Logo degrowth

Text

From Sustainable Development to Degrowth: Strategic Concepts in a Time of Downturn

Author:
Jakub Rok

Entry type:

Year of publication:
2015

Publishers:
Green European Journal

Language:
English

External content:
To the content

From the text: We now live in a world where all those lofty exhortations on the need for sustainable development have lost their force, despite the fact that the term itself has enjoyed wide currency in public discourse. What holds strong instead is an unswerving belief in the liberating role of economic growth, a term which, for the European Union, has become synonymous with sustainable growth. As citizens of the Global North, we are unable to admit that ‘we’ve accumulated enough wealth.’ Even worse, neither are our so-called elites, who are invariably preoccupied with entrapping us in a whirl of excessive consumerism.One promising response to this impasse is degrowth (décroissance in French, postwzrost in Polish), an emerging political and social movement which questions the need for further growth and which challenges the necessity of our complete reliance on it. The primary function of degrowth is thus to shake the foundations of an assumption so obvious and widespread that it has been taken for granted. Hence the name itself (degrowth), which might serve as a potent and thought-provoking slogan to critique and undermine the dogmas of economic neoliberalism, for the sake of creating a gap in the status quo narrative, a gap which could be filled with new content.



> The article is also available in Polish

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