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- Convenors:
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Ritu Verma
(University of California Los Angeles, and Carleton University)
Nitasha Kaul (University of Westminster, London)
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- Discussant:
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David Lewis
(London School of Economics)
Short Abstract:
Anthropology is at a crossroads as a damaged world reels from climate crises and widening inequalities. The discipline struggles with moving from critique to an emancipatory agenda. The panel reflects on degrowth and wellbeing as alternative pathways for repairing, healing and rebuilding our planet.
Long Abstract:
Anthropology finds itself at the crossroads. Critical questions arise as a damaged world reels from climate crises, planetary degradation at an existential scale, and alarmingly widening socio-economic inequalities. These issues deeply challenge the discipline’s ability to move from scholarly engagement and deconstruction of interlocking crises, to an activist agenda of re-construction of an equitable, resilient and ecologically-healthy world. While anthropological critique has advanced robust diagnosis of the causes of emergent issues in an era of GDP-centric globalization (i.e. power relations and discourses enabling human over-consumption, resource extraction, elite capture, fossil fuel burning, institutional failures, policy disconnects, colonial continuities, austerity measures, etc.), and excelled in documenting in fine-grained ethnographic detail the struggles and resultant effects of climate and other crises (i.e. carbon emissions, species extinction, disappearing field sites, vanishing indigenous life-worlds, extreme inequalities, land grabs, dehumanization of labour, etc.), it has struggled to forge an activist agenda, with notable exceptions. This panel explores anthropological and social-scientific engagement with the themes of planet and relations. It examines the challenges and potential of moving beyond deconstruction and critique, towards an emancipatory politics that engages anthropological knowledge and methodology in actively envisioning, anticipating, negotiating and forging alternative futures. The panel reflects on the potential of building alliances with other disciplines, degrowth and decolonial movements, and wellbeing alternatives from Bhutan and beyond. It argues for the urgent need to repair and rebuild a more equitable, resilient and habitable world, while taking into account diverse needs of all sentient beings we share our precious planet with.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 April, 2023, -Andreas Wittel (Nottingham Trent University)
Paper short abstract:
The current ideology of progress is reduced to economic growth and measured in GDP. I argue that economic growth is irreconcilable with the survival of the human race. I point toward two elements of a political ecology after progress. They are centred on commoning in degrowth.
Paper long abstract:
What does it mean to live in a world so unwell, that the human race has to confront the threat of extinction? I make a case that living in such an unwell world logically can only mean that we have to abandon the modernist ideology of progress. I briefly review ideas of societal progress and note the decline in arguments relating to progress in the writings of political and social commentators. However, alive and well, and hidden in plain sight, is the current dominant ideology of progress – the central policy goal of governments to achieve growth in Gross Domestic Product. If we have a chance to survive we must abandon this twisted ideology of progress. Speculating on the best possible future for living and surviving in an unwell world I point to two interrelated elements of a political ecology of after-progress – degrowth and commoning. I outline a political ecology of degrowth as one centred on sustaining the commons, and contrast this with current arguments for green capitalism, centred on the idea of a Green New Deal and based on a technological fix. Competitive individualism is the central social relationship of capitalism and is a social relationship that leads to the destruction of the commons. By contrast, commoning should be seen as the central social relationship of a degrowth economy. It is simultaneously a social relationship and an ecological relationship. It is a social-ecological relationship to sustain a commons in degrowth.
Nitasha Kaul (University of Westminster, London)
Paper short abstract:
There is an urgent need to frame and embed biological concerns within the very idea of democracy itself. In this paper, I provide an original conceptualisation of how the idea of ‘biodemocracy’ can be conceived and why we need it.
Paper long abstract:
In an era of global ecological disasters, there is an overarching responsibility of reframing democracy as a
system for people and the planet. How, when, and why do democracies succeed or fail at ecological issues?
There is an urgent need to frame ‘bio’ concerns in democracies in ways that can be addressed meaningfully
notwithstanding the political urgencies of electoral mandates and party-political divides. This requires an
embedding of biological concerns within the very idea of democracy itself. In this paper, I provide an original
conceptualisation of how the idea of ‘biodemocracy’ can be conceived and why we need it. I argue that
‘biodemocracy’ is situated at the intersection of politics, ecology, environment, and democracy, although in a
way that is related to, but theoretically distinct from, similar existing terms like green democracy, sustainable
development, etcetera. Putting forward an understanding of biodemocracy allows us to explicitly recognise in
analytical terms the interdependence of all life forms so that we think of a spectrum that ranges from political
ecology at one end to ecological politics at the other, and many complex challenges can gain coherence through
how they are situated along this spectrum.
Ritu Verma (University of California Los Angeles, and Carleton University)
Paper short abstract:
While anthropology excels in critically analyzing power-laden development and growth narratives, it is minimally engaged with activist agendas. This paper examines congruences, divergences, challenges and strategies for anthropological engagement of degrowth, wellbeing and decolonial alternatives.
Paper long abstract:
As the climate crises deepens and both socio-economic and development inequalities widen across the world, there is an urgent need to fundamentally change the way we engage with our planet, its fragile resources, one another, and all sentient beings. While anthropology excels in providing theoretically-grounded critical analysis of the interlinked crises through the deconstruction of power-laden development narratives, hegemonic neo-classical growth economics and neoliberal interventions and their effects, it sometimes struggles with activist agendas, with notable exceptions (Graeber, Hickel, for example). Degrowth, wellbeing and decolonial alternatives offer innovative pathways for imagining and reconstructing the world beyond capitalistic focus on endless unsustainable and inequitable growth. These alternatives are often grounded in indigenous cosmologies, such as Buen Vivir, Ubuntu or GNH-Buddhist perspectives that holistically conceptualize economic (and material culture) in equal weight with environmental, political and cultural-spiritual concerns. Though indigenous knowledge is a central concern for anthropologists, anthropological engagement with such alternatives has ironically been limited conceptually, and in terms of both critique and activism. This paper examines possible epistemological, institutional, cultural, political and other factors of disinclination, or solidarity, that impede and defer anthropological activist engagement, or critique of alternative movements and action. It overviews the congruences (subjects, approaches, methods) and divergences (theory, objectives, purpose) between anthropology and degrowth, wellbeing and decolonial alternatives. In the current crises, it is imperative that anthropology engages in constructive critical analysis, but also strategizes and actively participates in transdisciplinary alliances with other disciplines and alternative movements to repair, heal and rebuild our damaged planet.