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About Joe Herbert

Joe is a member of the degrowth.info editorial collective, working on the blog and communications. He recently completed a PhD in Human Geography at Newcastle University (UK), studying young environmental activists' imaginaries of socio-ecological crisis and transformation. He tweets at @joefherb.

Strategy • 29.09.2021

Degrowth strategies: thinking with and beyond Erik Olin Wright

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By: Joe Herbert, Nathan Barlow, Jacob Smessaert, Carol Bardi

Degrowthers have recently seemed to find a lot of inspiration in Erik Olin Wright’s framework of political strategies for transformations beyond capitalism. In this blog post, we wish to highlight some crucial insufficiencies of Wright’s framework in relation to degrowth transformations, and propose some adaptations which can enhance its utility for further strategy discussions.

Cities • 26.08.2021

Transformation or Gentrification? The Hazy Politics of the 15-Minute City

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By: Joe Herbert

The idea of the ‘15-minute city’ has recently gained traction amongst policy-makers as an urban innovation with the potential to address intersecting social and ecological challenges of the post-COVID world. But its lack of an embedded politics presents a danger as much as it does an opportunity.

Strategy • 12.10.2020

Reflecting on the emerging strategy debate in the degrowth movement

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By: Joe Herbert, Nathan Barlow

This piece will close the ten-part degrowth.info series on strategy, highlighting some of the key insights and charting the development of the strategy debate within degrowth. We will then offer some insights on how our own understanding of strategy and degrowth has changed over the last two years since we first urged the community to engage with this topic more. Finally, we will consider the p...

Reviews • 31.08.2020

Book review: 'Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World' by Jason Hickel

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By: Joe Herbert

Hickel succeeds once more in making a clear yet robust case for degrowth, providing an accessible introductory text that the movement has long required. Degrowthers may remember 2020 as the year their ideas entered the mainstream, or at least the edges of it. As the coronavirus pandemic has prompted a renewed societal conversation around alternative futures, discussions of degrowth are...

Blog • 15.12.2019

Degrowth: the transformation needed to combat climate breakdown

By: Joe Herbert

Previous global ‘efforts’ to tackle climate breakdown have failed dramatically, because they have been based on a fundamentally flawed economic paradigm: growth. The concept of growth is an altar at which economists, politicians and businesspeople across the political spectrum have worshipped for decades. Unfortunately, where the planet’s long-term habitability is concerned, it is this obsessi...

Blog • 25.06.2019

Global Degrowth Day

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By: Joe Herbert, Ana Poças, Joël Foramitti, Álvaro Fonseca

Saturday 1st June 2019 marked a significant occasion for the degrowth movement: the inaugural ‘Global Degrowth Day’. Groups of people gathered together in places all around the world to engage with ideas of degrowth and alternatives to our growth-based society, guided by the event’s theme of ‘a good life for all’. The Global Degrowth Day was coordinated by the Activists and Practitioners int...