Presentation short abstract

An organizational ethnography that examines how the Post Growth Institute embodies Real Existing Degrowth across North-South geographies through experimental, relational and imperfect forms of organizing that surface tensions, facilitate learnings and generate possibilities.

Presentation long abstract

This paper presents an organizational autoethnography of the Post Growth Institute (PGI) as a generative case of Real Existing Degrowth (RED) that expands notions of territory to include organizational ecologies shaped by diverse histories, positionalities, and power dynamics across North-South geographies. Drawing on analytic and impressionistic forms of organizational autoethnography and ethnographic data generated through the PGI’s Fellowship and Alliance programs, it examines how an organization embodies post-growth principles as it transitions from a White, Global North-led organization to one governed across diverse socio-spatial, cultural, and epistemic contexts. By tracing the everyday processes, tensions and learnings within the PGI, the paper highlights the ongoing experimental practices through which the organization models degrowth. These include the internal circulation of money, power, and resources, while nurturing relationality across a network of members in the Global North and South. The analysis reveals how post-growth principles become materially and emotionally entangled in collaborative work across difference and argues that the PGI represents a liminal organisational formation that offers a lived, global attempt to practise degrowth through context-specific, relational, and imperfect arrangements. The paper contributes to debates on how degrowth-oriented organizing can navigate and potentially transform North-South divides within contemporary research, governance, and innovation cultures.