1. Imagining post-growth Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) futures
Critical examinations of the nexus between economic growth and technoscience in different contexts and sectors
Exploring the (uneasy) relations between science, technology, and activism
Rethinking STI discourses and practices through a post-growth / degrowth lens
Identifying barriers and opportunities for shaping technological and scientific imaginations with degrowth-minded ideas
Discussing technological complexity in alignment with degrowth /postgrowth futures and understanding the trade-offs involved
Challenging platform-based capitalism and the gig economy
Examining the impact of environmental disinformation strategies, post-truths, conspiracy theories, and fake news
STI policies for degrowth: assessment and critique
Identify institutional and governance mechanisms to align STI with degrowth values of democracy, conviviality, autonomy, and simplicity
Reshaping scientific institutions to enable degrowth
Politics of transition and strategy: how can social movements (eco-socialism and degrowth) enable transition?
2. Theoretical perspectives and debates around STI and degrowth / postgrowth
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Philosophy of technology and science
Decolonizing STI
Feminist techno-science
Is small always beautiful? Technology, infrastructure, and questions of scale
Post-normal science as a new paradigm for addressing the science-democracy gap
Science and epistemological pluralism: complementarity or an impossible combination?
Science is political! Steering science towards envisioning and promoting a degrowth society
Slow science/technology
Epistemic justice and plural ways of knowing
3. Human creativity and innovation without growth
Reclaiming creativity discourses from growth-oriented innovation
Defining creativity and innovation in a world where economic growth is not the primary focus
Decolonizing and collectivizing innovation and creativity
Theories, examples, and methodologies for creativity and innovation in a degrowth/postgrowth context
Creative methodologies for responsible innovation
Fostering creativity through artistic interventions
Art-science collaborations
Empowering creative and innovative practices through degrowth: barriers, governance, institutions, and self-organization
4. Political economy and political ecology
(Re)organizing provisioning systems beyond growth: markets, states, and commons
Centralized economies and planning
Commodity frontiers, environmental distribution conflicts, and other challenges for socio-environmental justice
Geopolitical questions
Corporate/state land grabbing, Indigenous rights, and land stewardship
The political economy/ecology of green technologies
Implications of war, violence, and militarization for sustainability transitions
Labor, livelihoods, and just transitions
Distribution, equality, and social justice, including the rural-urban divide
Debates on anti-capitalism, post-capitalism, diverse capitalisms
Feminist political ecology/economy
5. Policy assessment, critique, and alternative proposals
Green Deals and Circular Economy without growth
Universal Basic Income
Care Income
Rethinking the welfare state and public services without growth
Job-sharing, shortening the working week, and green job guarantees
The role of public policy as a catalyst for radical socio-ecological change
Democratic process, participation, and multi-level policymaking
Agenda 2030: Assessment, critique, and alternatives to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Environmental treaties and global governance
Postgrowth analyses of sectoral policies: transport, housing, energy, etc.
6. Ecological macroeconomics
Ecological macroeconomic models
Managing without growth
Doughnut economics
Beyond GDP: Alternative macroeconomic accounting
Indicators and composite indicators
Carbon budgets, climate mitigation and adaptation policies
Cap and trade and market reforms
Monetary, fiscal, and financial policy transformations
Behavioral ecological economics and incentives
Input/Output models
7. Ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity conservation, biophysical measurements and indicators
Planetary boundaries, overshoots, and impacts
Analyses of ecosystem service characteristics ( distribution, excludability, rivalry, substitutability)
Payments and compensation for ecosystem services, including approaches such as “the polluter pays”, “the beneficiary pays”, “full cost recovery” and others.
Tools and policies for ‘No Net Loss’ or ‘Net Positive Impact’
Justice, governance, and decision-making in ecosystem services management and biodiversity conservation
Critiques of ecosystem services monetization and alternative approaches (including non-valuation)
8. Energy, resources, and energy/matter flow analyses
Food, land use and deforestation
Materials, energy, waste
Pollution
Strategic minerals
Industrial ecology and material flows analysis
Trade, production, and consumption patterns
Resilience and sustainability in rural and urban areas
Trade and ecological impacts
Transport and mobilities
Water resources management
Methodological advances in material/energy flow analyses
9. Blue economies and degrowth / postgrowth
Questioning “blue growth”
Oceans: resources, rights, governance, and institutions
Carbon storage
Climate change adaptation and mitigation in oceans
Decolonizing the blue economy
Jobs, livelihoods, and coastal communities
Island nations
Blue justice
Blue extractivism (minerals, energy, food, transboundary water transfer) and resistances
10. Challenging dominant values, ideologies, and imaginaries
Eco-feminism, gender, intersectionality
Postcolonial and decolonial critique and indigenous worldviews
Non-anthropocentric and non-speciesist/multi-speciesist approaches
Non-consumerist lifestyles: downshifting, voluntary simplicity, anti-consumption, commoning, etc.
Ethics of limits and self-limitation
Amplifying subaltern voices
Hegemony and counterhegemony
Pluriverse and alternative development pathways
Travel and transformation of imaginaries
11. Enabling radical change and institutional transformation
Trade unions, social movements, and other civil society organizations as catalysts for socio-ecological change
Nowtopias and prefigurative politics for postgrowth transitions
Mobilizing mass publics to address the climate emergency
Confronting power structures and vested interests
Authoritarianism, state surveillance and the criminalization of dissent
Communication strategies, social media, and mass media: the use of new metaphors, narratives, etc.
Engaging with Artificial Intelligence and Big Data from a degrowth / postgrowth perspective
Building strategic alliances across the ideological spectrum
Green parties, electoral politics and postgrowth/degrowth
Shall we blow a pipeline? Debates on violence, disruption, and direct action in challenging the status quo
Ethical considerations and dilemmas in eco-activism and advocacy
12. Transformative businesses and organizations in a postgrowth context
Taxonomies and theories of postgrowth organizations
Debates on for-profit vs non-for-profit organizations; competition vs cooperation; private property vs commons (and how to think beyond these dichotomies)
Degrowth/postgrowth organizations and strategy
Value(s) and valuation in postgrowth organizations
Mutualist systems, collaborative and cooperative business models
Rethinking supply chains and logistics for a finite planet
Alternative finances for community and sustainability
The role of social entrepreneurs and alternative business models
Assessing the benefits and challenges of localized production and consumption networks
Grassroot economic experiments: local currencies, repair cafes, product sharing, etc.
The role of the state: public-owned businesses (utilities, and other sectors)
13. Putting wellbeing at the center of the economy
Exploring human needs, capabilities, and essential requirements for human flourishing
Cultivating different meanings and understanding of the good life
Studying the relationship between (de)growth and collective wellbeing
Moving beyond materialism and consumerism: exploring creative leisure, alternative hedonism, consumption corridors, etc.
Strategies for delivering decent healthcare for all in a postgrowth world.
Assessing the effects of pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss on mental and physical health; understanding climate trauma vs resilience
Fostering the wellbeing of marginalized and vulnerable populations
Developing strategies for managing eco-anxiety and other mental health challenges associated with the ecological emergency
Small-scale fishing activity is fundamental to maintaining nutrition, subsistence, identities, and sustainable livelihoods around the world. However, they are amongst the most vulnerable groups to …
The discourse on degrowth has progressively matured evolving into a critical lens towards the conventional growth paradigm that dominates economic and business landscapes. Thus far, debates on the …
The covid pandemic showed that care work is still disproportionately performed by women and feminized populations, both privately and in state-led institutions. This trend, embedded in the fabric of …
In our collaborative statement in the context of Covid-19, the Feminism and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA) called for” the socialization of all universal health care, the socialization of utilities, the …
This special session calls for a radical overhaul of consumer research and marketing practices and pedagogy to fit a post-growth world. Open to degrowth-minded scholars and practitioners, the session …
What might it mean to invest in degrowth? At first glance, “invest” and “degrowth” seem like a contradiction in terms, but experimenting with what this can be--both in theory and in practice--is a …
To deliver on climate ambitions, voices and solutions that amplify regional and local particularities and place-based approaches must be incorporated into research, policy and action. This implies …
There is a consensus that the key drivers of the prevalent environmental crises – biodiversity loss and climate breakdown – stem from the complex economic, social and environmental entanglements of …
The materiality of extractivism and its impacts have been challenged through centuries by local and extra-local groups that defend land and water, and increasingly link their fight with alternative …
Academia has been, and has the potential to be, a source of radical thinking and of contributions to a degrowth future. However, currently it is being pressed from all sides to do exactly the …
There is a growing body of literature analysing the principles of degrowth across the specific challenges of urban planning and urban studies. However, this scholarship remains overwhelmingly urban, …
The session provides an opportunity to focus on how post-growth and degrowth theory plays out in specific geographies and the infrastructural technologies that make places liveable. There is already a …
The panel “Sleeping with the Enemy: Marketing’s Role in Shaping Post-Growth Realities” intends to explore the transformative potential of marketing in a world facing a confluence of crisis. We want to …
To transition towards sustainable socio-ecological systems, it is necessary to analyze the issues generated by each economic sector and explore existing and emerging alternatives. This field has been …
Like ecosystem, the geosystem is a source of various services (regulating, cultural, supporting, and provisioning) that support human well-being. These geosystem services are often undervalued and …
Many renewable-based large, medium and small energy projects are being pushed to achieve the energy targets and net-zero goals for decarbonization. The renewables are promoted as sustainable and green …
Inspired by Pontevedra’s semi-peripheral location within geographies of degrowth, this special session asks: What kind of knowledges around transformation and social change can be gleaned when …
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are promoted as a governance tool to tackle ongoing environmental and societal crises. While the importance of mimicking nature and applying participatory planning …
The concept of “just transition” has evolved from a reactive project aimed at safeguarding workers in polluting industries into a comprehensive eco-social project pursuing intertwined environmental …
Waste is the immanent outcome of any social metabolism. Metabolic processes continuously produce wastes in the form of discarded materials, heat and pollution that accumulate in the environment. The …
Conceptualising the spaces and geographies of degrowth has accompanied the debate on degrowth since its beginning. In recent years, a specific literature has emerged that reflects systematically on …
Conceptualising the spaces and geographies of degrowth has accompanied the debate on degrowth since its beginning. In recent years, a specific literature has emerged that reflects systematically on …
Anarchy, as opposed to anarchism (GA, 2005; Anonymous 2013), seeks to go beyond the formal ideology of anarchism, instead to extend this to focusing on the spirit of revolt (Bakunin, 1990) and …
We may achieve the transformation of the system, but if we have not transformed ourselves along the way, we will be destined to equally corrupt the degrowth society. This is the starting point for a …