Presentation short abstract

I argue that the urgent task to downscale societal throughput, address ecoclimatic breakdown, liberate the Global South from (neo)colonial oppression, and redistribute reproductive work, must be rooted in recentering land and rebuilding Northern socio-ecological reproduction capacities.

Presentation long abstract

In this article, I argue that the task to drastically downscale societal throughput, liberate the Global South from (neo)colonial oppression, redistribute care and reproductive work, and address ecological breakdown, must be rooted in rebuilding the Northern provisioning capacities for socio-ecological reproduction at all scales. To do so, I make a case for an agrarian degrowth that roots itself in rebuilding the forces of socio-ecological reproduction (subsistence agriculture, care work, earthcare and all that’s necessary to make and maintain life) in Europe, starting from the instances of their persistence within it. I mobilise materialist ecofeminist thought on subsistence economies and socio-ecological reproduction, bringing further a “subsistence approach” for Europe. Addressing the persisting gap in sustainability, degrowth and social transformation scholarship regarding the role of the countryside for desirable futures, I argue for the centrality of rural space in operationalising the re-centering of life and socio-ecological reproduction, beyond escapism and localisms. Finally, I draw on peasant and critical agrarian studies to highlight the lessons we can learn from peasant economies and their traces within Europe, putting forward subsistence-oriented and degrowth-akin economies persisting in European internal peripheries, and their unexplored political potential. While existing at the margins of capitalist growth in the core, these are tangible instances of non-capitalist social metabolism that aim at socio-ecological reproduction, and that can be of inspiration in the context of broader political economic transformations and agrarian theories of change.