Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

Max Koch (2022) argues that the degrowth movement needs to adopt a multi-frontal approach, working both within and outside of the state. I argue that this strategic proposal further needs a critique of state sovereignty, as well as a vision for what we want the state to be. This is not a reversal from strategy to vision: it is strategy through vision.

Critiquing and reimagining the state is strategically relevant for three reasons. First, we need to adopt a metric for when to change the state and when to work outside of it. To say both paths are necessary is one thing, to have a sensibility for when to walk one instead of the other is another. Second, we need a vision of what we want a degrown state to be like. Degrowth is primarily a vision for our economies, but we also need to understand that uncritically reproducing state sovereignty may be antithetical to the broader societal ambitions of the degrowth movement. Third, we need to connect with struggles that do not share our vocabulary of degrowth, but do have an articulated critique of the kind of sovereignty that has perpetuated growth thus far. This includes indigenous struggles against settler colonialism, but also the epistemic struggle against the anthropocentrism latent in existing notions of sovereignty.

In my presentation, I will explicate this question and point to some preliminary avenues for theorising what we want sovereignty and the state to be like under a degrowth society, starting from decolonial thought.

Info

Day: 2023-09-01
Start time: 12:15
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-8-1
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Feminist, decolonial, anti-racist and anti-ableist ecologies

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