Conference Degrowth and the Politics of Space: Tools for Thought and Action

When: 21 -23 October 2026
Where: Amsterdam, The Nerthelands

Degrowth has gained wide traction as both a critique of contemporary capitalism and an agenda for emancipatory and democratic spatial politics. Despite its increasing visibility and popularity in both research and practice, degrowth still lacks a thorough and systematic development of a spatial perspective.

Space is a relation of power, a material condition, a means and a target of degrowth politics. A degrowth transformation necessarily implies a reorganization of socio-metabolic relations and socio-material flows of matter, capital and energy across spatial scales, as well as a different cultural imaginary of how we as humans, think about our relation to spatial dynamics. Space is also a target of radical politics that aims to address the destructive impact of endless economic growth upon marginalized social groups and endangered ecosystems, while guaranteeing the provision of essential and universal goods and services for all. Degrowth envisions a spatial politics that questions hierarchies and borders and surpasses the underlying socio-cultural frames that sustain intrinsically toxic growth, like militarization, colonialism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy and racism.

A spatial perspective which is multiscalar and relational can help to both calibrate radical degrowth practices to specific socio-cultural contexts and to interconnect them across scales and sectors. This is the challenge that this conference will tackle, both for research and for practice.

This conference brings together contributions from both research and practice to develop tools for degrowth-oriented thought and action. 

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Call for Contributions