Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

Multiple crises of climate, biodiversity, political, economic and social structures require a new thinking about how humans and their social systems are embedded in nature. This includes a re-definition of how humans relate to nature physically, intellectually and empathically, as well as whether and to what extent humans perceive themselves as an interconnected part of nature. This re-definition of the human-nature nexus as one of inherent connection could potentially replace a view of humans and the structures they create as being a human-technological (“non-natural”) entity which would perceive itself as being separated from nature. Within this critical framework I propose innovations in economic theory, modelling, and a framework for concrete socio-economic pathways for sustainable development.

I aim to integrate strands of thought that have been long apart. Some of these are rooted in ancient traditions describing the world from the human-natural-connected viewpoint; some are most recent and rooted in the systems and complexity sciences. This includes human-nature-connecting traditions rooted in the world religions, animism, and more recent streams of thought such as Deep Ecology (Macy, 2007) or theories related to the Chthulucene (Haraway, 2016).

A guiding principle for this vision is the degrowth framework, i.e. a controlled reduction of human activities for the benefit of humans and their natural environment alike. Moreover, I intend to develop a meta-theory of systemic economic modelling, which can derive possibilities of how to analytically and quantitatively describe feasible socio-econonomic-ecological pathways to a society of abundance with a renewed and updated conception of human-nature relations.

Info

Day: 2023-08-31
Start time: 12:15
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-KC-Cres
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Alternative economies

Links:

• iCalendar
• Michael Miess' CV