Logo degrowth
Report

Text

Good, natural, malignant: five ways people frame economic growth

Authors:
Laurence Matthews, Alison Matthews

Entry type:
Report

Year of publication:
2015

Publishers:
The Guardian

Language:
English

External content:
To the content

The authors make a short analysis of how "growth" is framed in public debate. Frames discussed are: 1. Growth is good news, 2. Growth is natural, 3. Growth is the way forward, 4. A malignant growth, 5. Free from growth.

From the text: Growth is good. We need growth for wealth, for jobs, to help the poor – without it society will collapse. Or, at least, that’s the message we’re surrounded by, even though logic tells us growth can’t go on for ever on a planet with finite resources.
Growth is so strongly framed as good and necessary that rational or technical arguments – pointing to the damage to our planetary life-support systems, for example – go in one ear and out the other. Such messages are worth examining. So how is growth framed?

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