Library

By: Felix Rauschmayer

sustainability transition, needs, NonViolent Communication, sustainable lifestyles, quality of life

By: Mine Islar

Abstract: Social movements, as powerful channels of political expression and mobilization, have become global phenomena with potential to reshape societies and politics around the world. The purpose of this paper is to produce an interdisciplinary study of right to the city movements by analyzing the re-politicization of the citizens engaged in Turkey’s Gezi movement. The paper aims at explorin...

By: Degrowth Conference 2014

In the run-up to the conference monthly videos were published on the conference homepage, dealing with different aspects of degrowth.

By: Frederik Larsen

Abstract: Solutions to the economic and environmental challenges the world is currently facing often introduce novel ideas and new ways forward. In a conceptual take on degrowth this paper presents an ethnographic study of an existing economic system, the second hand market, and argues that understanding how values are created in this market can contribute to a change towards greater sustainabi...

By: Henrike Rau

Abstract: The emergence of carbon-intensive systems of production, distribution and consumption as part of the modernisation process in Europe and beyond coincided with fundamental changes in how people view and use time. Predictions by advocates of modern time management that time-saving technologies will radically reduce working hours and enhance people’s quality of life did not materialise, ...

By: Angelika Zahrnt, Uwe Schneidewind

How to make sufficency go mainstream, proposals for politics, an attempt to bring sufficency into the political arena. ISBN-13: 978-3-86581-690-0 Original published as "Damit gutes Leben einfacher wird: Perspektiven einer Suffizienzpolitik"

By: Lisa Graaf, Holger Bär, Klaus Jacob

Abstract: In this paper we develop a concept of transformative environmental policy as a complementary field of environmental policy, which addresses ongoing processes of societal change and utilizes them for achieving environmental sustainability. In our view, transformative environmental policies are not replacing other environmental policies that protect natural resources or reduce emissions...

By: Degrowth Conference 2014

In the run-up to the conference monthly videos were published on the conference homepage, dealing with different aspects of degrowth.

By: Maja Goepel

Abstract: Humans create stories about why they are here, what the purpose of this journey is and how to relate to their human and natural environment. These stories rest on some core ideas that feed into the common language and sense-making that people apply when engaging in collaboration, the design of institutions or legitimization of domination. Looking at what the story of neoclassical econ...

By: Andrea Stocker

Abstract: The paper is motivated by the assumption that low economic growth rates could be the normal case and not the exception in developed economies in the near and also in the far future. Several reasons imply limits on economic scale and thus limits to growth, e.g. resource scarcities, commodity price shocks, instability of financial markets, government debts, a decline in consumer confiden...

By: Lanka Horstink, José Luís Garcia

Abstract: This proposal stems from the need for an experimental and reflective method - which we call “methodological luddism” - that will allow us to reevaluate the structure of humans' relationships with information technologies. Luddism as a method should not be confused with its original meaning - destruction of machines and equipment -, but understood as a means to examine the conditions t...

By: Nina Pohler

New Spirit of Capitalism, Artistic Critique, Social Critique, Growth Critique, Coordination of Work Strategies for transformation

By: Ernst Hollander

Abstract: 40 years ago it was harder to opt out of 'the growth society', in the US than in Sweden. At home I expected good education disregarding income. Since then Sweden has been 'normalised'. In Polanyian terms – disembedded. The same forces applies mutatis mutandis to nation states. One factor is the arrangements for international flows of finance. An illustration is the rising ratio of glo...

By: Thomas H. Greco

Abstract: The global, interest-based, debt-money system is the primary driver of unsustainable growth, economic inequity, and environmental destruction. Almost all of the money in existence in the world today is created by banks when they make loans. The accrual of interest on these loans over time, causes the amount of debt to always exceed the means for its payment, so new loans must continua...

By: Filka Sekulova, Francois Schneider

Abstract: The so-called “open-growth-society”, related to globalisation, has only been open for a few: the rich ones, and for the products from multinationals. Criticizing globalisation, worse promoting degrowth, leads very quickly to accusations of being reactionary. In practice now growth and globalisation in this finite world leads to increasing inequality and therefore – frustration, closur...

By: Peter Hennicke

Abstract: The paper demonstrates that a “resource efficiency revolution” in combination with “sufficiency policies” could be a promising step towards a sustainable development. This might create much technological optimism. However there is much evidence that technological progress has to be accompanied by radical socioeconomic transformation and new patterns of sustainable production and consu...

By: Ulrich Schachtschneider

Abstract: An ecological basic income is one financed through eco-taxes. This principle could both combine the necessary rise in costs of environmental goods with redistribution of income and link sufficiency with different lifestyle norms. Moreover, it can help to switch off the acceleration motors which are responsible for the ongoing social acceleration in modern societies, according to the t...

By: Christoph Gran

macroeconomics; degrowth; scenarios; welfare; ecological economics

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: Hubert Buch-Hansen

Capitalist diversity; De-growth; Economic growth; Institutional change; Steady-state economy