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Short abstract:

This paper utilizes a ‘reading for difference’ approach across food, mobility and housing in DK. It advocates for a community economies lens to reshape consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future, urging further research on spatial proximity, long-term relations, and co-ownership.

Long abstract:

The ongoing climate crisis requires rapid reduction in carbon emissions, calling for not just ‘greener’ and more efficient modes of production and renewable energy, but also a wide-ranging transformation of our lifestyles and current consumption-production relationships. Especially affluent countries with high consumption emissions are facing the need for systemic change. Through the case of Denmark, this paper explores on the one hand dominant, and on the other alternative, consumption-production relationships across the three areas with the highest carbon emissions: food, mobility and housing. It does so by mapping different actors and stakeholders in the Danish landscape of production and provision and analyzing focus group material representing a total of 50 professional organizations from food, mobility and housing. By adopting Gibson-Graham’s approach of ‘reading for difference’, the paper explores more-than-capitalist economic activities, commodity exchanges and forms of ownership at play in organizations’ strive towards sustainable production. As such, the paper draws attention to the field of community economies as a lens to reframe consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future. The paper contributes to the body of community economies research by identifying three central dimensions in which alternative actors differ from mainstream organizations in consumption-production relationships across food, mobility and housing: 1) spatial dimensions; 2) temporal dimensions; and 3) social dimensions. Highlighting these, the paper calls for further research and attention to spatial proximity, long term relating and co-ownership in reframing consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future.

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Short abstract:

The paper explores empirically and theoretically post-growth futures through an ethnographic study of three cases in Spain. They exhibit diverse alternative socio-ecological forms of organization and illustrate some of the difficult but viable potentials for large-scale societal change.

Long abstract:

Based on ethnographic studies in Spain this paper investigates actually existing examples of post-growth futures and how they in practice enact the slogan of “another world is possible”. Three comparative cases will be explored, sourced from both rural and urban settings, all highlighting viable alternatives and challenges to current hegemonic growth-based models of social organization. The cases vary in scale and scope, from a small rural “art and eco-village”, via a more than 30 years successful anarcho-communitarian agricultural town run by public assemblies, direct democracy, and anti-capitalist philosophies, to a large urban, cooperative network with its own social currency and practices of creating an alternative economy based on social and ecological needs and well-being. Place-based but highly networked and translocal, all cases illustrate aspects of relational STS notions such as “assemblages”, “networks” and “alliances”, “chthulucene” (Haraway 2016), and the “Terrestrial” (Latour 2020). The paper brings STS vocabulary into dialogue with both the empirical cases, degrowth/post-growth theory, and some of the core anti-capitalist theory from which the degrowth movement draws a lot of inspiration, especially the work of Erik Olin Wright (2010, 2020) and his three logics of transformation (ruptural, interstitial, and symbiotic). The interstitial logic of transformation might be said to form the basis of the degrowth movement (Chertovskaya 2020), and the cases illustrate this logic as well. Furthermore, I will critique and refunction the three logics in light of the cases and explore the generative potential for both transformation and theorizing that opens up in the dialogue with STS.

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Short abstract:

Post-growth and geopolitics are an uneasy couple. If the European Union were to abandon economic growth and opt for 'humble' technologies, would it be able to defend itself, its allies and its values at a time when aggressive autocracies are invading or threatening their democratic neighbours?

Long abstract:

It is unlikely that we can defuse the climate time bomb, let alone other ecological threats, as long as our economy continues to grow. But what would abandoning economic growth mean for geopolitics? Could an EU that is the first to embrace post-growth still be a global actor? Would it be able to defend itself, its allies, democracy, human rights, and the international rule of law at a time when aggressive autocracies are invading or threatening their democratic neighbours? After all, the power of countries and alliances is largely determined by their wealth and military capabilities. We see this in Ukraine: the fact that the country has withstood Russia’s imperialist assault until now is largely thanks to Western financial and military support.

Technology is paramount here. Many US and EU arms are technologically superior to Russia's, reflecting a wider lead in tech development. Technology is also a major factor in the relations with China. China’s dependence on key western technologies gives the West some leverage over Beijing, which might help persuade it to refrain from attacking democratic Taiwan. Would the EU be able to maintain a technological edge over Russia and China if it put technology development at the service of post-growth, sending it down a ‘humbler’ path?

Clearly, post-growth and geopolitics make an uneasy couple. In a recent report for the Green European Foundation, I outline some ways to reconcile them, including in the field of technology. I would love to discuss post-growth, geopolitics and technology with this panel.

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Short abstract:

Cascading risks threaten to escalate throughout the 21st century. Both the costs and risks of mitigating innovation at gigascale are tremendous. Could incremental changes, either build-ups or scale downs of existing facilities, tools, technologies, and infrastructures, provide an alternative path?

Long abstract:

Cascading risks across nature, technology, the economy, and society threaten to escalate throughout the 21st century, unleashing unprecedented risk chains with tremendous unforeseen consequences. Damages from already regularly occurring hazards such as the January 2024 Californian floods are already in the trillions of dollars. With generative AI, digital technologies have, arguably, leapfrogged any conceivable previous expectations, causing both tremendous worry and excitement at the possibilities. Given the high stakes for investors, capitalizing on innovations in a socially responsible manner seems difficult. Mitigating cascading risks, or plausible hazards before or if they occur is assumed to be costly and difficult, but responding to them post factum carries the additional rush factor and therefore increased sustainability risks. Many gigascale–e.g. $10bn or larger-projects are currently underway or proposed–from carbon capture to ice cap blankets, to a Mars colony, to a ban on AI. But both the costs and risks of innovation at gigascale are tremendous. Against this backdrop, could incremental changes, either build-ups or scale downs of existing facilities, tools, technologies, and infrastructures, provide an alternative path? Is there a middle ground where modular planning and construction can bring the best of both worlds? Building on case study sketches of a selection of either type of projects, ongoing, emerging, and imagined, this discussion paper asks whether a sociotechnical perspective offers guidance to this conundrum of how to domesticate the future, either from a democratic or a practical perspective. The implications are drawn for innovation, growth, and societal risk management.

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Short abstract:

How can complex productive processes be disentangled from the growth imperative? This article will consider automobility as a paradigmatic example of the challenges faced when attempting to rethink production, and the underlying cultures and norms, within the hostile context of the global market.

Long abstract:

The socio-technical productive assemblages underpinning contemporary capitalist societies – production lines, value chains, R&D departments – all play a pivotal role in perpetuating an unsustainable mode of relating to the environment. At the same time, these assemblages are inextricably bound to external forces outside the control of both individual actors and firms: a ‘mute compulsion’ exerted by capital, urging socio-economic entities to take determined decisions irrespective of their own subjective will (Mau, 2019). The result is that inherently destructive productive pathways are locked-in by economic forces which prevent, both technically and economically, the conversion of complex and highly technological productive processes in the pursuit of degrowth.

Mobilising theory in an effort of prefiguration, this article will address the question of how a firm would operate in a degrowth setting. How would objects be assembled if producers were no longer submitted to the profit motive and the forces of market competition? Under what conditions could such an endeavour succeed? To tackle these questions, I will apply Samir Amin’s concept of delinking to describe the task of unbinding the industrial production of countries in the global north from the ecologically unsustainable drives of capital accumulation. I will consider the case of the automobile industry as a paradigmatic example of the obstacles faced when aiming to reconvert key industries within an ecologically sustainable socio-economic paradigm. Drawing on STS literature, the article will then reflect on the consequences of delinking for the technology behind the products, as well as for their design.