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Short abstract

We use STS to unpack what makes futures “alternative.” Showing how different ontologies; imaginaries (ends), provisioning infrastructures (means), and practices (enactment), yield distinct diagnoses, we argue for sufficiency, care, and gentleness as guides to grounded post‑growth futures.

Long abstract

In this paper, we explore what counts as an “alternative future” when viewed through the analytical sensibilities of STS. Building on longstanding STS critiques of technological determinism and solutionist framings, we argue that post‑growth and degrowth debates often remain ontologically narrow: they diagnose structural obstacles and articulate strategic repertoires, yet they frequently bypass the socio‑material arrangements, infrastructural sediments, and everyday practices through which futures are stabilised. We propose that STS’s attention to co‑production, multiplicity, and material agency provides crucial resources for expanding what imaginations of societal transformation can legitimately include.

Drawing on imaginaries research, foundational‑economy approaches, convivial design, and practice theory, we show how different onto‑epistemological commitments generate different diagnoses and different forms of “alternativity.” We demonstrat how futures change depending on whether we foreground collective ends (socio‑technical imaginaries), institutional means (provisioning infrastructures), or everyday enactment (socio‑material practices).

By articulating how different ontologies enact different futures, we aim to contribute to STS efforts to unpack what makes alternatives alternative; when, where, and for whom. Our argument highlights sufficiency, care, and gentleness as normative orientations that help evaluate competing future‑making projects while avoiding both nostalgic regressions and techno‑utopian escapes. In doing so, we position STS not merely as a diagnostic tool but as a generative resource for imagining and assembling more grounded, plural, and materially attentive post‑growth futures.