UiT Environmental Humanities gathering #34: The Case for Degrowth

Capitalism is what Wendy Brown has called a "world-class boundary smasher"; it overcomes all limits it encounters. Yet many commentators see the ecological itself as an outermost limitation to the growth of markets. The theory of degrowth critiques capitalism's imperative of limitless growth as an ideological fantasy with grave human/environmental consequences and seeks out alternative economic models. This meeting of UiT's environmental humanities research network will consider recent writings by prominent degrowth advocates Kohei Saito and Stefania Barca et al. These texts will include:

Kohei Saito, "The Abundance of Wealth in Degrowth Communism," Ch. 7 of Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene. Cambridge UP, 2023. pgs. 216-44.

Stefania Barca, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, and Alexander Paulsson. "The End of Political Economy as We Knew It? From Growth Realism to Nomadic Utopianism," the Introduction to Barca, Chertokovskaya, and Paulsson, eds. Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth. Roman & Littlefield, 2019. pgs. 1-17.

Both readings are available upon request as pdfs. Please email Justin Parks at justin.parks@uit.no to obtain them!