Library

By: Lorenzo Pellegrini, Luca Tasciotti

Abstract: This study juxtaposes the congratulatory rhetoric surrounding Bhutan’s efforts to promote happiness and the gross violations of human rights that coincide with the happiness project. The academic debate has not reflected on the Janus-faced nature of the Bhutanese regime and the literature is replete with references to the Bhutanese happiness search. From these acclaims, it appears tha...

By: Maurizio Ruzzene

Abstract: This presentation considers problems and benefits that can follow from linking time currencies to an average social value of labour time. The link to an average social value of labour time (i.e. applying an average hourly wage to a standard time unit) can greatly ex-tend the application of time-based currencies. It can significantly enhance their interest-free long-term credit functio...

By: Volker Stöckel

Abstract: Here it is a special view to the relationship from three of the core-values of the german economy – the waged work volume (labour), the gross domestic (GDP) product and the stock of fixed assets (capital or curdled labour). The relationship on the scale of things, aggregated in the alpha of the Cobb-Douglas-Function over the time, shows a developement over the last 40 years and there ...

By: Alistair Tamlit

Abstract: According to Auturo Escobar, development and capitalism have become the most significant ideas to shape social life and these ideas are directly related to the multiple crises our planet faces. Post-development theories offer alternative narratives to the traditional development notions of universal knowledge and progress. Yet, the mainstream development discourse remains and challeng...

By: Olli Tammilehto

Abstract: According to many studies greenhouse gas emissions attributable to a person or to a household increase with growing income. On the global level, a well-paid quarter of the population generates around three quarters of the total carbon dioxide emissions. The suffering from the disastrous effects of climate change, on the other hand, is distributed in the opposite direction. The conditi...

By: Sören Köpke

Abstract: Climate change is increasingly framed as a security concern. Proponents of the environmental security discourse warn that dwindling water resources, loss of arable land and grazing grounds will cause hunger and conflict. These resource-related conflicts will arise in the most vulnerable parts of the Global South. However, this discourse is blind to the political economy of a growth-ba...

By: Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach, Stefan Baumgärtner, Martin Quaas

Abstract: Most scientific research on a “degrowth-economy” is motivated by finding pathways to build a just society, in terms of both intragenerational justice and intergenerational justice. As conflicts in attaining the two justices (may) arise in the design and implementation of sustainability policy, the relationship between the objectives of intragenerational and intergenerational justice (...

By: Valerio Verrea

Abstract: This paper focuses on the specific features of the Alternative Trade Organizations (ATOs) developed within the Fair Trade system. They are an example of an organizational business model able to create and alternative market where social and ethical aspects are prioritized over profit-seeking. Their example offers important insights about the possibility to create a degrowth-friendly m...

By: Tobias Vogel

growth legitimation by democracic values, comparison of status, unequality, cultural enforcement of growth, consumption

By: Constanze Weiske

Abstract: Global climate change is the most pressing environmental issue the world society has to tackle in this day and age. Although the international Framework Convention on Climage Change (UNFCCC) has been established in 1992 in order to mitigate climate change, substantial progress is not made yet. In order to identify the reasons for that unsatisfactory situation, researchers has mainly c...

By: Yorck Hauß

Abstract: In the early industrialized countries the economic growth rates are declining. Various symptoms of instability are showing already. Furthermore, economic growth has reached social and ecological boundaries. This implies the need for a transformation of the present social structure. A stable post-growth society has to be either egalitarian or authoritarian. There is empirical evidence ...

By: Tilman Reitz, Tine Haubner

Abstract: In discussions about the main growth drivers in our societies, two explanations often collide: a cultural account of growth dispositions and an economic account of capitalist growth imperatives. The planned contribution aims at bridging the gap between these accounts. Its central idea is that flexible global capitalism increasingly binds exploitation to the relative weakness and stren...

By: Stephan Voswinkel

Abstract: Upward social mobility is a promise of modernity, but as a zero-sum game it includes potential for social conflict. Economic growth could moderate conflicting social aspirations for a long time, therefore upward mobility was understood universally. As a result of the lack of growth, the conflictual nature of upward mobility comes more to the fore. The lecture explicates various proces...

By: Hartmut Rosa

Abstract: From a traditional leftist perspective centered on class-struggle, things are easy: The capitalist economy produces winners and losers. The rich, the winners, gain wealth, time and freedom, while the losers have to sell their time and their autonomy and remain poor at that. With respect to time, the difference is portrayed as the difference between those who can command over their tim...

By: Edina Vadovics

Sustainability; Contraction and Convergence

By: Thomas Frisius

Abstract: The current capitalistic economic system is very prone to crises, social inequity and waste of natural resources. In combination, this threatens the means of livelihood for future generations and is, therefore, at variance with a sustainable development. An alternative economic system is proposed with the potential to overcome these difficulties. In this system, international trade is...

By: Mark Cramer

Abstract: The degrowth vision of working less to enjoy life more is reserved primarily for people who possess certain material or philosophical tools. From Epicurus to anti-consumerism, overworked masses have indirectly subsidized lovers of idle conviviality. Therefore, opposition to wealth inequality should feature a struggle for justice in the realm of leisure time. The idle Thoreau, walking ...

By: Iris Borowy

Abstract: The concept of sustainable development emerged in the early 1980s when existing theories proved unable to provide convincing models of how to satisfy the seemingly contradictory developmental demands of simultaneously increasing wealth, of keeping production and consumption within global environmental limits and of providing an equitable distribution of material goods and opportunitie...

By: Mark Boulle

Abstract: This paper presents the findings from doctoral research into social sustainability practice of Australian local government. It is argued that the social pillar of sustainability has received less attention in research and practice than environmental and economic pillars of sustainability. The research contends there is a leading role for local government to play in incorporating socia...

By: Alberto Acosta

extractivism, neocolonialism, redistribution, ecological costs