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critique of growth

The vocabulary of degrowth: A roundtable debate

Alexander Paulsson (AP): A very warm welcome to all the participants of this roundtable, where we will discuss Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era published by Routledge in 2015. Giorgos Kallis and Giacomo D’Alisa – co-editors of the book together with Federico Demaria – are here today. Stefania Barca and Ekaterina Chertkovskaya will act as discussants. We will also have plenty of time for general discussion. Giorgos, would you like to start?[*]

The post-growth economy needs a degrowth vocabulary!

Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of ‘grow or die’, is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental [and social] problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of ‘progress’ with corporate self-interest.

Whither emergence?

Issue editors: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Konstantin Stoborod and Christian Garmann Johnsen

The theme of this special issue was inspired by the location of our 2015 conference, which took place in Moscow, the capital of a country that is often referred to as ‘emerging’. What does it mean – we thought – and (how) can it be mobilized to mean something else?

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