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Critiques, challenges and dilemmas of degrowth

The critiques of degrowth concern the negative connotation that the term "degrowth" carries, the challenges and feasibility of a degrowth transition as well as the entanglement of desirable aspects of modernity with the growth paradigm.

Negative connotation

The use of the term “degrowth” is criticized for being detrimental to the degrowth movement because it could carry a negative connotation,[1] in opposition to the positively perceived “growth”.[2] “Growth” is associated with the “up” direction and positive experiences, while “down” generates the opposite associations.[3] Research in political psychology has shown that the initial negative association of a concept, such as of “degrowth” with the negatively perceived “down”, can bias how the subsequent information on that concept is integrated at the unconscious level.[4] At the conscious level, degrowth can be interpreted negatively as the contraction of the economy,[1][5] although this is not the goal of a degrowth transition, but rather one of its expected consequences.[6] Within the current economic system, a contraction of the economy is associated with a recession and the ensuing austerity measures, job cuts or lower salaries.[7] Noam Chomsky commented[8] on the use of the term "degrowth":

when you say “degrowth” it frightens people. It’s like saying you’re going to have to be poorer tomorrow than you are today, and it doesn’t mean that.

— Noam Chomsky

Since "degrowth" contains the term “growth”, there is also a risk of the term having a backfire effect, which would reinforce the initial positive attitude toward growth.[1] "Degrowth" is also criticized for being a confusing term, since its aim is not to halt economic growth like the name implies. Instead, agrowth is proposed as an alternative naming that emphasizes that growth ceases to be an important policy objective, but that it can still be achieved as a side-effect of environmental and social policies.[5][9]

Political and social spheres

The growth imperative is deeply entrenched in market capitalist societies such that it is necessary for their stability.[10] Moreover, the institutions of modern societies, such as the nation state, welfare, the labor market, education, academia, law and finance, have co-evolved along growth to sustain it.[11] A degrowth transition thus requires not only a change of the economic system but of all the systems on which it relies. As most people in modern societies are dependent on those growth-oriented institutions, the challenge of a degrowth transition also lies in the individual resistance to move away from growth.[12]

Agriculture

A degrowth society would require a shift from industrial agriculture to less intensive and more sustainable agricultural practices such as permaculture or organic agriculture, but it is not clear if any of those alternatives could feed the current and projected global population.[13][14] In the case of organic agriculture, Germany, for example, would not be able to feed its population under ideal organic yields over all of its arable lands.[13] Moreover, labour productivity of non-industrial agriculture is significantly lower due to the reduced use or absence of fossil fuels, which leaves much less labour for other sectors.[15]

Population

The challenges of alternative agriculture systems highlight the population question, which is another theme that lacks analysis from a degrowth perspective.[13]

Dilemmas of degrowth

Given that modernity has emerged with high levels of energy and material throughput, there is an apparent compromise between desirable aspects of modernity (e.g. social justice, gender equality, high life expectancy, very low infant mortality)[16] and unsustainable levels of energy and material use.[17] Another way of looking at this is through the lenses of the Marxist tradition, which relates the superstructure (culture, ideology, institutions) and the base (material conditions of life, division of labor). A degrowth society, by its drastically different material conditions, could produce equally drastic changes of the cultural and ideological spheres of society.[17] The political economy of global capitalism has generated a lot of bads, such as socioeconomic inequality and ecological devastation, which have engendered a lot of goods through individualization and increased spatial and social mobility.[18] This has allowed social emancipation at the level of gender equality[19], disability, sexuality and anti-racism that had no historical precedent. These two co-evolving aspects of global capitalism, liberal modernity and the market society, are closely tied and will be difficult to separate to maintain liberal and cosmopolitan values in a degrowth society.[18] Inter-personal violence, gender equality and modern healthcare are examples of such values that may be difficult to maintain under degrowth conditions.

Inter-personal violence

The reduction of inter-personal violence that we can observe within modern societies, has co-emerged with the expansion of the global market by the nation-state through a monopoly on violence.[20] It is not certain that this reduction of inter-personal violence would persist under a different political economy.[18]

Gender equality

Another example is women’s emancipation since the 1980s as conditional to the capitalist labour market which has provided them with wages while the state provided childcare.[21] Again, the presence of social progress such as women’s emancipation in modern society is not a guarantee of its presence in a less complex degrowth society with a low energy and material throughput. Traditional gender roles could reemerge in a de-globalized society dependent on local production and in which birth control technology would become limited.[18]

Healthcare

Another dilemma of degrowth that has been pointed is the trade-off between the ability of modern healthcare systems to treat individual bodies to their last breath and the broader global ecological risk of such an energy and resource intensive care. If this trade-off exists, a degrowth society would prioritize the ecological integrity and the ensuing collective health over the health of individuals.[22]

Loftslag (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  1. ^ a b c Drews, S., & Antal, M. (2016). Degrowth: A “missile word” that backfires? Ecological Economics, 126, 182–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.04.001
  2. ^ Warriner, A. B., Kuperman, V., & Brysbaert, M. (2013). Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 45(4), 1191–1207. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0314-x.
  3. ^ Meier, B. P.; Robinson, M. D. (2004-04-01). "Why the Sunny Side Is Up: Associations Between Affect and Vertical Position". Psychological Science. 15 (4): 243–247. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00659.x. ISSN 0956-7976.
  4. ^ Lodge, Milton; Taber, Charles S. (2013). The Rationalizing Voter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9781139032490. ISBN 9781139032490.
  5. ^ a b Van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. (2011). Environment versus growth - A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth.” Ecological Economics, 70(5), 881–890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.09.035
  6. ^ Kallis, Giorgos; Kostakis, Vasilis; Lange, Steffen; Muraca, Barbara; Paulson, Susan; Schmelzer, Matthias (2018-10-17). "Research On Degrowth". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 43 (1): 291–316. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025941. ISSN 1543-5938.
  7. ^ van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M. (2011). "Environment versus growth — A criticism of "degrowth" and a plea for "a-growth"". Ecological Economics. 70 (5): 881–890. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.09.035.
  8. ^ Levy, Andrea; Gonick, Cy; Lukacs, Martin (January 22, 2014). "The greening of Noam Chomsky: a conversation". Canadian Dimension. Open Publishing. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
  9. ^ van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. (2017). "A third option for climate policy within potential limits to growth". Nature Climate Change. 7 (2): 107–112. doi:10.1038/nclimate3113. ISSN 1758-678X.
  10. ^ Rosa, Hartmut; Dörre, Klaus; Lessenich, Stephan (2017). "Appropriation, Activation and Acceleration: The Escalatory Logics of Capitalist Modernity and the Crises of Dynamic Stabilization". Theory, Culture & Society. 34 (1): 53–73. doi:10.1177/0263276416657600. ISSN 0263-2764.
  11. ^ Luhmann, Niklas (1976). "The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society". Social Research. 43: 130–152.
  12. ^ Büchs, Milena; Koch, Max (2019). "Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing". Futures. 105: 155–165. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2018.09.002.
  13. ^ a b c Gomiero, T. (2018). Agriculture and degrowth: State of the art and assessment of organic and biotech-based agriculture from a degrowth perspective. Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, 1823–1839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.237
  14. ^ Ferguson, Rafter Sass; Lovell, Sarah Taylor (2014). "Permaculture for agroecology: design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review". Agronomy for Sustainable Development. 34 (2): 251–274. doi:10.1007/s13593-013-0181-6. ISSN 1774-0746.
  15. ^ Giampietro, Mario (2011-10-12). "The Metabolic Pattern of Societies". doi:10.4324/9780203635926. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. ^ Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now. ISBN 9780141979090. OCLC 1083713125.
  17. ^ a b Quilley, S. (2013). De-growth is not a liberal agenda: Relocalisation and the limits to low energy cosmopolitanism. Environmental Values, 22(2), 261–285. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113X13581561725310
  18. ^ a b c d Kish, K., & Quilley, S. (2017). Wicked Dilemmas of Scale and Complexity in the Politics of Degrowth. Ecological Economics, 142(September 2016), 306–317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.008
  19. ^ Felski, Rita. (2009). Gender of Modernity. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674036796. OCLC 1041150387.
  20. ^ Elias, Norbert, 1897-1990. (2012). On the process of civilisation : sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. University College Dublin Press. ISBN 9781906359041. OCLC 939759627.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ Bourdieu, Pierre (2014). On the state: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989-1992. John Wiley & Sons.
  22. ^ Zywert, K., & Quilley, S. (2018). Health systems in an era of biophysical limits: The wicked dilemmas of modernity. Social Theory and Health, 16(2), 188–207. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-017-0051-4
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