Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

Dominant narratives of green growth and sustainable development rest upon uncritical distinctions between ‘techne’ and ‘oikos’ on the one hand, and ‘oikos’ and ‘logos’ on the other. In other words, the relevance of science and technology is often taken for granted for a desired social and ecological change. Partly as a reaction to this, degrowth scholarship has shown how modern technoscientific systematizations perpetuate the capitalist growth economy and facilitates the increasing exploitation of people, and nature as a whole. However, there seems to remain an incipient optimism towards new technologies and scientific discoveries among degrowth proponents and researchers that are often motivated by ‘non-essentialist’ and ‘de-romantic’ theoretical assumptions.

Without idealizing the past or reducing the world to essences, this study first proposes a typology consisting of four varieties of science and technology optimism. Second, the study identifies contentious technoscientific proposals within the degrowth literature, dissects them, and categorizes them through the proposed typology. The study analyzes degrowth proposals for a Green New Deal, positive takes on the global mega-production of cheap renewables, and more. Third, the study finds proposals within degrowth based on positivist epistemologies and/or de-materialized ontologies, which may lead to fundamental misunderstandings of what a convivial and just degrowth is from the prospects of modern science and technology.

Info

Day: 2023-08-30
Start time: 10:00
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-KC-2
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Technology and science for degrowth

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