We would like to remind you that the deadline for the submission of scientific papers and civil society contributions for the Fourth International Degrowth-Conference is 28th of February 2014. The conference will be held in Leipzig from the 2nd to 6th of September 2014 with the strategic goal to bring forward the degrowth movement.
In order to achieve this, the conference facilitates the exchange between scientists, civil society, pioneer projects of a social and ecological economy and artists. The main theme of the conference is „building bridges“, not only between the above-mentioned protagonists, but also between the degrowth-debate and similar discourses, as well as the Global South and the Global North. The conference aims at giving an impulse for a common degrowth vision by bringing together people with different backgrounds.
The call for scientific papers including the electronic submission tool is available here.
The call for activist and practical contributions is available here.
In addition, there is the possibility to submit stirring papers. This type of papers can be submitted by scientists, practitioners and artists and will, if accepted, serve as introductory papers for expert working groups of a so-called Group Assembly Process. The length of such stirring papers should be between 1000 and 1500 words. More information on the Group Assembly process and the call for stirring papers can be accessed here.
Recently, an article on degrowth appeared in Harvard Business Review (hereafter HBR). Rather than offering a critique of capitalism, the article proposes that degrowth may not be a threat to business after all, and in fact, there are burgeoning degrowth markets waiting to be tapped into by the risk averse. Although we applaud the authors in getting the word “degrowth” into the illustrious pages...
By Nafeez Ahmed New research suggests that the ongoing global economic crisis is symptomatic of a deeper crisis of industrial civilization’s relationship with nature. The continuation of the crisis, though, does not imply the end of the world – but rather is part of major phase shift to a new form of civilization that could either adapt to post-carbon reality and prosper, or crumble in denial....
Some people object to the concept of “natural capital” because they say it reduces nature to the status of a commodity to be marketed at its exchange value. This indeed is a danger, well discussed by George Monbiot. Monbiot’s criticism rightly focuses on the monetary pricing of natural capital. But it is worth clarifying that the word “capital” in its original non-monetary sense means “a stock ...
