Paper short abstract:

The presentation will focus on assessing the closeness of past and present Maasai indigenous people to “frugal abundance”, which means living well without much consumption. The research provides avenues for deeper connections between degrowth and African ideas and practices.

Paper long abstract:

So far, African engagement with degrowth has been minimal. However, as argued by Escobar (2015), degrowth has the potential to resonate with imaginaries and practices in the so-called Global South. In this optic, my research relies on the notion of “frugal abundance”, which roughly means living well with low levels of consumption. This term has been popularised by degrowth and post-development thinker Serge Latouche. The notion of frugal abundance might be more appealing than degrowth in Africa, as it more clearly resonates with African practices and realities without directly questioning economic growth.

Anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins have provided evidence that some African societies used to be close to frugal abundance. Despite colonial and post-colonial changes, some societies might still be close to it. After giving a more formal definition of frugal abundance, my presentation will focus on the past and present closeness of the Maasai indigenous people to frugal abundance.

To do so, I will rely on preliminary results from quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (participatory workshops, participant observation, interviews) data collected during a one-month fieldwork in two Kenyan Maasai communities. The results will notably provide evidence that, despite low levels of consumption, Maasai communities are very satisfied with their lives and are generally happy not to have and consume more. Differences between older and younger generations will be highlighted. Overall, the research provides avenues for deeper connections between degrowth and African ideas and practices.

Paper short abstract:

For the Hadza hunter-gatherers, the economic catalogue includes formats that are rooted in strong conventions against accumulation. They have developed in tandem with particular social relations and specific historical dynamics, so how are such formats relevant beyond their empirical source?

Paper long abstract:

'If gifts make friends, friends make gifts', Marshall Sahlins wrote in his seminal work on Stone Age Economics (1972). As the quote indicates, economics create the very foundation for social relations - and vice versa; the quote also testaments to the generative force of economics - a powerful future-making tool. For the Hadza hunter-gatherers, expectations to the future form a complex of ambiguity and certainty; there is a conspicuous confidence in food continuity (data from fieldwork in 2022) combined with strong certainty that time ahead will present unforeseeable radical change. The indigenous Hadza economic catalogue includes particular formats, such as demand-sharing, immediate-return systems, egalitarian meat-sharing, and managing cosmological debt relating to the hunting and eating of animals - all economic practices that are rooted in strong conventions against accumulation (Woodburn 1982). Accumulation, whether as piling, storage, or harvesting interests, is among the Hadza perceived as particularly anti-social human behaviour. The economic formats have developed in tandem with specific social relations and historical dynamics in an egalitarian hunting and gathering society, so how are such formats relevant beyond their empirical source? Late capitalism is a radically different ideational system, yet it has fostered novel economic models that bear some resemblance, e.g. sharing economies, and, most recently, the current energy crisis has (re)introduced talking about the commons and a communal call for restraint. These late-capitalist formats reintroduce morality and social conventions to the core of economic practice whether they are founded in degrowth or in anti-accumulation theories.

Paper short abstract:

Sustainability and equality, for which degrowthists are thirsty, already exist in rural Africa. This paper argues that such a convivial nature of rural communities may derive from the fact that agricultural practices and social relations of villagers largely remain uncaptured by state and market.

Paper long abstract:

Although there has been a strident advocacy of “Green Revolution” in sub-Saharan Africa, the greater part of villagers are still reluctant to join it. Forty years ago, Goran Hyden called our attention to “uncaptured peasantry,” a term which aptly summarizes the situation in which both state and market failed to involve African peasants into modernization projects. This paper examines how African villagers still remain “uncaptured” both in terms of their agricultural practices and social organizations. It also explores the implications of “uncapturedness” for building more sustainable agri-food systems in the developed world. In contrast to standardized Green Revolution technologies characterized by mono-cropping and heavy use of agro-chemicals and machines, techniques characterizing African agriculture such as mixed-cropping and no-tillage contribute to conserving soil and enhancing bio-diversity. Although an increased population pressure and penetration of the market economy have prompted villagers more recently to adopt intensive farming techniques, polyculture and diversification to secure subsistence still characterize agriculture and rural life in may parts of Africa. This fact suggests that the state agenicies and markets are not yet powerful enough to fundamentally transform the peasant production system, allowing villagers considerable leeway to make their own decision over farm management. Their relative independence from the state and the market can also be found in their social organizations. Villagers are still involved in the communal networks of mutual help and interdependency, which also enable them to defend their lives not only from capricious climate and market, but also against unfavourable state intervention.

Paper short abstract:

the paper aims to draw attention to the ambiguities of the blue economy in proposing a conservationist approach without rethinking the dogmas of a neoliberal acceleration. Local conceptions of the sea as commons rise practices of degrowth that offer a way of resistance to narratives of development.

Paper long abstract:

The urgency of the challenges posed by climate change and the focus on new models of sustainable development invests the African continent with a new ferment of economic growth. This is where blue economy policies and the myth of blue growth come in. The oceans assume a key role in rethinking the economic future of the African continent, which extends well beyond marginal coastal and island contexts now at the center of global agendas, and which also concerns landlocked African states. Based on an ethnography conducted in the Comoros islands, this contribution aims to draw attention to the ambiguities of the blue economy concept in proposing a conservationist approach without rethinking the dogmas of a neoliberal economic acceleration. In the management of marine protected areas, community solutions drive the resources and concepts of the blue economy in unprecedented temporalities. Local conceptions of the sea and coastal spaces as commons underpin from-below forms of re-appropriation of economic-conservationist rhetoric, even from a political-identitarian perspective. In other cases, individual tactics for zero-impact living embodied forms of resistance to globally imposed economic models of blue growth. Amidst the interstices of a productivist model, in the urgency of preserving the marine ecosystem, rise different practices of degrowth that offer a concrete way to rethink “from the sea” power relations and hegemonic narratives. These spontaneous practices are an expression of a maritime Africa capable of unthinking the concept of development as well as to question and overturn a continental hegemony.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on African extractive technologies, this paper mobilizes ethnographic engagements to examine the thin line between re-purposing, appropriation, and 'frugal' innovation. In searching for a more grounded alternative to frugal innovation, what do other modes of inquiry might pop up?

Paper long abstract:

Consider the role small (China-made) engines, play in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past two decades, its import not only impacted agriculture, but also ways of artisan and small-scale mining. In the Kivu region of DR Congo, small-scale machinery (ball mills, air compressors, pumps) boosted revenues by affording extractive deepening in unbreathable (underwater or underground) workspaces. From a different vantage point, however, engines also require repair work, maintenance, apprenticeship, improvisation, and adaptation. Mechanization requires craftsmanship and care. Yet, what can Congolese ingénieurs teach us about their technology? What perspective on development do they hold? And can ways of extraction be considered useful within ongoing debates of degrowth? What can be extracted, what are the tailings, and what can be wasted at this intersection?

This paper mobilizes multiple ethnographic interlocutions (collected over long-term fieldwork and archival research) surrounding African socio-technical dynamics to critically engage with the following notions: technological choices, frugal innovation, and appropriate (and/or convivial) technologies. A first interlocution focuses on hard rock mining and the challenges of aeration and stone crushing. Although ingénieurs’ often place themselves in prolongation to colonial (often improvised) ways of extraction, their current (appropriated) techniques afford thinking with the re-purposing of vernacular material, colonial debris, and the translation of pre-colonial metallurgical skills. What assumptions on development do their practices preclude and can they help us 'unthink development'?

A second case engages with alluvial mining (kazabula). Starting as forms of free diving for diamonds during the Mobutu era (late 1970s) in the Kasai region, over time kazabuleurs 'innovated' their set-up and currently dive with artificial air supply in the Kivu region. From the outset their ways seem ‘frugal’. Yet, can more ethnographically grounded notions, such as souple (flexible), give a more valid alternative to start (re-)thinking or valorize what is going on in the Congolese hinterland?

Paper short abstract:

Smallholder farmers’ adoption of pesticides, with their potential for growth and harm, illuminates the ways in which notions of capitalist growth and ‘flourishing’ intertwine in everyday practices in an East African village.

Paper long abstract:

Pesticide use in Ambuor, a village in western Kenya where I conducted fieldwork with smallholder farmers in 2019, is entangled with visions of growth. Globally circulating flows of pesticides have reached this relatively remote rural area and are seized by smallholder farmers to sustain families, investments, education and consumption. The concept of growth (Dongruok in DhoLuo) calls forth nearly a century of anthropological interpretations of Luo life worlds, although with pesticides as a recent instrument, it is taking a radically different, chemically altered new shape. Yet, the affects and aspirations that drive pesticide use today can be layered onto and rooted in long-standing engagements with a broader concept of growth that views it as more than simple accumulation, but that can be better described as a state of continuous flourishing that includes human and more-than-human communities (Geissler and Prince 2010). I argue that rather than envisioning a simple trajectory here, from holistic and vital ‘Luo growth,’ to the toxic growth associated with chemical industries, modern agriculture, and global capitalism (and then back again through degrowth), these seemingly opposing ideas are closely intertwined in everyday practices. I use pesticides as a vehicle for analysing how different visions of growth impact on life and livelihoods in an East African village, how they interact with each other, and how they are articulated by various actors in this context.

Paper short abstract:

West Tanzanian discourses on growth both celebrate the increasing productivity of agricultural intensification , and express fears about the unnatural growth it engenders. This paper analyses the ambivalent reflections on growth, and brings them in dialogue with Degrowth proposals.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers an analysis of the ambivalent discourse on growth that occupies Tanzanian everyday life and public debate. Interlocutors blame the intensification of agriculture for forcing livestock, crops and soils to grow in excessive and unnatural ways. Plants, animals and the humans who consume them are said to grow ‘before their time’, resulting in bodies that are ‘older than their age’. At the same time, striving for the growth of fields and families is at the core of people’s understanding of the good life. Tanzanian conceptions of wellbeing thus follow the pro-growth sentiment described by many Africanist ethnographies (see Geissler & Prince 2010). Politicians find resonance with popular imaginaries of prosperity when calling upon the people to reproduce for the economic growth of the nation. Agrochemicals are simultaneously feared for how they drain soils and humans of vitality, and lauded for the strongly desired productivity they bring. These discourses on growth reflect the complexities of a country where obesity is rising while stunting – the most arresting image of impaired growth – is still present. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with farmers and healers in West Tanzania, I describe how discourses on growth are rooted in intimate understandings of the metabolic lifecycle and rhythms of organisms. I analyze the lived experiences and critical reflections that converge in these growth discourses, and bring them in dialogue with Degrowth proposals.

Paper short abstract:

Millets are increasingly imagined as a panacea for ecological, economic and public health challenges. Drawing on long term ethnographic research in urban Senegal, this paper explores how millet has become emblematic of efforts to slow down, rescale or reform food systems.

Paper long abstract:

Millets are increasingly imagined as a panacea for ecological, economic and public health challenges. Agricultural and dietary interventions promote millet to disrupt dependencies on rice, wheat and maize, seek to remake patterns and promoting food sovereignty. This paper explores the promotion of millets as a food for generating sustainable urban life. Drawing on long term ethnographic research in Dakar, Senegal, the paper traces the production, marking, processing and preparation of millets across laboratories, households and marketplaces, asking how millet become emblematic of efforts to slow down, rescale or reform food systems.

The paper challenges the idea that social practice in African contexts might, without consciously adopting or reproducing its politics, mirror or illustrate the principles of degrowth. Examining day to day consumption reveals how urban Senegalese use food to enact diverse political identities and ideals: dreams of decommodification and aspirations towards consumption. Millets shape and enable critiques of modern foodways and urban consumption, but also engender ambivalence and hesitation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper challenges a dichotomous framing of conversations on growth that tend to be either for it or against it. Thinking from a range of sites in Uganda where a phenomenon that we call “bundling” comes into view, we outline a way to imagine growth otherwise.

Paper long abstract:

While economic expansion is still presumed to be a fundamental requirement for nation-states, in recent years, calls to abandon growth entirely and to degrow have multiplied. This paper challenges a dichotomous framing of many conversations on growth that tend to be either for it or against it. Thinking from a range of sites in Uganda where a phenomenon that we call “bundling” comes into view, we reflect on whether it is possible to think growth otherwise. Analyzing a number of examples of bundling from present-day Kampala as well as its historical and linguistic scaffolding, we take the phenomenon seriously as an alternative way of imagining growth. Bundling, we argue, is the result of an aesthetics wherein both material value and social relationships are imagined to arise through thickenings of like persons and things, assembled and ordered in spatial proximity and symmetry. The paper suggests that bundling offers conceptual resources to imagine growth otherwise, as processes unfolding in ways that complicate both too facile liberal and neoliberal imaginaries of unfettered flows of goods, people, things and services. It also suggests that the Euro-American degrowth arguments may be less persuasive and urgent in places like Uganda. Instead of being for or against growth, bundling draws attention to the need to cultivate other ways of growing together.

Paper long abstract:

Post-development scholars have argued that Degrowth movements have the potential to resonate with related imaginaries and practices in the Global South. And yet, these movements have so far gained little traction in Africa, perhaps because of perceived connotations with poverty, scarcity, romantic luddism, and economic recession. What can these calls offer to Degrowth debates and how might they contribute to scholarship seeking to 'unthink development' in Africa?