Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

As key drivers of endless economic growth, innovation and technology have often (if not totally) been neglected in their relation to degrowth and wider societal change away from economic growth. However, we argue that in order to achieve alternative societies, it is vital to imagine different ways of technology, innovation and science that are not bound to the persisting growth imaginaries and values like productivity and consumption. Rather, by understanding innovation and technology as fundamental to society, we tackle the question of what innovation and technology might look like if detached from economic growth, and what their roles are for degrowth transitions, post-capitalist organizations and society overall. To explore such issues further, we draw on foundational work that has started to re-imagine innovation and technology in post-growth and organizational contexts (Pansera and Fressoli, 2020) and in other scholarships ranging from the arts to critical management, political ecology and community economies for a fruitful exchange about innovation, technology and degrowth. Through multiple presentations followed by a participatory conversation, this session hopes to build new bridges between scholarly traditions and break the static identities of innovation and technology for the reproduction of economic growth and their neglect in degrowth scholarship. Thanks to presentations on e.g., innovations and subjectivities in historical commons, novel forms of organizing transport and mobilities, innovation as activist knowledge through resistance and prefigurative politics, circular economy technologies and education for counter-hegemony, we aim to re-define and map out the catalyzing potential of innovation and technology for and by degrowth.

Info

Day: 2023-08-31
Start time: 10:00
Duration: 01:30
Room: ZV-8-7
Type: Special Session
Theme: Technology and science for degrowth

Links:

• iCalendar