Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

This paper asks whether there is a deliberative democratic pathway to governing infrastructure systems in such a way as to enable a planned reduction in economic activity. We first consider the forms of democratic governance envisaged by the conventional growth model and associated large-scale, complex infrastructural systems. We consider this in light of a dominant perspective on infrastructure as facilitating and driving the type of economic activity that advocates of degrowth point out is incompatible with attempts to reduce the resources that flow in and the greenhouse gas emissions that flow out of contemporary economies. The nature of the politics that infrastructure generates challenges the emphasis on the small scale inherent within both degrowth and current conceptions of how deliberation ought to be organised. We argue that to address these challenges it is vital to view infrastructure not simply as physical objects but as a bundle of relationships and that deliberative democracy needs to take account of these relationships. Whilst conventional economic relationships may have traditionally dominated they have not gone unchallenged, particularly by the view that infrastructures ought to be managed as commons. Finally we argue that the relational perspective breaks down distinctions between different types of physical, social and environmental infrastructure and may help to avoid what are often taken to be inherent and insurmountable path dependencies.

Info

Day: 2023-08-30
Start time: 12:45
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-8-8
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Degrowth as a political project?

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