By: Sarah Koller

This article explores the existential conditions for a transition towards socioeconomic degrowth through an analysis of a paradigm shift between two extreme polarities of socio-ecological positioning: the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) and the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). It is suggested that the transition from one to the other – understood as the first collective step towards degrowth – re...

By: Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso

Presentation [part of the standard session "Communicating Degrowth"] We investigated how to influence people’s support for degrowth, and whether such influence may be subject to individual differences regarding transformative social change. To do so, we adopted the regulatory focus theory—one of the most widely used theoretical frameworks in social psychology—and used it to frame how degrowt...

By: Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso, Tom Smith , Lucía Muñoz Sueiro, Justus Baumann, Vegard Beyer

Standard session (discussion following 4 presentations) The Psychology of Degrowth Adoption: Insights from the Perspectives of the Utopian Impulse and the Regulatory Focus Theory - video We investigated how to influence people’s support for degrowth, and whether such influence may be subject to individual differences regarding transformative social change. To do so, we adopted the regulat...

By: Michael Deflorian, Karoline Kalke

Presentation [part of the standard session "Limits, Ethics, Unsustainability and Change"] Critical views of consumerism are widely shared among degrowthers. However, there is a risk of overlooking a particular affective dimension of consumption: the ‘entropic feeling’. The latter is triggered when we surpass the biophysical limits of our human body and come to enjoy the pleasures of dense en...

By: Anya VerKamp

Comment from Anya VerKamp on the novel "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens. Introduction: Charles Dickens, an author witnessing firsthand the harsh impacts of the industrial revolution, wrote a novel that contains in it some of the themes still present in degrowth discourse today. His novel Hard Times demonstrates the invasion of utilitarianism and its economic implications into human relationsh...

By: Timo Luthmann

Die politischen und persönlichen Herausforderungen nehmen für engagierte Menschen stetig zu. Wie können wir – ohne auszubrennen – mit diesen Umständen klug umgehen? Was macht Aktivist*innen wie auch soziale Bewegungen widerstandsfähiger, kreativer und erfolgreicher? Wie sieht es mit der feinen Balance zwischen individueller Selbstverwirklichung und kollektiver Befreiung aus? Erstmals wird da...

By: Stephen Quilley, Kaitlin Kish

Highlights • Entanglement of socio-ecological systems is described from a historical perspective. • Entanglement of traditional growth economics, the sanctity of the sovereign individual and complexity is analysed. • We present five cherished norms and dimensions of progressive modernity and how limiting growth economic may change them. First Page Preview

By: Sarah Koller

Despite the repeated questionings of economic growth and the development of alternative economic theories, the growth imperative seems to remain unaltered. How can we understand this situation ? Would there be, beyond the institutional explanations, anything inside us that unconsciously agrees to preserve this dynamic ? An increasing body of studies in existential psychology explore experiment...

By: Alfredo Natale, Salvatore Di Martino, Fortuna Procentese, Caterina Arcidiacono

Keywords: Degrowth; Critical community psychology; Well-being; Decolonisation of the imaginary; Reciprocity; Social justice

By: Lucie Bardos

On the Need for Collaboration Between Social Movements and Activisms. The article sheds the light on the fact that most of the people engaged in the international transition town movement are white educated middle class. It concludes that the integration of other perspectives through a facilitated "opening-up process" would make the transition town movement more inclusive. Published on Degro...

By: Patrick Schreiner

Der Verlag: Weit über Politik und Wirtschaft hinaus hat sich der Neoliberalismus längst im Alltagsleben der Menschen verankert. Patrick Schreiner befasst sich mit seinen unscheinbaren, vermeintlich unpolitischen Erscheinungsformen. Er fragt nach den alltäglichen Mechanismen, durch die Menschen neoliberale Ansätze und Ideen als gut, angemessen und alternativlos akzeptieren. Dazu nimmt er das Bil...

By: Tilman Santarius

Die Erhöhung der Energieeffizienz - durch LED-Lampen, Hybrid-Autos, Gebäudedämmung usw. - kann einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Nachhaltigkeit leisten. Doch welche 'unerwünschten Nebenfolgen' haben diese technischen Lösungen der Nachhaltigkeit? Im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit von Tilman Santarius steht die Frage, inwiefern Effizienzsteigerungen sogenannte Rebound-Effekte hervorbringen, die die Nachfrage n...

By: Marcel Hunecke

Geld und Konsum allein machen bekanntlich nicht glücklich. Wie und wodurch aber erlangen wir Lebenszufriedenheit jenseits von materiellem Konsum und Wirtschaftswachstum? Und wie lässt sich das Wissen über die Ursachen des subjektiven Wohlbefindens für die Förderung nachhaltiger Lebensstile nutzen? Dem Umweltpsychologen Marcel Hunecke gelingt es, die bisher in der Nachhaltigkeitsforschung eher v...

By: Rex Weyler

From the text: In systems, relationships comprise the change, not individuals. Relationships are what endure in nature, not individuals or components. Our language, as Gregory Bateson observed, is biased toward things, against relationships. We say "the table is hard," conferring "hardness" upon the table, but this "hardness" can only be experienced when the table stops some momentum. Hardness ...

By: Alessandra Pigni

From the text: . . . Today I’m not as convinced as I was in my early days, that ‘changing the world starts from within.’ Instead I wonder if changing the world starts ‘in between’—between people, in relationships, and in the way we treat each other, as well as in the radical transformation of the way our institutions operate. So yes, I do have some agency, but no, the world does not dramaticall...

By: Lara Kirch, Melanie Hernandez Sanchez

Dokumentation eines Kurses der Degrowth Sommerschule 2015 "Degrowth konkret: Klimagerechtigkeit" Titel des Kurses: Schneller und besser die Welt retten?! Mit welchen Mustern reproduzieren wir die Wachstumslogik? Kursbeschreibung aus dem Programm: Wir bieten einen Raum, in dem die Teilnehmer*innen ihre eigenen, tief verinnerlichten Wachstumslogiken reflektieren und sich in ihren Bemühungen, ei...

By: Hartmut Rosa, Laura Bazzicalupo

Scientific lecture at the 4th International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Leipzig in 2014. Presentations by Laura Bazzicalupo and Hartmut Rosa. Laura Bazzicalupo: Ambivalence of dispositifs of subjectivation in the biocapitalist imaginary Hartmut Rosa: Striving for growth, yearning for degrowth? Resonance as a solution to the good-life problem

By: Susanne Brehm

This media entry is a stirring paper of the Group Assembly Process (GAP) at the Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014. This paper belongs the group Learning for degrowth.