Paper short abstract:

Few other economic sectors are as crucially shaped as shipping by the notion that expansion is a goal in itself. A relentless focus on economies of scale has resulted in the mega-sizing of container ships. Few ports are today equipped to host such ships, with ever more costly adaptations needed.

Paper long abstract:

Few other sectors of the global economy are as fundamentally shaped as shipping by the notion that economic expansion may be a goal in itself. A relentless focus on economies of scale, for instance, has resulted in the mega-sizing of container ships, which have grown to truly spectacular dimensions. With ships today holding up to 24,000 twenty-foot containers on board, these vessels increasingly pose major problems to global ports and the cities around them. Few ports are today equipped to host such ships, with ever more dredging and other costly infrastructural adaptations needed. The Port of Hamburg, today Europe’s third largest container port, is at a disadvantage vis a vis its deep-sea port competitors of Rotterdam and Antwerp. Located 130km from the North Sea, the tidal movements of the River Elbe have put limits on the port’s capacity to welcome large vessels. Possibly the largest dredging project in history was completed in 2022 and was meant to allow the Port of Hamburg to welcome mega-ships irrespective of the tide, with the project justified by astronomically high projections of cargo arriving in the future. Meanwhile, many urban stakeholders are increasingly asking themselves whether a less port-focused city is possible. Engaging with the growth-obsessed shipping sector via the lens of Hamburg, this paper outlines ongoing urban discussions around economic growth and ecological survival. In response to the fast-changing nature of global maritime capitalism, expanding containerized cargo capacity is often dominating debates at the expense of the environment and social life.

Paper short abstract:

With insights from tourism activities in Jämtland, a mountainous region in northern Sweden, this session shows how growth is implicit for actors, yet shocking when seeing the impacts on our planet.

Paper long abstract:

What makes us continue accepting the impacts on our planet despite continuous growth? The Anthropocene is becoming increasingly pressing, yet the consequences of our everyday actions remain difficult to discern. Reminding us of Anna Tsing's argument (2015; 2005) that scholars need to adopt a more local lens, because the Anthropocene is never global but always appears locally, this presentation examines how individuals perceive their contribution to local environmental impacts. The insights are based on 50 participants from a running marathon and a mountain biking competition held in northern Sweden. During the interviews, the informants were shown 10 photos depicting various types of trail damage captured through photo-elicitation. This analysis shows how actors interpret and navigate actions to limit their impacts. While man-made impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste were acknowledged as environmental issues, human-made impacts like trail damage were seen as natural phenomena that nature quickly recovered from. They expressed shock and surprise upon seeing the photos, having not fully realised the extent of their damage. This presentation offers insights into the complex relationship between participation in nature-based events and environmental impacts that emphasise the need for increased awareness and fostering self-limitation to challenge the imperatives of growth.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I develop a research agenda grounded on the notion of ‘everyday economies of welfare’. This agenda aims to provide a compass for connecting people's embedded knowledge with social policy interventions that go beyond the imperative of economic growth.

Paper long abstract:

The historical use of measurement frameworks and global indicators as tools of state governance and knowledge production in defining human welfare and welfare policy has been marked by the emergence of statistics and the rise of the GDP indicator as the primary policy compass guiding economic growth and societal well-being. However, this historical reliance on measurement frameworks has not met the expectations of ordinary people for greater well-being, human needs satisfaction, and livelihood sustainability. Instead, it has been associated with increasing inequality, crises in social reproduction, the erosion of intergenerational social mobility, the scaling back of welfare state safety nets, growing food insecurity, and the recent "cost of living crisis." A core contradiction of the current conjuncture is the disconnection between the ongoing hegemony of economic growth and the sustainability of human welfare. In this paper, I develop a research agenda grounded on the notion of ‘everyday economies of welfare’, which aims to provide a compass for connecting people's embedded knowledge and social policy interventions that go beyond the imperative of economic growth. I first offer context on the evolution of quantitative indicators, illustrating how they have transformed from simple representations of reality into influential models of reality and human well-being, using GDP as a key example. Next, I introduce the concept of "everyday economies of welfare." After that, I explore three central anthropological questions that emphasise a shift in perspective in understanding human welfare calculus and livelihood sustainability towards a bottom-up approach to choice, agency, and provisioning decision-making processes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses agro-industrial developmentalism as a growth project through a historical-ethnographic analysis of groundwater depletion in Doñana, a protected area in southwestern Spain.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses agro-industrial developmentalism as a growth project through a historical-ethnographic analysis of groundwater depletion in Doñana, a protected area in southwestern Spain. Surrounded by Europe's leading berry production region, the Doñana wetlands are one of the continent's most visible hotspots of water conflict. Drawing on ongoing historical ethnographic research, this paper explores the resilience of growth imperatives in the region and their connection to conceptions of resource use and distribution. I focus on the entanglement of dominant understandings of regional and social inequality and the ways in which these legitimise the intensive exploitation of water, labour and land.

Paper short abstract:

What happens when disembodied growth scenarios are “fleshed out” in urban politics and everyday life? Centering Zurich’s sites of anticipated growth and the communities that inhabit them, I examine the exclusionary logics of the urban growth machine.

Paper long abstract:

Zurich, Switzerland's largest and one of the wealthiest cities worldwide, has a fraught relationship with growth. In 2018, the municipality issued a masterplan geared towards an anticipated population increase by 25% until 2040. While city government promises good growth through "steered" development and by espousing a future-oriented narrative of world-class urban aspirations, Zurich’s population has been known to have "growing pains": a spatially and culturally conservative attitude to growth. Through disembodied speculative calculations of a yet-to-come future population, a resistance to growth is fuelled that is, in turn, “fleshed out” in locally disseminated imaginaries of a city much too crowded, filled with “unwanted” bodies, prone to the erosion of local identity.

I draw from long-term fieldwork on some of the sites supposed to absorb Zurich's growth, namely the city's land reserves: municipal plots of land currently inhabited by some of Zurich's marginalized communities. Putting the ethnographic data from everyday future-making on these lots in conversation with the futuring techniques used by the municipal statisticians crafting population growth scenarios, this paper will show how the disembodiedness of hegemonic urban futures is a) shaped by global financial logics of speculation, and b) gives way to culturally grounded right-wing populist urba- and xenophobia.