenflation – inflationary pressures centred around environmental policies but also how degrowth is a means to circumvent the fossilflation gripping the global economy, (ii) green finance – in which the issuance of maturity of green debt will be affected by degrowing the economy and (iii) climate justice – insofar that the previous two challenges will have profound implications for the capacity of Global North and the Global South to begin degrowing their economies. Keywords: degrowth, ecomodernism, greenflation, fossilflation, green debt, climate justice

Introduction The ceaseless exceedance of planetary boundaries has long since posed profound questions about how the global political economy is to be brought into harmony with the natural environment (Rockström et al., 2009). Since the 1980s, the answer to this question has largely centred around the deployment of technological fixes in the form of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles, to name just a few, that reduce society’s reliance upon prior fossil fuel incumbents. Over the preceding decades, doubt has been cast over technological solutions by different schools of thought, not least degrowth and associated scholars be, if not the, which has come to a prominent critique of simple technological fixes to ecological problems (Bardi & Pereira, 2022). Typically, these positions are thought to be dichotomous, with the latter’s focus on an aggregate reduction of economic activity seen as a response to the former’s presumption that aggregate growth of the economy can continue unabated so long as growth

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is ‘decoupled’ from emissions (Hickel, 2021; Kallis, 2018). It is within the space cleaved upon by this polarised debate that I situate this chapter. I therein propose a site of reconciliation in which these positions need not always be diametrically opposed but can be co-constitutive features of degrowing the economy, employing technology as a means to, rather than the alternative of, degrowth. Degrowth’s ascent up the research agenda of scholars from various disciplines has come in the wake of evidence that technology has had only a limited impact on resolving the impact of the extraction, production, transportation and ultimately consumption of goods in the global economy. It is important to note that solutions embodied in technological modernism, manifested in the advent of ecological modernisation and sustainable development, were themselves responses to the previous criticism of capitalism and its relationship with the natural environment found in the Limits to Growth debate (Bardi & Periera, 2022). To that extent, degrowth is ostensibly a critique of the validity and indeed the possibility of green growth, as seen through a critical lens honed by capitalism’s failure to avert climate and ecological breakdown. The echoes of limits to growth scholars of the past can thus be heard in the now amplified critique of degrowth scholars today. The fundamental postulation, that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is an intellectual and physical impossibility, has been lent credence by recent evidence the current trajectory of the global political economy will far exceed the objectives of the Paris Agreement, itself a conservative or optimistic target of ecological conciliation (Tingley & Tomz, 2019). And whilst the logical resolution to this existential problem would tacitly appear to lie in an acknowledgement that economic activity needs to be limited to a natural capacity, the fact remains that present fossil fuel infrastructure will almost certainly need to be supplanted by technological alternatives. In this chapter, I look to bridge this divide in the traditionally opposing positions by proposing a Newer but Fewer (NBK) principle in which the promise of ecomodernists, that technology will resolve environmental issues, is coopted for the purpose of degrowth. To that end, this chapter is structured as follows. I begin by reviewing the points of divergence between these antithetical political perspectives. I then propose these positions can converge on the subject of technologies which could be used in the pursuit of degrowth. Through this view of degrowth, I examine three potential implications that might occur in the process of degrowing the economy, namely (i) greenflation – inflationary pressures centred around environmental policies but also how degrowth is a means to circumvent the fossilflation gripping the global economy, (ii) green finance – in which the issuance of maturity of green debt will be affected by degrowing the economy and (iii) climate justice – insofar that the previous two challenges will have profound implications for the capacity of Global North and the Global South to begin degrowing their economies.

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Ecomodernism and Degrowth: The Dividing Line(s) Ecomodernism has roots in the paradigmatic view of sustainability since the 1980s and is attributed to the diffusion of technology. It has followed the mantra that technology could decouple economic growth from its environmental impact and economies could be simultaneously modernised whilst being brought into greater harmony with the environment (Vandeventer et al., 2019; Kerschner et al., 2018; Grunwald, 2018). An ecomodernist perspective has come to be the common means by which the decarbonisation literature is framed, taking root in both the discourse and policy of the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality. According to the ‘ecomodernist manifesto’ (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015), produced by scholars sympathetic to its aims, far from simply a technological approach, ecomodernism is thought to be contingent upon a social democratic political and economic settlement, informed by evidence-based policy making (Symons, 2019; Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015). Ecomodernists proclaim that whilst it is itself a response to the perceived eco-radicalism of the 1970s, situated as a thirdway alternative between laissez-faire and anti-capitalist, it is a concerted cause for change (Symons, 2019; Nisbet, 2018; Lewis, 1992). Degrowth, by contrast, rejects the third-way assertion of many ecomodernists, firmly locating itself in anti-capitalist schools of thought (Stuart et al., 2020; Kallis, 2017; 2016). Just as ecomodernism has served as the policy paradigm for ecocentrist scholars and policymakers alike, degrowth is considered an alternative conceptual framework that repoliticises the very ideological and political edifice upon which ecomodernism is based (Akbulut, 2021; Hickel, 2021). Where the former reflects the primary economic objective of capitalism that prioritises growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the latter deprioritises this fundamental objective (Koch, 2015). Degrowth instead supplants the objective of growth as the imperative for the economy, replacing it with an alternative imperative, such as well-being, universal access to goods and services within planetary boundaries, ensuring biodiversity and sustaining life (Kallis et al., 2020; Kallis, 2018). The simultaneous (de)prioritisation of economic growth and (re)prioritisation of a successive imperative is reflected in the ongoing splintering of disciplines, from the neoclassical to ecological economics (Brand-Correa et al., 2022; Common, 2005), political economy to environmental and ecological political economy or political ecology and more (Craig, 2018; Meadowcroft, 2006). A distinction can be drawn between the ultimate aims of ecomodernism and degrowth, at least in the short-term. That is to say that while ecomodernism has bled into the environmental priorities of developing countries just as it was institutionalised in the developed countries of the world (Hickel, 2021), doubts remain over the implementation of degrowth in lesser developed countries. On this point, some scholars, including Chiengkul Likaj et al. (2022) propose that degrowth advocates need to acknowledge that low and middle-income countries will need to undergo a degree of economic growth, in both aggregate and per capita terms, to allow their citizens to meet a particular level of material prosperity. This bleeding of perspectives is, however, muddied by many of the

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countries that retain developing countries’ status, particularly China, Russia and India, to prevent them from committing to such environmental objectives when their economic activity would suggest otherwise (Khusyakova & Urumov, 2021). Nevertheless, this suggests that the economy must first grow, albeit as environmentally accommodating as possible, before it can then degrow. Where the dividing lines exist between ecomodernism and degrowth strategies to ultimately reconcile the economy with the environment has important implications for this chapter. Firstly, it suggests that contemporary analyses of degrowth are inevitably concerned with developed capitalist polities that presently exceed both their territorial capacity and requirements at the expense of their lesser developed counterparts (Trainer, 2021; Hickel & Kallis, 2020). This is, of course, not circumstantial but indicative of the exploitative and extractivist tendencies of contemporary global capitalism, founded upon the uneven flows of capital, resources and labour from the Global South to the Global North (Hickel & Kallis, 2020; Kallis, 2017). Secondly, degrowth is intimately tied to the notion of ‘national’ responsibility for those most responsible for climate and the ecological breakdown and those duty bound to begin the transition in earnest (Hickel et al., 2022). Finally, it indicates that for the transition to begin, those countries currently in the process of development must ultimately reach a certain level akin to developed nations. These dividing lines are not solely drawn between pro-growth and post-growth positions but within post-growth positions themselves. Historically, degrowth has been considered an alternative to ecomodernism so radical that it was delegitimised by association with socialism and Marxism (Koch, 2015). This has, in part, given rise to alternative post-growth alternatives, post-growth and a-growth that purport to provide more viable, and indeed precise, alternatives to green growth (Jackson, 2021; Van den Bergh, 2011). Where the dividing lines are drawn between degrowth, post-growth and a-growth centre around the amelioration of growth with relative indifference, as post-growth seeks to modify the growth imperative while degrowth is a critical perspective (Likaj, 2022). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to trace these additional dividing lines further but suffice it to say they are a nuanced critique of capitalism with relative divergence. Instead, I turn to how the divisions between ecomodernism and degrowth can be bridged.

Newer but Fewer (NBF): Bridging the Divide? By way of bridging the divide, I propose that degrowing the economy could be predicated on a not just newer, but fewer principle (NBF), concurrently incorporating the technological contingency of ecomodernism for the purpose of undertaking the aggregate reduction of economic activity advanced by degrowth. This, like other social and ecological principles proposed by ecological economists and others, is an attempt to

20 Not Just Newer, but Fewer: A Bridge Between Ecomodernism and Degrowth?

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contribute to the foundation upon which degrowth can be built (Brand-Correa et al., 2022). Such a position maintains a deep scepticism, if not complete rejection, of the prospect of green capitalism coming to fruition through the vast deployment of technology but a co-optation of technology as a means of achieving ecological objectives within a degrowth framework. The NBF principle I propose is thus a reconciliation of the ecomodernist and degrowth perspectives through decarbonisation that pushes degrowth into a new conceptual territory. As noted by Kallis (2019a; 2019b) the key dividing line between ecomodernists and degrowth centres around the question of growth. One on the hand, the former believe growth can be limitless when facilitated by new, emergent technology. On the other, the latter asserts that growth is quite literally limited by the laws of thermodynamics (Brand Correra, 2022; Hickel, 2020). Of course, on this count, the divide is insurmountable. On a more technical level, Kallis (2018) notes that the dividing line is oriented around scarcity, wherein ecomodernists accuse degrowth scholars of self-imposed scarcity by highlighting the need to limit societies’ material throughput, or as Kallis (2018) calls it ‘collective self-limitation.’ In response, degrowth scholars decry ecomodernists fanaticism that technology can continue the ceaseless growth of the economy whilst keeping within ecological limits. It is therefore on the question of the ultimate utility of technology as a tool for keeping the economy within ecological limits that I seek to propose a site of reconciliation between the two positions. Together, I propose a view of decarbonisation through a planned degrowing of the economy predicated on newer technology, but at a ratio of less than 1:1 (or < 1) with its present carbon intensive alternatives. New technologies are inevitably required to supersede carbon intensive incumbents. Degrowing the economy, by extension, would therefore be limited under present technological and industrial conditions. In the process of replacing carbon intensive incumbents, however, the supply of various goods and services does not need to, nor should it, replicate that presently produced through carbon intensive sources. Whilst the amount of goods and services in the economy has been a source of debate as to whether it is rooted in the supply of, or demand for, such commodities, the underlying cause is the pursuit of growth (Kallis, 2018). This need not be the case, however, with technology deployed to liberate workers from unnecessary labour time, severe its link to fossil fuels and used as a tool to degrow the economy. Inevitably, degrowing the economy at an aggregate level contains within it a significant degree of nuance in terms of individual sectors. For instance, requisite supply will still be needed for developed economies to meet the consumption needs of citizens, businesses and services as yet unfulfilled. This requirement will vary, as it presently does, depending on the industrial composition that characterises the accumulation strategy of the economy in question. Energy demand in South Korea, for example, will likely remain higher than in the United Kingdom (UK) due to the former’s reliance on manufacturing and exports compared to the latter’s export of financial services but with acute import dependency. Longer term, it also remains to be seen whether finan-

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cial services serve any purpose in a degrowth future. This is despite South Korea having a smaller population (−16 million) than the UK, and so lower per capita energy use, but larger aggregate demand given the productive output of the economy. The industrial compositions of economies are a continuation of the broader acknowledgement of growth sceptical scholars that developed economies will need to reduce consumption as developing countries increase their own. Two such examples of the disproportionate consumption of energy include that of the USA, whose energy consumption is far higher than India despite a far smaller population (−971m) or Norway which likewise consumes more energy than Pakistan (−215 million population). Therefore, a basic level of material requirement will need to be adhered to by all countries, one that means some economies need to degrow in earnest (reducing their ratio) as others undergo a degree of growth (in some specific sectors) before plateauing. Where the NBF principle is more acute, however, is in the case of goods consumed disproportionately by higher income countries, and higher income groups within those countries, across the global economy. For instance, evidence shows that consumption statistics in the areas of transportation, clothing, entertainment, housing and many more are consumed by the global elite (Oxfam, 2021). Technological alternatives, from electric vehicles, garments made from recycled materials, new forms of home entertainment or houses which rely less on concrete, for example, have limited net benefit when consumed on the scale they are today. It is in these instances, then, that technological alternatives continue to supplant carbon intensive incumbents, but at a ratio less than one. Therefore, electric vehicles in aggregate, in many instances for medium to higher income earners, will need to be lower than their present level (e.g.,