Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality, and to see the links to virtual rooms.

Accepted Paper:

Degrowth, Alternatives to Development and Non-Western Discourses: how Ubuntu and Dure can inspire us to pursue social justice and ecological integrity for a sustainable future  
Taekyoon Kim (Seoul National University) Wiebe Nauta (Maastricht University)

Paper short abstract:

Through the comparative analysis of Africa's Ubuntu and Korea's Dure, this study aims to re-launch the idea of degrowth and sustainable development as a way to create alternative sources for public goods which can be shared by community members.

Paper long abstract:

In multiple 'non-Western' settings and languages personhood is understood, imagined and lived in a more relational manner, different from dominant 'Western' understandings focusing on the atomized individual which have strongly shaped our globalized capitalist world. An African example is the philosophy of Ubuntu - Umntu Ngumtu Ngabanye Abantu (a person is a person through her relationship with other people) - which inspires us to think differently how we stand in relationship with each other, wherever we live but also how we may reconceptualise our relationship with non-humans and our understanding of solidarity. Similar to Africa's Ubuntu, the Korean tradition of Dure is a type of collective labouring operation within farming communities, by which farmers work together on each other's farms, so that they can support each other and enrich solidarity for social economies.

Through the comparative analysis of Ubuntu and Dure, this study aims to re-launch the idea of degrowth, not understood as regression or recession, but as a way to steer away from the mantra of GDP growth and instead create alternative sources for public goods which can be shared by community members. This would mean huge opportunities for the Global South, in the current system of unequal exchange largely relegated to supply labour, resources and raw materials at the expense of ecological riches and diversity. These 'non-Western' views on personhood and humanity, as well as imaginaries, conceptualizations and theorization regarding our understandings of degrowth and sustainable development may be combined with debates on "alternatives to development."

Panel P31a
Leaving, Living and Learning: Knowledge Production and its Impact on Designing Just Sustainable Futures
  Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -