ABSTRACT
Degrowth is a provocative, overarching idea that connects different social-ecological movements, research, and political projects working towards a radical transformation of growth-based societies through “a democratic and redistributive downscaling of the biophysical size of the global economy”. In addition to an extensive critique of the monetary and material dimension of economic growth, degrowth also challenges the pervasive logic of acceleration, competition, and expansion that guides neoliberal policies and informs social relations, practices, and institutions in late capitalistic societies. Degrowth represents a liberation from alienation and oppression and a path towards a truly democratic self-determination of the basic conditions for common living. Institutional-oriented approaches call for degrowth “by design” aimed at reforming basic institutions to guarantee well-being to all with a smaller “material flow” of the economy. Sufficiency-oriented approaches claim a necessary radical turn in individual and collective behavior towards voluntary simplicity.
