Short Abstract:

This roundtable aims to spark a more robust conversation of environmental historians on degrowth. It asks how the ideas and prospects for an equitable downscaling of economic activities can benefit from historical perspectives as well as how degrowth might affect historical inquiry.

Long Abstract:

This roundtable aims to spark a more robust conversation between scholars of environmental history and theorists and activists of degrowth. It asks how the ideas and prospects for an equitable downscaling of economic activities developed in the degrowth literature can benefit from historical perspectives as well as how degrowth might affect the questions that historians ask. Degrowth emerged as a social movement and research field over the last few decades. It combines a thorough critique of economic growth, ecological modernization, and mainstream sustainability discourses with the formulation of systemic alternatives and policies. Current writings about degrowth also tend to stress the functioning of capitalism as a system and imperial inequities related to class, race, and gender. As fruitful as degrowth perspectives have been for environmental thinking, environmental historians have barely engaged with them. By bringing together six historians who have been considering degrowth in their work (Stefania Barca, Venus Bivar, Andy Bruno, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Matthias Schmelzer, and Julia Adeney Thomas), this roundtable will engage in critical debate about degrowth and its implications for environmental history.", this roundtable will engage in critical debate about degrowth and its implications for environmental history. Among other questions, the participants in this roundtable will consider the historical origins of scarcity as a conception and reality, economic growth as an orientation in capitalist and non-capitalist political systems, and the possibilities of applying historical examples to future paths toward degrowth.