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Scientific paper

Text

Degrowth as an ‘Aesthetics of Existence’

Author:
Samuel Alexander

Entry type:
Scientific paper

Year of publication:
2017

Publishers:
Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute

Language:
English

External content:
To the content

"In recent decades the ‘limits to growth’ position has received a great deal of attention, mostly from economic and ecological perspectives (Meadows et al 2004, Daly 1996, Jackson 2009, Turner 2012). More recently, the degrowth movement has begun contributing an important range of new political and sociological analyses (see generally, D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015), offering deeper insight into the alternative paradigm, evaluating transition strategies, policies, and obstacles, while also continuing to update and refine the ecological critique of growth economics (eg Kallis 2017a) in response to those who continue to fetishise growth. The purpose of this scoping paper, however, is neither to review these existing literatures nor offer another ecological critique of growth, but to extend and deepen the understanding of degrowth by examining the concept and the movement from a perspective that has yet to receive any sustained attention — namely, aesthetics. More about raising questions than offering answers, my aim is to open up the dialogue not close it down, which is to acknowledge that large theoretical territories are traversed without being able to map them all in the detail they deserve. Consider this, then, an invitation to discuss." (From the introduction)

ISBN: 978 0 7340 4953 7

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