Degrowth & Strategy: how to bring about social-ecological transformation

by Nathan Barlow (Editor), Livia Regen (Editor), Noïmie Cadiou Et Al (Editor)

Overview

Degrowth is a counter-hegemonic movement that has the ambitious aim of transforming society towards social and ecological justice. But how do we get there? That is the question this book addresses. Adhering to the multiplicity of degrowth whilst also arguing that strategic prioritisation and coordination are key, Degrowth & Strategy advances the debate on strategy for social-ecological transformation. It explores what strategising means, identifies key directions for the degrowth movement, and scrutinises strategies in practice that aim to realise a degrowth society. Bringing together voices from degrowth and related movements, this book creates a polyphony for change going beyond the sum of its parts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781906948603
Publisher:	Mayflybooks/Ephemera
Publication date:	07/27/2022
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	667,843
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.93(d)

Editorial Reviews

"This book is what the degrowth movement needed the most: a well-reasoned and empirically grounded compendium of strategic thinking and praxis for systemic transformations. This is a true gift, not only to degrowthers, but to all those who understand the need for radical change. In an era of unprecedented challenges as the one we are living through, this book should become essential reading in every higher-education course across the social sciences and humanities."

Stefania Barca, University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Forces of Reproduction - Notes for a Counterhegemonic Anthropocene

"Emerging amidst the ruins of the destroyed (some call it developed) world, degrowth is a powerful call for transformation towards justice and sustainability. This book takes degrowth's ideological basis towards strategy and practice, relates it to other movements, and shows pathways that are crucial for the Global North to take if life on earth has to flourish again."

Ashish Kothari, co-author of Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary

"The book is an exciting source of hope for degrowth futures. It is a thoroughly readable and ambitious book that sets out what degrowth wants to do and what it is actually achieving. It contains many inspiring examples of new ways of living together, illustrating how to share resources, create caring institutions, fair infrastructures, and new ways of relating to humans and more-than-humans."

Wendy Harcourt, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam

"In contrast to previous works on the topic the focus is firmly placed on the challenge of how to achieve social-ecological transformation in the face of economic structures and powerful vested interests committed to a utopian vision of sustaining economic growth without end; a vision that pretends to be concerned for the poor while exploiting them and destroying Nature. An alternative multi-faceted vision is outlined in the most comprehensive exploration of the topic available, including addressing the role of money, mobility, energy, food, technology, housing, and most importantly how to change modernity's various growth-obsessed social-economic systems."

Clive Spash, Vienna University of Economics and Business, editor of Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature & Society

"We live in times of great despair and danger, but also great promise. This book is the perfect gateway to strategy and action for our time, written by some of the very top thinkers in the degrowth movement. It will help you create possibilities to transform our world for the better."

Julia Steinberger, University of Lausanne

"This is a book everyone in the degrowth community has been waiting for. Moving beyond the diagnosis about the costs and limits of growth, this volume asks the question of what is to be done and puts forward an ambitious political program of how we go from here to there. The authors present a coherent vision of how different mobilisations at different scales can come together and steer societies to what now seems politically impossible - degrowth."

Giorgos Kallis, ICREA Professor, ICTA-UAB, author of Limits and The Case for Degrowth

From the Publisher