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.
Degrowth addresses the negative consequences of consumerism (psychological stress, long working hours and positional competition) and discusses the benefits of frugal lifestyles. Henri Lefebvre, a French philosopher from the 20th century, argues that if ideas or values are not physically implemented in space, they become mere fantasies. As such, if degrowth wishes to prevail, it has to leave it...
Küche für Alle [Kitchen for all] from Marc Menningmann on Vimeo. Next to discussing and presenting, people also ate and cooked on the Degrowth Conference which took place in Leipzig last year. The "Kitchen for all" is a group of People's kitchens which cooked for and with the conference participants to provide food every lunch and dinner.
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 ...
