The Covid-19 quarantine has given us time to reflect on the work we’ve done toward “creating capacity”, that is, resilience and resources for when “normal” breaks down. We’d like to share some thoughts about that work, and our focus going forward.

Author/archdruid John Michael Greer talks about “catabolic collapse“. That’s not the guns & ammo, post-apocalyptic-yet-still-powered-by-capitalism scenario favored in the media, but an ongoing process of societal disintegration. Looking at our mainstream institutions, economics or beliefs, it’s clear that we’ve been collapsing for a while. Events like pandemics punctuate the catabolic curve with sudden, eye-popping jumps set against the processes bedrocked as background, never foreground. Welcome to the apocalypse, we’ve saved you a seat.

The origins of the word “apocalypse” point to an “unveiling”, dropping illusion and finding revelation. As our global production systems and social institutions (eg. healthcare, education) are suddenly overwhelmed, their basic unsuitability is exposed. Just weeks ago so mighty, economies now sputter when faced with this latest adversity. As many have noted, this sudden spike in the process of collapse portends a larger undertaking in ecological and social entropy. And as Covid-19 takes its human toll worldwide, we’ve begun to see the best and worst that humanity can offer in its choice of loyalties, whether to human life or to economic systems, and the power struggles in finding the right balance (if such a thing exists). It’s another opportunity to consider, what is inherent in us as people, and what is the product of our systems? Growing up in systems preaching that “greed is good”, that “the only social responsibility of businesses is to increase profits”, or that “there is not alternative”, is it any wonder that the worst reactions to the crisis are marked by individualism, paranoia and accumulation?

Natural systems are rebounding because pollution and emissions are down, but it’s impossible to fist-pump about this while people are suffering, dying, or working beyond capacity to save lives. In fact, it’s a good time to question the very validity of work: which services are essential, how to use our “free time”. What solutions can the market offer to the health crisis, to overcrowded hospitals, to breaks in supply lines of essential goods and services? To those unable to meet their rent, mortgage or future expenses? Some claim our global, industrialized model is to blame for the virus, others cry that “the cure is worse than the disease“, that the economic effects of quarantining will create more destruction than the virus itself. 

We think these predictions are not endemic to economic science, but to a history of accumulatory, command and control dynamics which, via longstanding institutions including patriarchy and colonialism, have found their apex in capitalist realism: “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” Short a few weeks of predatory feeding, the growth-based model shows its weakness against the apocalypse. Another veil is lifting.

What else can we see? What will the world look like whenever “this is over” (and how will we know when it is)?

Could this be the herald of another political economy based on abundance, not scarcity and greed? We can help nature to restore itself, cut down emissions, our consumption of mass manufactured and designed-to-break-down crap. We can radically curtail speculative ventures and fictitious commodities. Slash inequality from the bottom up, spend our time away from bullshit jobs to reimagine the world. Use this free time to reconnect, cherish our aliveness, break out of containment, care for each other, grieve what we’ve lost and celebrate what we still have.

We do have the frameworks, we have been creating this capacity for quite a while. From localized, yet globally connected systems of production that can rapidly respond to urgent needs without depending on massive global chains, to ways to organize the workforce into restorative and purpose-oriented clusters of people who take care of each other. This new economy will need a new politics and a more emancipated relation to the State: we have tried it and succeeded. What new worlds (many worlds are possible) can we glimpse from under this lifted veil?

Here’s a question: did you already know about these potentials? Are we still having this conversation among ourselves, or have these terrible circumstances gifted us with an opportunity for (apocalyptic) clarity? The normal is collapsing, while our weirdness looks saner than ever before. 

Timothy Leary famously called for us to “find the others“. I think that the others are all of us, and this may be the moment where more of us can recognise that. A few years ago, we created an accessible, easy to use platform to share the potential of the Commons with everyone. Today it’s more relevant than ever. The projects we work on (Commons Transition and DisCO) are based on two simple precepts:

1. Everyone can become a commoner
2. Commoners can make more commoners

This is why we strive to create accessible and relatable frameworks for people to find the commoner within themselves. But we need to grow out of our bubbles, algorithmically predetermined or not; we need to rewild our message beyond the people who already know. Movements like Degrowth, Open Source software and hardware, anti-austerity, Social Solidarity Economy, Ecofeminism, Buen Vivir…we are all learning from each other. We must continue to humbly and patiently pass the knowledge on, listen to more voices and experiences, and keep widening the circle to include everyone, until there are no others.

Please share this article with anyone who may benefit from these “crazy ideas” that suddenly don’t look so crazy anymore. Start a conversation with people who, aghast at the rapid collapse and lack of reliable systemic support, are eager for new ideas, solutions, hope. The greatest enclosure of the commons is that of the mind: our capacity to imagine better worlds, to be kinder to each other and to the Earth. This will not be an easy or straightforward process. We need to hold each other through the loss and pain. We need to keep finding the others among all of us, until there are no more.

• Originally published in Stacco.works
• Cover art photograph by Antonio Marín Segovia
• “On Panic Buying” by the Sam Wallman and Miroslav Sandev
• “We Must Reimagine Everything” was originally published in Spanish by Miguel Brieva Clismón. It was translated to English by Guerrilla Translation

The post No New Normal appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In recent years, many researchers and social activists from very different countries, like myself, have rediscovered the notion of the commons as a key idea to deepen social and environmental justice and democratise both politics and the economy. This reappropriation has meant questioning the vanguardist and hierarchical visions, structures and practices that for too long have characterised much of the left. This concept has resurfaced in parallel with the growing distrust in the market and the state as the main suppliers or guarantors of access to essential goods and services. The combined pressures of climate change and the crisis of capitalism that exploded in 2008 (a permanent and global crisis, which is no longer a series of conjunctural or cyclical recessions) force us to reconsider old paradigms, tactics and strategies. This means discarding both the obsolete models of planning and centralised production at the core of the so-called ‘real socialism’ of the last century and the state capitalism that we see today in China and a few other supposedly socialist countries, as well as the equally old and failed structures of present-day deregulated capitalist economies.

At first, the concept of the commons was disseminated by progressive intellectuals inspired by the work of Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 2009. Ostrom, an American political scientist, was a progressive academic, but could hardly be classified as a radical thinker or as a leftist activist. In the last decade, academics and activists from very diverse ideological families of the left have reviewed her contributions and have engaged in intense theoretical debates about the potential of the commons, based on the analysis of many inspiring prefigurative experiences currently underway.

Ostrom’s main contribution was to demonstrate that many self-organised local communities around the world successfully managed a variety of natural resources without relying on market mechanisms or state institutions. Currently, it is possible to identify various perspectives in the theoretical debates around the commons, but in general they all converge on the importance of a third space between the state and the market (which should not be confused with the Third Way outlined by Anthony Giddens and adopted by politicians as dissimilar as Tony Blair in Britain, Bill Clinton in the United States, or Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil as a hypothetical social democratic alternative to socialism and neoliberalism).

Nowadays, a quick search in Google about the commons results in millions of references. Most definitions tend to characterise commons as spaces for collective management of resources that are co-produced and managed by a community according to their own rules and norms. We (TNI) have recently published a report on the commons in partnership with the P2P Foundation, in which we refer to this concept as the combination of four basic elements: (1) material or immaterial resources managed collectively and democratically; (2) social processes that foster and deepen cooperative relationships; (3) a new logic of production and a new set of productive processes; and (4) a paradigm shift, which conceives the commons as an advance beyond the classical market/state or public/private binary oppositions.

In Latin America and Spain, those of us interested in this field of activism and research must overcome a linguistic obstacle, since the translation of the concept of the commons from English into Spanish is not always easy or appropriate. This problem also appears in other parts of the world, so we often use the original English word to avoid confusion. Some of our friends and comrades use the concept of bienes comunes, but this term refers to ideas linked to the old economy or the social imaginary propagated by the church and other conservative institutions, without capturing all the richness, complexity and potential of recent theoretical developments and empirical processes around the commons. Obviously, the production of meaning in this field has already spread beyond the Anglo-Saxon world and there are already many people in countries of the South involved in this type of processes. That’s why the P2P Foundation and other friendly organisations have added a new word to the Spanish dictionary, procomún, while others (like myself) prefer to use the word comunes, which derives from a literal translation of the original term. From a similar perspective, many European or African activists prefer to use the English term instead of bens comuns (Portuguese), beni comuni (Italian), biens communs (in French), or gemeingüter (German).

Are the concepts of ‘the commons’ and ‘the public’ synonymous?

This question is the axis of heated theoretical debates, since it alludes to the old discussion about the nature and role of the state. The defenders of the commons who are most disillusioned with the left in government in several Latin American countries, particularly those linked to the fundamentalist autonomist current (like many of my friends in the Andean region, mainly those who are involved in struggles around the rights to water or energy) are convinced that the state should not assume any role and that the social order should be restructured by transferring political and economic power to self-organised local communities. Other researchers and activists (including myself, something that’s not surprising having been born in a country as state-centric as Uruguay) retort that such a contradiction is artificial and that we should at the same time expand the reach and influence of the commons – for example, by creating and interconnecting new types of authentically self-managed cooperative enterprises– and democratising or ‘commonising’ the state – for instance, incorporating workers and users into the management of existing state-owned enterprises or creating new public-public partnerships for the provision of essential public services.

My friend Michel Bauwens, a Belgian social activist internationally recognised as one of the most creative and influential thinkers in this field, often highlights the importance of what he has characterised as the partner state. From his (and mine) perspective, the state is perceived not as the enemy, but as an entity that could provide local communities and self-organised workers with the institutional, political or economic power that would be required for these processes to reach their maximum potential in the framework of the political and economic transition that we need. It also means, among several other possibilities to be considered, the provision of financial or in-kind support for cooperatives or other initiatives inspired by the notion of the commons.

The idea of the ​​partner state is in line with some relatively recent theoretical debates among Marxist thinkers. Today, and especially after a series of counter-hegemonic governments that we have had in Latin America, we’re already very aware that the contemporary state is not simply that “committee for the management of the common affairs of the bourgeoisie” that Marx and Engels referred to in the Communist Manifesto. Neither Marx nor Engels were interested in developing a unified or integral theory about the state, so we should not interpret their statement (from the year 1848!) literally,. In the 1970s, Nikos Poulantzas and other non-dogmatic thinkers began to rethink the institutional framework of capitalist societies and argued that the state should be understood as a social relationship and not as an abstract entity floating above conflicting social classes, and added that the transformation of state institutions could be possible in the context of a “democratic way to socialism” (opened by the government experience of Popular Unity in Chile and brutally repressed by a military coup in 1973). More recently, Bob Jessop has shown how, although the state has a strong structural bias towards the reproduction of social relations, it’s also influenced by the totality of social forces, including counter-hegemonic struggles. My perspective of analysis on the state and the commons is very influenced by Jessop, and also by David Harvey, when he argues that a big problem on the left is that many – pointing to John Holloway and other proponents of the thesis of “changing the world without taking power” – think that the capture of state power wouldn’t be of much importance in emancipatory processes. We must recognise the incredible power accumulated in the institutions of the state and, therefore, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of state institutions; in particular when there’re opportunities to enable the expansion of the commons.

To those who are interested in deepening the knowledge of contemporary theoretical debates on the state and the commons, I would recommend reading our comrade Hilary Wainwright, the British political economist with whom I co-coordinate the TNI New Politics Project. A few years ago Hilary wrote a beautiful book, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, where she argued the need to ‘occupy’ state institutions while, in parallel, we organise ourselves to create and connect new political and economic institutions rooted in local communities and workers’ collectives. Her books, the one mentioned here and more recent ones, are based on the detailed investigation of positive examples of commons-related initiatives across the Globe.

In recent years, within the framework of our New Politics project, Hilary, myself, and many other activist-scholars from different regions of the world have tried to make sense of a substantial shift in emancipatory thinking. Until not long ago, the economic policy of much of the left included the proposal of nationalisation of key industries. Nowadays, and maybe influenced by the recognition of the failures or shortcomings of nationalisation in places like Venezuela (where in recent years there’s been a recentralisation of political and economic power in the hands of the bureaucrats and military that control the reins of the state, with very negative in terms of lesser autonomy and influence for popular organisations and with very bad indicators in the management of nationalised companies) many of us are more interested in the design of a new economy based on cooperative relations, in which state institutions would play a facilitating and protective role. We emphasise the importance of public ownership of public services and productive infrastructure, but only as long we ensure a significant level of decentralised ownership and management; for example, in the provision of water and energy services and in the production of a vast range of goods through networks of self-managed ventures.

This perspective also means a deeper and more serene examination of the ambivalent consequences of the scientific and technological changes currently underway. We already know that the emerging forms of organisation and control of information and communication technologies and distributed production constitute a very contested space, in which a few transnational corporations (I’m thinking of Uber, Airbnb and other examples of the wrongly called ‘sharing economy’) financialise and benefit from precarious workers, the users of social networks and independent software programmers – with negative impacts on unions’ power and on the quality of work – but we should also be able to recognise that the same technological developments could be beneficial for the (re)creation of truly solidarity, democratic and self-managed forms of ownership and management. Around the world, we can see the emergence of a new generation of workers who use their technological knowledge to launch new enterprises and networks based on the principles of the commons and coordinate and collaborate among themselves, transcending economic sectors and geographical borders, and being ethically (and increasingly also politically) aware of the new social and economic order they’re creating.

How would you appraise the so-called ‘pink tide’ in Latin America vis-à-vis the commons?

My personal perspective on these issues has evolved, as I tried to understand the arguments of comrades from other Latin American countries who posed a very strong critique of the statist political culture prevalent in some political and academic circles of the region. Like many Uruguayans, it was hard for me to assimilate the positions of compañeros like Pablo Solón in Bolivia, Edgardo Lander in Venezuela, Arturo Escobar in Colombia, Maristella Stampa in Argentina, or Eduardo Gudynas himself in Uruguay. They (and many others) are strong critics of ‘development’, and in particular of its ‘(neo)extractivist’ component. In short, my critique to them focused on two aspects: their staunch criticism of the state, and their inability to formulate alternatives or proposals to transcend the reality that they criticised. With the passage of time, and after many and agitated discussions with Pablo and Edgardo in workshops at the World Social Forum, seminars of our New Politics project and other similar spaces, I could understand that their criticisms of the state (not always so homogeneous nor so acidic as I perceived them) were not that far from my own criticism of the Latin American left, and I also ended up realising that indeed there were proposals embedded in their criticisms.

My position on these issues has also been influenced by my increasingly pessimistic interpretation of the outcomes of our progressive of left governments. After having followed very closely the processes of Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and to a lesser extent also those of Bolivia and Nicaragua, I think we should ask ourselves up to what point is it possible for the left to get involved in government without losing autonomy and our utopian perspective. In other word: is it possible to operate within the state apparatus without being caught in the demobilising logic of institutional power? Unlike some of the friends I mentioned before, I don’t have a single or categorical answer to such question. I still believe that the state has a very important role to play, but I’m also convinced that it is now imperative for the left to get rid of its obsolete state-centric vision and open up to fresh perspectives like those of the commons.

For the Uruguayan left, such transition could be difficult, if we consider the heavy weight of the state in our society, politics, economics and culture. A significant difference between Uruguay and most other countries in the region is its long tradition of strong and efficient state-owned companies, which are highly appreciated by the population. In Uruguay, people perceive the state as a catalyst for development and guarantor of equity and social integration. On the other hand, the transition could be made easier if we consider the already high significance of workers’ and housing cooperatives. I grew up in a mutual-aid housing cooperative, so I might not be entirely objective. And we know that not all cooperatives are well managed or are internally democratic or participatory, but when we compare the reality of the Uruguayan cooperative sector with other countries of the region and the world, it’s clear that we already have a very fertile terrain for the development of the commons.

From a purely theoretical or ideological point of view, many components of the current global debate around the commons wouldn’t be a novelty for the Uruguayan left. If we look at several parties that compose the ruling coalition Frente Amplio(Broad Front), we realise that parties as different as the Progressive Christian Democrats (PDC, the advocates of the thesis of socialismo autogestionario, self-managed socialism), the People’s Victory Party (PVP, in line with their libertarian roots), or the Socialist Party (PS, with their proposal of transition from co-management to self-management, which the party has been advocating since 1930, when it demanded workers’ control of the economy) have been for a long time formulating programmatic ideas that transcend the limits of statism.

In other countries of the region, it would seem that the proposal of the commons would be more compatible with the governmental discourse. In fact, the proponents of the commons in Europe often refer to the concepts of vivir bien (living well) or buen vivir (good living), which came from Latin America. These concepts became popular on a world scale as a supposed alternative paradigm to capitalism. The concepts of suma qamaña and sumaq kawsay have their roots in the economic and societal models developed over centuries by the indigenous peoples of the Andean and Amazonian regions, prioritising forms of production more horizontal and in harmony with nature. The translation (or ‘export’) into other languages and cultures is problematic, but in the countries of origin the significance of these concepts can be debated as well. Bolivia and Ecuador, during the governments led by Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, incorporated the notions of living well and good living in their respective constitutions and policy guidelines, but the policies implemented have not always been coherent with the spirit or with the letter of the new legal and institutional framework. In Ecuador, in the framework of the very radical turn to the right performed by president Lenin Moreno in recent months, the discourse of buen vivir (which sounds beautiful and guarantees a left patina) is being used to provide justification for an impending wave of privatisation and corporatization of public services. In Venezuela, there was also much talk around self-management and people’s power, and considerable resources were allocated to the creation of cooperatives and associative ventures of a new type, but in practice very little progress was achieved; the rentier model based on the exploitation of a single resource – oil – deepened during the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and its current exhaustion is the most important factor to explain the political, economic and social crisis that the country suffers today.

What are the organisational and programmatic challenges of the left for the integration of the idea of the commons into its political platform?

To answer this question, I should start by clarifying that I do not believe that the promotion of the commons should be the only strategy of the left. I believe that we must embrace the emancipatory vision of the commons, but without forgetting the role of the state and the need to respond to the very urgent problems of large sectors of the population. I agree with the criticisms of the hegemonic model of development and support the struggles against extractivism. I also tend to agree with many elements (not the whole package) of the emerging theorisation around the concept of degrowth – which is already very influential among European left circles, but not very significant within the Latin American left. But I disagree with visions such as Escobar’s when he speaks of “underdevelopment” as a mere “narration”, presenting it as an abstract concept that the colonialists would have elaborated and spread for the colonized to repeat. We can’t ignore the terrible rates of poverty, exclusion, and poor access to basic goods and services that still affect millions of Latin Americans. Our region should be incorporated into the global fight against climate change, and we must promote new forms of organisation and production that preserve the ecological balance, but we must also respond to social demands in the context of a quite likely deterioration of the economic situation in the short or medium terms. In that sense, I believe that the impulse to the commons must be framed within a broader strategy of growth, different from that offered by predatory and savage capitalism.

Thinking about the specific conditions of Uruguay, and based on data and projections published by local researchers, it should already be evident that the promotion of mega-projects like the huge paper mills run by Finnish corporations, or the already privatisation of the wind segment of the energy sector, don’t constitute the most appropriate developmental strategy. I would have preferred that the effort made by the government to convince us that the attraction of direct foreign investment and the liberalisation of trade are the right path would have been accompanied by serious studies sustained by reliable information to appraise the pros and cons of two different strategies: supporting large private investment on the one hand, and the promotion of the local and popular solidarity economy on the other. What would be the impacts of redirecting the tax exemptions and the large explicit or covert subsidies received by large transnational corporations if all that money were used to support cooperatives and other associative enterprises rooted in the national economy? I don’t have concrete answers to these queries, but I know that other Uruguayan economists and social researchers also raise similar questions and could provide objective and relevant information to deepen this exchange.

How to incorporate the commons within a political project that aims at the de-commodification of public services?

In Latin America we have many valuable examples of de-commodification of public services, past and present, that we should reconsider in the framework of current exchanges around the commons. A few years ago, during the heyday of what we then praised as the Bolivarian ‘revolution’, I worked in Venezuela and I was able to appreciate very closely the emergence of multiple processes of popular self-organisation in which millions of people participated. I’m referring to the mesas técnicas (people’s technical committees), the consejos comunitarios de agua(community water councils), the consejos comunales (communal councils) and the comunas (communes). Unfortunately, most of these processes are no longer in existence or in terminal crisis. Individualism and competition has been stronger than solidarity and cooperation in the responses to the crisis that Venezuela is experiencing today. This is a sad realisation, which forces us to question ourselves about the reasons and the conditions that made possible the erosion of processes that many of us considered very strong and even irreversible. A large part of the communal and participatory initiatives that had emerged in the most fecund years of the Venezuelan transition have gone into rapid regression when faced with the loss of the resources provided by the state (of which they had become dependent), in the context of the terrible deterioration of the social and economic situation. I think that many lessons can emerge from Venezuela, both on the potential of the commons and on the fragility of processes of this type. It also forces us to rethink the limits of ‘revolutionary’ political projects that are excessively focused on the state.

At the international level, and taking as a basis for analysis the European reality – which is the one that today I know better, since it’s my place of residence, activism and research – I believe that Latin Americans could ‘import’ some interesting ideas from current European exchanges on alternatives to commodification and corporatization. The side of the European left most active side in the promotion of the commons is that linked to struggles around the right to the city and the citizen platforms that won local office in several Spanish cities. Today, an important part of the European left perceives the city as the privileged space for political, social and economic experimentation, without seeing cities as isolated entities or at the margin of processes aimed at changing the state on a national scale, but recognising their growing significance in the new regional and world order. It’s not by chance that the fight against climate change or for the recovery of public services are led by networks of progressive local governments. Barcelona En Comú, the citizen coalition that now governs the Catalan capital, in particular, is a very powerful source of inspiration of regional and world importance. The political influence of Barcelona today is comparable to the hope that Porto Alegre, Montevideo and other Latin American capitals had been generated in the 1980s and 1990s, when the left began to experiment with participatory budgeting and other innovative policies for the radicalisation of democracy at the municipal level. Barcelona is today a laboratory for the design and testing of multiple initiatives inspired by the principle of the commons.

Another possible source of inspiration could be the current program of the British Labour Party. Since Jeremy Corbyn became party leader, Labour has become much more radical than our Frente Amplio and most other left parties in Latin America and Europe. The Labour Party has a proposal for renationalisation that’s much more advanced than similar initiatives applied or proposed anywhere else in the world. In the specific case of the energy sector, Corbyn and his party propose to bring back the sector into public hands, so that the country’ energy becomes environmentally sustainable, affordable for users, and managed with democratic control, as stated in the programmatic manifesto launched last year. But renationalisation, from this perspective, does not simply implies that the state retakes control by going back to the obsolete state-owned companies of the past, but rather the combination of different forms of public ownership and management. In short, Labour proposes not merely to re-nationalise companies that had been privatised during Thatcherism and Blairism, but to reconvert the big banks and other financial institutions that during the crisis had been saved from bankruptcy with public monies into a network of local banks based on mixed ownership (state and social), or the creation of new municipal utilities. The party is committed to create new municipal utilities, inspired by some socially-owned companies already in operation – such as Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham – or by popular campaigns – such as Switched On London – that propose the de-privatisation of power through the launch of new public enterprises, rooted in a more democratic type of management based on the active participation of users and workers, being environmentally sustainable, and securing services with affordable rates for the entire population.

Originally posted at the Transnational Institute Website

Lead image by Roger Cunyan. Additional image by Isabella Jusková.

The post The commons, the state and the public: A Latin American perspective appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Unfortunately, current mitigation scenarios follow a path of economic growth because underlying socioeconomic assumptions assume further economic growth, and the modelling is done with models in which measures that would lead to less production and consumption either cannot be included or are not used due to a limited welfare concept.

This dismisses the possibility of a fundamental shift towards a society that is not based on economic growth. Policy measures beyond the logic of growth are not included in the debate on climate policy and society as a whole. – Instead, the scenarios suggest that a temporary «overshooting» of the global warming target of 1.5°C must be accepted, and that this can remedied later with risky geoengineering technologies to remove emissions from the atmosphere. 

This short study shows that neither the use of CDR technologies is as indispensable as shown in the scenarios, nor is an overshoot unavoidable. The IPCC conclusions result from models and modelling processes that present only some of the possible developments. In contrast, the focus of this study is on economic growth and climate policy measures that envisage less production and consumption.

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Author Kai Kuhnhenn has been working for five years at Neue Ökonomie e.V. Previously, he worked for more than eight years at the Federal Environment Agency on policy scenarios, a sufficiency project and the IPCC reports.

Photo by lewishamdreamer

The post Economic Growth in mitigation scenarios: A blind spot in climate science appeared first on P2P Foundation.

For the past seven decades, GDP growth has stood as the primary economic objective of European nations. But as our economies have grown, so has our negative impact on the environment. We are now exceeding the safe operating space for humanity on this planet, and there is no sign that economic activity is being decoupled from resource use or pollution at anything like the scale required. Today, solving social problems within European nations does not require more growth. It requires a fairer distribution of the income and wealth that we already have.

Growth is also becoming harder to achieve due to declining productivity gains, market saturation, and ecological degradation. If current trends continue, there may be no growth at all in Europe within a decade. Right now the response is to try to fuel growth by issuing more debt, shredding environmental regulations, extending working hours, and cutting social protections. This aggressive pursuit of growth at all costs divides society, creates economic instability, and undermines democracy.

Those in power have not been willing to engage with these issues, at least not until now. The European commission’s Beyond GDP project became GDP and Beyond. The official mantra remains growth — redressed as “sustainable”, “green”, or “inclusive” – but first and foremost, growth. Even the new UN sustainable development goals include the pursuit of economic growth as a policy goal for all countries, despite the fundamental contradiction between growth and sustainability.

The good news is that within civil society and academia, a post-growth movement has been emerging. It goes by different names in different places: décroissance, Postwachstum, steady-state or doughnut economics, prosperity without growth, to name a few. Since 2008, regular degrowth conferences have gathered thousands of participants. A new global initiative, the Wellbeing Economies Alliance (or WE-All), is making connections between these movements, while a European research network has been developing new “ecological macroeconomic models”. Such work suggests that it’s possible to improve quality of life, restore the living world, reduce inequality, and provide meaningful jobs – all without the need for economic growth, provided we enact policies to overcome our current growth dependence.

Some of the changes that have been proposed include limits on resource use, progressive taxation to stem the tide of rising inequality, and a gradual reduction in working time. Resource use could be curbed by introducing a carbon tax, and the revenue could be returned as a dividend for everyone or used to finance social programmes. Introducing both a basic and a maximum income would reduce inequality further, while helping to redistribute care work and reducing the power imbalances that undermine democracy. New technologies could be used to reduce working time and improve quality of life, instead of being used to lay off masses of workers and increase the profits of the privileged few.

Given the risks at stake, it would be irresponsible for politicians and policymakers not to explore possibilities for a post-growth future. The conference happening in Brussels is a promising start, but much stronger commitments are needed. As a group of concerned social and natural scientists representing all Europe, we call on the European Union, its institutions, and member states to:

1. Constitute a special commission on post-growth futures in the EU parliament. This commission should actively debate the future of growth, devise policy alternatives for post-growth futures, and reconsider the pursuit of growth as an overarching policy goal.

2. Incorporate alternative indicators into the macroeconomic framework of the EU and its member states. Economic policies should be evaluated in terms of their impact on human wellbeing, resource use, inequality, and the provision of decent work. These indicators should be given higher priority than GDP in decision-making.

3. Turn the stability and growth pact (SGP) into a stability and wellbeing pact. The SGP is a set of rules aimed at limiting government deficits and national debt. It should be revised to ensure member states meet the basic needs of their citizens, while reducing resource use and waste emissions to a sustainable level.

4. Establish a ministry for economic transition in each member state. A new economy that focuses directly on human and ecological wellbeing could offer a much better future than one that is structurally dependent on economic growth.

• Dr Dan O’Neill, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Federico Demaria, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Giorgos Kallis, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Kate Raworth, Author of ‘Doughnut Economics’, UK
• Dr Tim Jackson, Professor, University of Surrey, UK
• Dr Jason Hickel, Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
• Dr Lorenzo Fioramonti, Professor, University of Pretoria, South Africa
• Dr Marta Conde, President of Research & Degrowth, Spain
• Dr Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK
• Dr Steve Keen, Professor, Kingston University, UK
• Dr Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, USA
• Dr Ann Pettifor, Director, Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), UK
• Dr Serge Latouche, Université Paris Sud, France
• Dr Kate Pickett, Professor, University of York, UK
• Dr Susan George, President of the Transnational Institute-TNI, Netherlands
• Dr Joan Martinez Alier, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia
• Dr David Graeber, Professor, London School of Economics, UK
• Dr Juan Carlos Monedero Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
• Dr Dominique Méda, Professor, University Paris Dauphine, France
• Dr Lourdes Beneria, Professor Emerita, Cornell University, USA
• Dr Inge Røpke, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Dr Niko Paech, Professor, University of Siegen, Germany
• Dr Jean Gadrey, Professor, University of Lille, France
• Dr Nadia Johanisova, Lecturer, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
• Dr Wolfgang Sachs, Research Director Emeritus, Wuppertal Institut, Germany
• Dr Stefania Barca, Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Gilbert Rist, Emeritus Professor, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
• Dr György Pataki, Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Simone D’Alessandro, Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
• Dr Ian Gough, Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, UK
• Dr Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Researcher, University of Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Amaia Pérez Orozco, Researcher, Colectiva XXK, Spain
• Dr Max Koch, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Fabrice Flipo, Professor, Institut Mines Télécom-BS et LCSP Paris 7 Diderot, France
• Dr Matthias Schmelzer, Researcher, University of Jena and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
• Dr Óscar Carpintero, Associate Professor, University of Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Hubert Buch-Hansen, Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
• Dr Christos Zografos, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
• Dr Tereza Stöckelová, Associate Professor, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
• Dr Alf Hornborg, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Eric Clark, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Miklós Antal, Researcher, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Jordi Roca Jusmet, Professor, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Philippe Defeyt, Chairman, Institute for Sustainable Development, Belgium
• Dr Erik Swyngedouw, Professor, University of Manchester, UK
• Dr Christian Kerschner, Assistant Professor, Modul University Vienna, Austria
• Dr Agata Hummel, Assistant Professor, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
• Dr Frank Moulaert, Emeritus Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
• Dr Frank Adler, Researcher, Brandenburg-Berlin Institute for Social Scientific Research, Germany
• Dr Janne I. Hukkinen, Professor, University of Helsinki, Finland
• Dr Jorge Riechmann, Professor, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
• Samuel Martín-Sosa Rodríguez, Responsable de Internacional, Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
• Dr John Barry, Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Dr Linda Nierling, Senior Scientist, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
• Dr Ines Omann, Senior Researcher, Austrian Foundation for Development Research, Austria
• Dr Hug March, Associate Professor, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
• Dr Jakub Kronenberg, Associate Professor, University of Lodz, Poland
• Yayo Herrero, Miembro del Foro de Transiciones, Spain
• Dr Isabelle Anguelovski, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr François Schneider, Researcher, Research & Degrowth, France
• Dr Vasilis Kostakis, Senior Researcher, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
• Dr Enric Tello, Professor, University of Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Andrew Sayer, Professor, Lancaster University, UK
• Dr Kate Soper, Emerita Professor, London Metropolitan University, UK
• Dr Klaus Hubacek, Professor, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
• Dr Brent Bleys, Assistant Professor, Ghent University, Belgium
• Dr Jill Jäger, Independent Scholar, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Mauro Gallegati, Professor, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
• Dr Peadar Kirby, Professor Emeritus, University of Limerick, Ireland
• Dr Inés Marco, Researcher, University of Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Ivan Murray Mas, Assistant Lecturer, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
• Dr Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Assistant Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Dr Aurore Lalucq, Co-Director, Veblen Institute, France
• Dr Gaël Plumecocq, Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), France
• Dr David Soto Fernández, Associate Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Christian Kimmich, Researcher, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic
• Dr Giacomo D’Alisa, Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Seth Schindler, Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK
• Dr Philippe Roman, Researcher, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
• Dr Lorenzo Pellegrini, Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Dr Erik Gómez-Baggethun, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Tommaso Luzzati, Assistant Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
• Dr Christoph Gran, ZOE Institute for Future Fit Economies, Germany
• Dr Tor A. Benjaminsen, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Barry McMullin, Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland
• Dr Edwin Zaccai, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Jens Friis Lund, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Dr Pierre Ozer, Researcher, Université de Liège, Belgium
• Dr Louison Cahen-Fourot, Researcher, Institute for Ecological Economics, Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna, Austria
• Dr Tommaso Rondinella, Researcher, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy
• Dr Julia Steinberger, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Andrew Fanning, Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK
• Jose Luis Fdez Casadevante Kois, Miembro del Foro Transiciones, Spain
• Dr Seema Arora-Jonsson, Professor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• Dr Astrid Agenjo Calderón, Lecturer, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Tom Bauler, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Gregers Andersen, Independent Researcher, Denmark
• Dr Peter Söderbaum, Professor Emeritus, Mälardalen University, Sweden
• Dr Lourenzo Fernandez Priero, Professor, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• Dr John R Porter, Emeritus Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Dr François Thoreau, Senior Researcher, University of Liege, France
• Mariagiulia Costanzo Talarico, Researcher, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Maria Nikolaidi, Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich, UK
• Dr Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, Assistant Professor, University of Roskilde, Denmark
• Dimitar Sabev, Researcher, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
• Dr Mladen Domazet, Research Director, Institute for Political Ecology, Croatia
• Dr Hans Diefenbacher, Professor, University of Heidelberg, Germany
• Dr Marco Armiero, Director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Dr Irene Ring, Professor, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
• Dr Christine Bauhardt, Professor, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
• Dr Dominique Bourg, Professor, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• Dr Tomas Ryska, Lecturer, University of Economics, Czech Republic
• Dr Filka Sekulova, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Andrej Lukšič, Associate Professor, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Dr Adrian Smith, Professor, University of Sussex, UK
  Dr Serenella Iovino, Professor, Università di Torino, Italy
• Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Roberto De Vogli, Associate Professor, University of Padova, Italy
• Dr Danijela Dolenec, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Alexandra Köves, Senior Lecturer, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Antoine Bailleux, Professor, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Christof Mauch, Director, Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Germany
• Ajda Pistotnik, Independent Researcher, EnaBanda, Slovenia
• Dr Branko Ančić, Researcher, Institute for Social Research for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Marija Brajdic Vukovic, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Manuel González de Molina, Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Kye Askins, Reader, University of Glasgow, UK
• Dr Carlos de Castro Carranza, Profesor Titular de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Annika Pissin, Researcher, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Eva Fraňková, Assistant Professor, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
• Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Lidija Živčič, Senior Expert, Focus, Association for Sustainable Development, Slovenia
• Dr Martin Pogačar, Research Fellow, ZRC SAZU, Slovenia
• Dr Peter Nielsen, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
• Yaryna Khmara, Researcher, University of Lodz, Poland
• Dr Ika Darnhofer, Associate Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Isabelle Cassiers, Professor, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Mihnea Tanasescu, Researcher, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
• Dr Daniel Hausknost, Assistant Professor, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
• Dr Christoph Görg, Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria
• Dr Andreas Novy, Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
• Dr Fikret Adaman, Professor, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
• Dr Bengi Akbulut, Assistant Professor, Concordia University, Canada
• Dr Kevin Maréchal, Professor, Université de Liège, Belgium
• Dr Anke Schaffartzik, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Milena Buchs, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Jean-Louis Aillon, Researcher, University of Genova, Italy
• Dr Melanie Pichler, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Helmut Haberl, Associate Professor, Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Julien-François Gerber, Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands
• Dr John Holten-Andersen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Theresa Klostermeyer, Officer for Sustainability and Social Change, German League for Nature, Animal and Environmental Protection, Germany
• Dr Lyla Mehta, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, UK
• Dr Geneviève Azam, Professor, Université Jean Jaurès, France
• Dr Hermann E. Ott, Professor, University of Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany
• Dr Angelika Zahrnt, Professor, Institute for Ecological Economic Research, Germany
• Dr Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK
• Dr Irmi Seidl, Assistant Professor, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Switzerland
• Dr Shilpi Srivastava, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK
• Dr Elgars Felcis, Researcher, University of Latvia, Chairman of Latvian Permaculture Association, Latvia
• Dr Tilman Santarius, Professor, Technische Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Futures, Germany
• Nina Treu, Coordinator of Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
• Dr Laura Horn, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
• Jennifer Hinton, Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Friedrich Hinterberger, President, Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Austria
• Dr Miriam Lang, Assistant Professor, Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Ecuador
• Dr Susse Georg, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Dr Silvio Cristiano, Researcher, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’ & Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
• Dr Petr Jehlička, Senior Lecturer, Open University, UK
• Dr Maja Göpel, Professor, Leuphana University, Member Club of Rome, Germany
• Dr Geraldine Thiry, Associate Professor, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
• Dr Olivier Malay, Researcher, University of Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Richard Lane, Researcher, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands
• Dr Laura Centemeri, Researcher, National Centre for Scientific Research, France
• Dr Stephan Lessenich, Professor, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany
• Timothée Parrique, Researcher, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Ludivine Damay, Lecturer, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Janis Brizga, Researcher, University of Latvia, Latvia
• Dr Claudio Cattaneo, Associate Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Miquel Ortega Cerdà, Advisor, Barcelona City Council
• Dr Olivier De Schutter, Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Annalisa Colombino, Assistant Professor, Institute of Geography and Regional Sciences, University of Graz, Austria
• Dr Philip von Brockdorff, Head of the Department of Economics, University of Malta, Malta
• Dr Sarah Cornell, Senior Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Ruth Kinna, Professor, Loughborough University, UK
• Francesco Gonella, Professor, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
• Orsolya Lazanyi, Researcher, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Eva Friman, Director at Swedesd, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Dr Pernilla Hagbert, Researcher, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Vincent Liegey, Co-Author of ‘A Degrowth Project’, Hungary
• Dr Manlio Iofrida, Associate Professor, University of Bologna, Italy
• Dr Mauro Bonaiuti, Lecturer, University of Turin, Italy
• Dr Marco Deriu, Researcher, University of Parma, Italy
• Dr Eeva Houtbeckers, Postdoctoral Researcher, Aalto University, Finland
• Dr Guy Julier, Professor, Aalto University, Finland
• Dr Anna Kaijser, Lecturer, Linköping University, Sweden
• Dr Petter Næss, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Irina Velicu, Researcher, Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Ulrich Brand, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
• Dr Christina Plank, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Karolina Isaksson, Senior Research Leader, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden
• Dr Jin Xue, Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Rasmus Steffansen, Researcher, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Irmak Ertör, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Maria Hadjimichael, Researcher, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• Dr Carlo Aall, Researcher, Western Norway Research Institute, Norway
• Dr Claudiu Craciun, Lecturer, National School of Political Studies and Administration (SNSPA), Romania
• Dr Tuuli Hirvilammi, Researcher, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
• Dr Tuula Helne, Senior Researcher, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Finland
• Davide Biolghini, Researcher, Rete italiana Economia Solidale (RES), Italy
• Dr Pasi Heikkurinen, Lecturer, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Anne Tittor, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
• Dr Dennis Eversberg, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
• Dr Herman Stål, Lecturer, Umea School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Sweden
• Dr Hervé Corvellec, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Anna Heikkinen, Researcher, University of Tampere, Finland
• Dr Karl Bonnedahl, Researcher, Umea University, Sweden
• Dr Meri Koivusalo, Professor, University of Tampere, Finland
• Dr Martin Fritz, Researcher, Bielefeld University, Germany
• Dr Daniel Bergquist, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• Dr Yuri Kazepov, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
• Dr Salvador Pueyo, Researcher, Universitat de Barcelona, Catalonia
• Dr Lars Rydén, Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Patrick ten Brink, Director of EU Policy, European Environmental Bureau, Belgium
• Dr Ebba Lisberg Jensen, Associate Professor, Malmö University, Sweden
• Dr Alevgul H. Sorman, Researcher, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Spain
• Dr Aram Ziai, Professor, University of Kassel, Germany
• Dr Panos Petridis, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria
• Dr Gary Dymski, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Markus Wissen, Professor, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
• Dr Wendy Harcourt, Professor, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands
• Dr John Barrett, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Silke van Dyk, Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
• Dr Vasna Ramasar, Senior Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
• Danijela Tamše, Managing Editor of the Journal for the Critique of Science, Imagination, and New Anthropology, Slovenia
• Dr Camil Ungureanu, Associate Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
• Dr Mirela Holy, Lecturer, VERN’ University of Zagreb, Croatia

Cross-posted from The Guardian
Photo by wackybadger

The post The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Find the full article here.

Highlights

• Smart City is a technology-led urban response to global environmental challenges.
• Smart City may imply technological determinism, privatisation and depoliticisation.
• ICT may open the prospect of alternative, non-capitalist urban transformations.
• Degrowth should establish a critical dialogue with ICT-led urban transformations.

Abstract

“The 21st century has been hailed as the urban century and one in which ICT-led transformations will shape urban responses to global environmental change. The Smart City encapsulates all the desires and prospects on the transformative and disruptive role technology will have in solving urban issues both in Global North and Global South cities. Critical scholarship has pointed out that private capital, with the blessing of technocratic elites, has found a techno-environmental fix to both reshuffle economic growth and prevent other alternative politico-ecological transitions to take root in urban systems. Against this bleak outlook, the paper argues that these technological assemblages might be compatible with alternative post-capitalist urban transformations aligned with Degrowth. Through a cross-reading of research on Smart Cities with theoretical perspectives drawn from the literature on Degrowth, I suggest that Degrowth should not refrain from engaging with urban technological imaginaries in a critical and selective way. As the paper shows through alternative uses of Smart technologies and digital open-source fabrication, the question is not so much around technology per se but around the wider politico-economic context into which these technological assemblages are embedded.”

Introduction

“The 21st century will be marked by the critical role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in shaping urban responses to global environmental change. Cities will be both the locus of global environmental problems but also the places where many solutions to these challenges may emerge. The Smart City paradigm has become one of the most important urban strategies to foster green growth and to improve urban sustainability against the backdrop of climate change, austerity politics, inter-urban competition, aging population, rampant social inequality, rapid urbanization, aging infrastructures, high unemployment and stagnant economic growth (Glasmeier and Christopherson, 2015, Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015, White, 2016). The Smart City articulates a “fantasy city” and utopian vision based on the emancipatory role of technological progress that aims to be the “common sense” of how 21st century cities should look (Gibbs et al., 2013, Hollands, 2008, March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2014). In that sense, it “consists of a general but flexible narrative and a common set of logics” for anticipating uncertain global future crisis (White, 2016:574). Cities across the world have embarked on a “quest for technologically enhanced urban management” (Taylor Buck and While, 2015:3) to enable “a more efficient use and organization of urban systems” (Wiig, 2016:538). The global urban scene observes an inter-local competition to attract Smart City investments (Shelton et al., 2015), either to retrofit the existing built environment or to develop neighbourhoods or even to build new cities from scratch.

Since the past few years, the Smart City techno-utopian imaginary is strongly influencing urban debates and shaping contemporary urbanism. Concepts such as ICT, Big Data, sensors, Smart grids, Smart meters, Internet of Things, 3D printers, digital open-source fabrication, circulate not only among large private corporations, start-ups, urban planners, architects and policy makers but are also progressively making headway into the imaginaries of civic organisations, grassroots and social movements.

From a critical viewpoint, one may say that hegemonic corporate notions of the Smart City and cognate concepts built upon entrenched promises of capitalist technological solutionism, ecological modernization and depoliticized environmental improvement, leave small room for post-capitalist alternatives such as Degrowth. However, behind these urban techno-imaginaries and its fetishism of Smart City technologies, there may lay a set of spaces of intersection with non- or post-capitalist projects, which may open up new opportunities for alternative and emancipatory socio-environmental transitions. If cities are said to be both the locus of environmental problems but also the place where solutions may develop, and if techno-modernizing narratives such as the Smart City dominate this debate, how does Degrowth need to position itself in front of these technologically-led urban futures?

This paper aims to open up a critical reflection and dialogue on whether and how ICT and paradigms such as the Smart City may be compatible with an urban Degrowth transition. Through a cross-reading of research on Smart Cities and digital open-source fabrication with theoretical perspectives drawn from the literature on Degrowth, the contribution of this paper is double. First, it argues that Degrowth has paid insufficient attention to the question of technology on the one hand, and to the urban question, on the other hand. Second, it suggests that despite all the problems of urban techno-modernizing imaginaries such as the Smart City (which are identified) there are latent technological possibilities that could inform a Degrowth transition. Beyond presenting a comprehensive review of critical social sciences scholarship on the perils of the Smart City, this article reviews how Smart City technology could be appropriated by grassroots for a progressive urban politics. The example of digital open-source fabrication demonstrates that these technological assemblages could not only be seized to produce data, make visible hidden urban problems and organize contestation, but also to impact upon the way we design, produce and consume at the urban scale. Degrowth should not be a passive observer of this process but may help to inform a process of critical scrutiny, reworking and appropriation of those technologies to enable alternative urban transitions not dictated by the pursuit of economic growth but of socio-environmental justice. In short, this paper argues that a progressive, bottom-up and emancipatory appropriation (or subversion) of ICT and Smart City technologies is possible. However, the paper also shows that this engagement should not solely focus on the technological artefact alone but also on the broader urban political economic context it is inserted in.

After this introduction, the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 I briefly review the main tenets of Degrowth, and I underscore the lack of engagement of Degrowth with the technological and the urban questions. Section 3 documents the emergence of the Smart City concept and shows how it is orchestrating urban transformations in the 21st century. After that, in Section 4 I carry out a comprehensive review of perils associated with current hegemonic understandings of technology-led urban transformations for a transformative and emancipatory socio-environmental Degrowth transition. In Section 5 I discuss how, within this heterogeneous, nebulous and ambiguous techno-utopian urban imaginary, we can find space for subversive, bottom-up strategies that could potentially be aligned with Degrowth. I end up with a concluding section where I argue for a selective and reflexive use of Smart City technology and ICT by Degrowth.”

Find the full article here.

Photo by TERRY KEARNEY

The post The Smart City and other ICT-led techno-imaginaries: Any room for dialogue with Degrowth? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Photo by Christopher Lane Photography

The post Is it time for a post-growth economy? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Martin Kirk: When Donald Trump says “Make America Great Again,” he’s alluding, at least in part, to the promise of economic growth. Just as when Bill Clinton said, “it’s the economy, stupid,” he was really saying that “it’s about economic growth, stupid.” This is the Golden Promise of politics: more economic growth. Golden, because it is effortlessly translated in voters’ minds to mean more jobs, more money in the economy, and therefore more income in everyone’s pockets. Because economic growth is, obviously, a thing greatly to be desired.

Equally obvious is the knowledge that no economic growth is a bad thing. When economies and companies don’t grow, they stagnate and falter. Which means fewer jobs, lower wages, less money to invest, more business shut downs, and bankruptcies. In short, more misery for all.

It’s all so obvious, right? It’s one of the precious few things we can all agree on in this fractious age.

But there are some new strains of thought that take a more nuanced and sophisticated view of growth. That say, yes, all other things being equal, economic growth is a positive thing. But all other things are not equal. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and, for all its positives, economic growth has a dark side; its ecological impact. The impacts of our ever-growing economy have become so stark and so widespread that they are by any sane measure portents to catastrophe. Whether it’s the fact that Antarctic ice is now melting three times faster than we thought, or the unfolding “biological annihilation” that has already wiped out 50% of all animals and up to 75% of all insects, or the fact that, in spite of all this, we are pumping out CO2 at record levels, it takes willful ignorance or a blinding ideology to deny the severity of the crisis.

This creates a terrible paradox: Economic growth keeps economies stable today, but threatens not just future growth but medium-term social and civilizational cohesion, and ultimately the very capacity of this biosphere to sustain life. A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year suggested that “the window for effective action is very short, probably two or three decades at most.” And that even this dire prediction is considered “conservative” by the authors, “given the increasing trajectories of the drivers of extinction.” In terms of practical politics, that means acting immediately, preferably yesterday.

Most politicians deal with this paradox by ignoring it. It’s by far the easiest option; one afforded every incentive and reward by this political economy and the beliefs that underpin it. This belief system has been dominant for a long time now. We are, as a society, deeply comfortable with it, which means many of its core assumptions are considered unassailable–too obvious to question. The most profound being this idea that growth is always good. Questioning this amounts to political suicide for any politician.

Or, at least, it used to. We are starting to see some movement in interesting corners of the global political landscape that suggest that some leaders are showing the sort of political courage needed to shift established norms. It may well be starting to become something of a bonafide political movement. It’s young and small, still, but so were all movements at one time.

A little thought experiment shows how growth can be a problem: Insert the word “a” before it. “A growth.” That feels very different from just “growth,” right? Growth is a big part of what we all understand happens in a healthy life. Children grow, knowledge grows, love grows. But “a growth” is what happens when life gets corrupted. “A growth” is when the growth is unchecked, and thus a symptom not of health but disease; when it takes on the character of an invader, attacking its host. The word for growth that gets out of control in this way, such that it becomes “a growth,” is, of course, cancer.

But wait, I hear you cry, technological progress will save us! We can just grow meat in test tubes rather than needing so much land and clean air space for cows and their methane-laden farts, or we can all switch to renewable energy, or recycle more and better, and then we can get back to the promise of infinite growth. Unfortunately, the evidence is clear that this is simply not possible. Yes, we can make dents in our impact with such measures, and we should with all possible speed, but the way the global economy is currently programmed means such things are important–but also entirely insufficient.

So, once we discard the vain hope of being able to grow the economy infinitely and indefinitely, what are we looking at? This is where the innovation and bravery come in.

A new alliance was formed in 2017, called the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. What they are shooting for is one–or many different–economic model(s) that have, “the fundamental goal of achieving sustainable well-being with dignity and fairness for humans and the rest of Nature.” Which means they cannot just reach for socialism or any other historical model–socialism, like capitalism, relies on growth, as does communism. They have recognized that we can’t rely on past thinking; we must genuinely put our best brains forward and innovate.

We’re not talking about a bunch of random, dreamy utopians here, but real politicians who have won real elections and are exercising real power. So far, the roster of governments signing up to the Alliance includes Scotland, Costa Rica, Slovenia, and New Zealand. Other governments that are actively looking at the issue include Italy, and there are political parties emerging, like the Alternative Party in Denmark, which is also embracing the innovation challenge. These are not what are often referred to as Tier 1 countries in the international order, but neither are they so small they are irrelevant.

Scotland, for example, provides a direct line into both the U.K. and (at least for the time being) the EU. Costa Rica has long been a pioneer of innovative economic and social thinking, with impressive results: It is routinely in the top three countries in the world when measured for the well-being and happiness of their people. New Zealand is, perhaps, the most newly bold. Its prime minster has not only called growth-at-all-costs capitalism “a “blatant failure” but also has said her government would no longer accept GDP as the sole, supreme measure of progress. “The measures for us have to change,” she said in October last year. “We need to make sure we are looking at people’s ability to actually have a meaningful life, an enjoyable life, where their work is enough to survive and support their families.”

And this is where social and economic forces start to align in very interesting and potentially powerful ways. And open the door for seeing electoral strategies in an agenda based on innovations to take us beyond traditional growth-at-all-costs economics.

Consider a few facts: More than 50% of millennials say they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values, while 90% want to use their skills for good. And these trends are on the up. Deloitte’s 7th Annual Millennial Survey of 12,000 young people, for example–both millennials and gen Z–reports record low opinions of businesses. Fewer than half now believe that businesses behave ethically, and this directly affects how loyal they feel to their employers; 43% of millennials and a whopping 61% of gen-Zers expect to stay in a job no more than two years. And all this against a backdrop of general public opinion that is also looking increasingly unkindly on the economic paradigm we have.

These are conditions that can be worked with. They show that there is a large and growing instinct out there that thinks that we need fundamental change to the way we do economics. Not tweaking around the edges, but fundamental change at the very roots of the global economy. There is no neat or reliable evidence to suggest that challenging infinite growth is at the top of peoples’ minds, or likely to be a particularly easy sell. But there is significant doubt in growth-at-all-costs capitalism, and that is an opportunity for innovation. Combine that with the new thinking coming out of places like the Wellbeing Alliance, and you can start to sense the causes and conditions may well be aligning in favor of the emergence of wholly new, post-growth economies. It cannot come soon enough.

Martin Kirk is cofounder and director of strategy for The Rules, a global collective of writers, thinkers, and activists dedicated to challenging the root causes of global poverty and inequality. His work focuses on bringing insights from the cognitive and complexity sciences to bear on issues of public understanding of complex global challenges.

Cross-posted from Fast Company

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Fortunately, there exist many experiments with non-capitalist modes of assessing and exchanging value, sharing goods and services, and making decisions that can help us transition to a more sustainable political economy based on principles of degrowth. One of the best ways to generate non-capitalist subjects, objects, and spaces comes from systems designed to manage common pool resources like the atmosphere, ocean, and forests. Commons-based systems depend upon self-governance and reciprocity. People rely on and take responsibility for each other, finding mutually beneficial ways to fulfill their needs. This also allows communities to define the guidelines and incentives for guiding their own economic behavior, affording people more autonomy and greater opportunity for protecting and cultivating shared values. Commons-based systems cut across the private/public, market/state dichotomy and present alternative economic arrangements defined by communities.

According to David Bollier, “As the grand, centralized market/state systems of the 20th century begin to implode through their own dysfunctionality, the commons will more swiftly step into the breach by offering more local, convivial and trusted systems of survival.”³ Already, there is evidence of this happening. The commons is spreading rapidly among communities hit hardest by recent financial crises and the failures of austerity policies. In response to the failures of the state and market, many crises-stricken areas, especially in Europe and South America, have developed solidarity economies to self-manage resources, thus insulating themselves from systemic shocks in the future. It seems likely that a community’s capacity to share will be crucial to its survival on a wetter, hotter, and meaner planet.

From the perspective of researchers, there are several different ways to define the commons. In most cases, the commons are understood to be material objects. For example, the atmosphere and ocean are global commons, because they are resources we must all learn to regulate and share collectively. This notion of the commons as material resource goes hand-in-hand with another notion that the commons can be both material and immaterial, a product of either nature or culture. Using this second definition enhances our appreciation for what is often undervalued by traditional economic measures such as care work, shared knowledge production, and cultural preservation. Together, both these perspectives are helpful in devising political and economic strategies for managing the commons, which remains the dominant interest of most commons researchers and policymakers.

Nevertheless, whether material or immaterial, the commons are viewed as a given concept or thing, ignoring that more fundamentally they are generated by social practices. In other words, there are no commons without commoners to enact them. From an enactive perspective, commons are not objects, but actions generated by many different actors in relationship. Whereas the prior notions assume that individuals need to be regulated and punished to prevent overconsumption (an assumption known as the tragedy of the commons), an enactive perspective on commons conceives the individual in relation to everyone (and everything) involved in co-managing the more-than-human commons. It therefore diverges from the prior two notions in assuming a relational epistemology rather than being premised on a liberal epistemology based on the individual. From a Buddhist perspective, one could say that the commons emerges co-dependently with a field of objects, forces, and passions entangling the human and nonhuman, living and non-living, organic and machinic.

The more-than-human commons thus does not dualistically separate the material and immaterial commons, the commons (as object) from the commoners (as subjects), nor does it separate humans from nonhumans. Instead, the commons are always understood as a more-than-human achievement, neither wholly produced by nature or culture. Commoning becomes, as Bayo Akomolafe points out, a material-discursive doing shaped by practices and values that engage humans with their environments.⁴ In Patterns of Commoning, David Bollier and Silke Helfrich argue that all commons exceed conceptual distinctions, because they are not things; rather, they are another way of being, thinking about, and shaping the world.⁵ Commoning is about sharing the responsibility for stewardship with the intent to construct a fair, free, and sustainable world—a goal that is all the more important given the unequal distribution of risks posed by intensifying climate change.

Read the entire essay/issue at The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture & Politics.

Zack Walsh is a PhD candidate in the Process Studies graduate program at Claremont School of Theology. His research is transdisciplinary, exploring process-relational, contemplative, and engaged Buddhist approaches to political economy, sustainability, and China. His most recent writings provide critical and constructive reflection on mindfulness trends, while developing contemplative pedagogies and practices for addressing social and ecological issues. He is a research specialist at Toward Ecological Civilization, the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. He has also received lay precepts from Fo Guang Shan, an engaged Buddhist organization based in Taiwan, and attended numerous meditation and monastic retreats in Thailand, China, and Taiwan. For further information and publications, please connect: https://cst.academia.edu/ZackWalsh, https://www.facebook.com/walsh.zack, and https://www.snclab.ca/category/blog/contemplative-ecologies/.

Illustration by Alicia Brown

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I have argued elsewhere that degrowth is entering into the parliaments. Some political parties have started to adopt degrowth oriented or degrowth compatible proposals in their political programmes.

With two large conferences to be celebrated this year in Malmö and Mexico City, Federico Demaria, writing for the Ecologist, charts the evolution of the Degrowth movement over the last ten years.

Federico Demaria: This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first international degrowth conference in Paris. This event introduced the originally French activist slogan décroissance into the English-speaking world and international academia as degrowth.

I want to take stock of the last decade in terms of conferences, publications, training and more recently policy making. I focus only on the academic achievements in English, leaving aside both activism and intellectual debates in other languages – these are huge, especially in French, Spanish, Italian and German.

This is not because I think it is more important, but simply because it is the process in which I have been personally involved.

International conferences 

The academic collective Research & Degrowth (R&D) aims at the facilitation of networking and the flow of ideas between various actors working on degrowth, especially in academia.

For this reason – as well as in order to increase the visibility of the degrowth ideas and proposals in the public space – R&D has organized the 1st (Paris 2008) and 2nd (Barcelona 2010) conferences, and called with a Support Group for the 3rd (Venice and Montreal 2012), 4th (Leipzig 2014) and 5th (Budapest) ones.

Apart from demonstrating the latest research in the field, the conferences aim at promoting cooperative research and work in the formulation and development of research and political proposals. In keeping with this spirit, in 2018 there will be three international conferences:

1) 6th International Degrowth Conference: ‘Dialogues in turbulent times’ in Malmö (Sweden) on 21-25 August;

2) The First North-South Conference on Degrowth: ‘Decolonizing the social imaginary’ in Mexico City (Mexico) on 4-6 September;

3) Degrowth in the EU Parliament: Post-growth conference to challenge the economic thinking of EU institutions with influent EU policy-makers in the European parliament of Brussels (Belgium) on 18-19 September.

Many other conferences and workshops have taken place. For instance, the conferences of the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE) – Istanbul 2011, Lille 2013, Leeds 2015 and Budapest 2017 – have been important to advance the debate and the society has endorsed the degrowth conferences since Paris 2008.

Academic publications

In 2008 there were only a couple of published papers in English on degrowth (Latouche, 2004 and Fournier, 2008). I have lost count, but today there are probably over 200 published papers – for a review see Weiss and Cattaneo, 2017; and Kallis et al, 2018).

The Media Library at degrowth.info aims to collect them all. An article has also been just published in the new prestigious journal Nature Sustainability (O’Neill et al, 2018).

I think the eight special issues have played an important role in proving the legitimacy of the research questions raised by degrowth as an academic concept (Schneider et al. 2010; Cattaneo et al 2012; Saed 2012; Kallis et al. 2012; Sekulova et al 2013; Whitehead, 2013; Kosoy, 2013; Asara et al, 2015).

We might be assisting in the emergence of a new scientific paradigm, in the sense of “universally recognised scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers” (Kuhn, 1962: x).

After this first wave of generalist special issues I expect a second wave: on specific themes (Technology and Degrowth by Kerschner et al 2015; Forthcoming: Tourism and Degrowth in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Environmental Justice and Degrowth in Ecological Economics, and a tentative one on Feminisms and Degrowth) or that introduce degrowth to a new discipline (e.g. Anthropology: Degrowth, Culture and Power by Gezon and Paulson, 2017; Geography: forthcoming Geographies of degrowth in Environment and Planning E).

The book Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2014) has been translated into ten languages. Others have been published (e.g. Bonaiuti, 2011; Kallis, 2017, 2018; Borowy and Schmelzer, 2017; Nelson and Schneider, 2018). More are coming, and we plan to launch soon a book series, most likely with a university publisher.

Training

The youth participating in the degrowth conferences presented a need for training opportunities. The summer school in Barcelona on degrowth and environmental justice has arrived to its seventh edition.

A more activism oriented one is regularly organised at climate camps in Germany. Degrowth is taught in many university courses, and in Barcelona we are about to launch a master degree in political ecology, degrowth and environmental justice, starting in October 2018.

Our Degrowth Reading Group in Barcelona has been running for 8 years, and many more exist around the world.

Policy making

I have argued elsewhere that degrowth is entering into the parliaments. Some political parties have started to adopt degrowth oriented or degrowth compatible proposals in their political programs.

In the House of Commons in London there is an ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group (AAPG) on limits to growth‘. Recently, a seminar was hosted at the European Commission titled “Well being beyond GDP growth?”.

The emerging field of ecological macroeconomics is shedding some light on policy related challenges (Victor, 2008; Rezai and Stagl, 2016; Jackson, 2017; Hardt and O’Neill, 2017).

Blank canvas

The future is a blank canvas. We need to think of aims, strategies and priorities. Let me mention two, one looking inward into the degrowth community, and the other reaching outward.

Inward, there is the survey for mapping degrowth groups worldwide. The resulting map will represent an attempt to bring together groups and individuals for political and practical actions on degrowth that builds upon the biennial conferences.

The map might evolve into a (loose) network that fosters the creation of synergies among individuals and organizations that situates degrowth as the common horizon. The degrowth blog already offers a space for these conversations.

A networking meeting will be held at Christiania (Copenhagen), one day before the Malmo conference.

Looking outward

Outward, one aspect is to strengthen the relationships with close research and activist communities like the ones of feminism, environmental justice, political ecology, ecological economics, post-extractivism, anti-racism, commons, decoloniality, post-development and economic and environmental history.

An interesting precedent is the project Degrowth in movement(s) that explores the relationships with over 30 different perspectives.  There is also the FaDA: Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance.

For the future, in Budapest Ashish Kothari (min 52.25) proposed a ‘Global Confluences of Alternatives’, along the lines of the Indian experience, Vikalp Sangam (Hindi for ‘Confluence of Alternatives’).

The start could be a joint visioning process. Fortunately, there are already great ongoing projects, like TransforMap to get motivated and learn from.

The ‘how’ and ‘why’

The ‘how’ needs to be thought through  – e.g. it could be a joint conference – but the ‘why’ is clear.

The alliances among these networks, and networks of networks, are fundamental to weave the alternatives and foster a deeply radical socio-ecological transformation.

We could imagine it as a rhizome of resistance and regeneration.

This Author

Federico Demaria is an ecological economist at the Environmental Science and Technology Institute, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is the co-editor of Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2015), a book translated into ten languages, and of the forthcoming Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. He is a founding member of Research & Degrowth. Currently, he coordinates the research project EnvJustice, funded by the European Research Council.

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Della Duncan: Welcome Lisi.

Lisi Krall: Thank you Della.

Della Duncan: Let’s start with just a brief introduction about yourself for our listeners.

Lisi Krall: Ok. I am a right now a professor of economics at the . And I concentrate on, I guess you would call ecological economics. But I actually have a lot of disagreement with much of what goes on in ecological economics.

Della Duncan: Yes I’ve seen you associated both with ecological economics and evolutionary economics. So what do those two areas of economics mean to you? And what are the disagreements that you have?

Lisi Krall: The main disagreement that I’ve had with ecological economics is that I actually don’t think ecological economics in a lot of ways has a real good handle on the economic system. There are a lot of ecologists in ecological economics, and it’s always said that economists don’t understand ecology. But I also think that the problem is somewhat the opposite as well, and that is that the ecologists don’t understand enough about the economy to have a real solid understanding of the problematic economic structure we have on our hands.

Della Duncan: And if you were to just briefly describe ecological economics, how you see it? What is ecological economics?

Lisi Krall: Ecological economics basically derives from the basic idea that the Earth is a subsystem of the biosphere and therefore some attention has to be paid to how big this economic system can be. So that’s kind of the starting point. Ecological Economics has gone in two different directions — there are two branches. One is this eco sphere studies branch of ecological economics, and that branch is sort of associated with putting prices on things that aren’t priced in the economy. That’s entirely what it’s about. And it is hardly discernible from standard orthodox economics. It’s the study of externality, public goods, and that sort of thing. There’s really no difference. The other branch of ecological economics, which is the more revolutionary branch, is the branch that talks about the issue of scale. That branch has been very good in talking about the need to limit or end economic growth. But in the conversations about how we might do that — and in particular dealing directly with the problem of whether or not you can have a capitalist system that doesn’t grow — I think that’s where that branch of ecological economics has not been as clear as it needs to be.

So this kind of helps us transition into something that you talk about: ultrasociality. Can you first explain ultrasociality as a concept within the more-than-human world, within animals or insects. What is it in the more ecological sense?

First of all let me just say this that I don’t think that there is an agreement about the definition of ultrasociality, either on the part of evolutionary biologists, or on the part of anthropologists and economists like myself. So I think that it is word that’s used by different people to describe different things in the broader sense. I think it refers to complex societies that have highly articulated divisions of labor and develop into large scale — essentially city states, and practice agriculture. That’s the definition that’s used in our work, the work that I’ve done with John Gowdy. We have adopted that definition. And so ultrasociality I would say is a term that has meaning other than in human societies. To talk about those kinds of societies that occur mostly in other than humans: in ants and termites that practice agriculture.

Della Duncan: Can you describe that? Describe, to an ant, what that is? What the concept is.

Lisi Krall: I’ll take the example of the leaf cutter ant, the Atta ant. They develop into vast, vast colonies that have highly developed, profound divisions of labor. And the divisions of labor in Atta ants are so incredible that they actually change morphologically based on the job that they do.

Della Duncan: Within their lifetime?

Lisi Krall: Yes. Well, I think you get one ant that develops in a certain way it will stay that way, although there is flexibility in terms of tasks that they do as well. But they have this very highly articulated and cohesive division of labor, and what they do is cultivate fungi. They cut and harvest leaves and then they feed the leaves to their fungal gardens, and they themselves then feed on the fungal gardens. And so I call these kinds of things self-referential, they are very expansive. E.O. Wilson refers to the advance of social insects like that as the “the social conquest of the earth.” They are extraordinarily successful and they are what I would consider ultrasocial.

Della Duncan: What do you mean by self-referential?

Lisi Krall: By self-referential I mean that it sort of refers to itself. So you have a very highly differentiated ant colony that will cut leaves and process those leaves and continue to expand as long as they’re not invaded by some kind of bacteria or toxin that ruins the fungal gardens and creates problems for them. And as long as they have the leaves to cut they are extraordinarily expansive. They’re sort of a system unto themselves, that in a sense their dynamic is cordoned off in a way from the exterior world. They kind of refer to themselves. The only reason that I started looking at ants is because a number of years ago John Gowdy came to me and he had become aware of these superorganism ant colonies that practiced agriculture. And so he came to me it was about, I don’t know, four or five years ago? And said to me, “Do you think that it’s possible that the evolutionary dynamic of these species of insect has any similarity to humans when humans made the transition to agriculture” Because one thing we know is that the population dynamic for humans changed dramatically. There are many other things that changed dramatically too but the population dynamic changed dramatically when humans made that transition to agriculture. So I guess I was crazy enough to say, “Well yeah that’s possible. Why don’t we look at it?” And so that led us down this the path of this present project.

Della Duncan: So let’s go into that then. So eight thousand years ago, about the time of the agricultural revolution, what is it that happened from your perspective? For humans — what’s the story that you see now with your research?

Lisi Krall: Well eight to ten thousand years ago humans began the practice of agriculture. And over the ensuing five thousand years after that, what happened to their societies was profound. They went from relatively small bands that lived in mostly equal societies, basically geared toward fitting in with the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human or other-than -human world that surrounds them. That’s not to say that there was no manipulation of the non-human world, but it was modest. Human beings lived as hunters and gatherers — and I think this is something that people don’t think about — not for 5000 years or 10,000 years, or 15,000 years, but literally as anatomically modern humans for something like 150,000 years a long, long, long time. So we became human in that kind of environment. With agriculture you have a human ability to engage agriculture because humans have a capacity for dividing up tasks, communication, and that sort of thing that lends itself to engaging an agricultural economy. And so John and I talked about the division of labor as one of the economic drivers of ultrasociality. And I would say without the capacity to do that, and not every species has that capacity — ants and termites do — But not every species does, without that capacity I think agriculture could not have been engaged and it certainly could not have been engaged to the point where you get, within 5000 years, the development of these vast, highly complex — anthropologists call them state societies. And then we get into this growing of annual grains and mining all of that Pleistocene carbon in the soil. There was a stock of carbon in the soil that we were able to mine and that boosts things, and the division of labor starts, the production of surplus, and the expansion of the division of labor. Hierarchies begin to develop and we’re engaged in a vast, self-referential expansionary system. And then you get the development of markets — and markets have their own institutional, evolutionary dynamic where you go from markets as a place of exchange of surplus to a market economy where the whole purpose of the economy is the production of surplus value, profit, reinvestment, and expansion.

Della Duncan: So let’s unpick the term ultrasociality because it has to do with what you’re talking about. So it doesn’t mean extroversion — that we’re hyper social — or that we’re really outgoing or anything I think people could think that hearing the phrase ultrasociality. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be lonely or isolated within an ultrasocial environment. So can you unpick what ultrasociality means?.

Lisi Krall: Ultrasociality is different than sociality. It has to do with these rather mechanistically articulated kinds of economic systems that take hold, where the individual becomes more of a cog in the machine of producing those annual grains and keeping the society going in that respect. So people are more alienated. They have less personal autonomy. In humans, these societies became extraordinarily hierarchical. I like to think about the fact that within five thousand years, after the onset of agriculture you get the development of these large-scale state societies. Where probably the majority of people lived in some realm of servitude. That’s not a liberating thing. And they are extraordinarily expansive and they are disengaged from the rhythm and dynamic, in some sense, of the other-than-human world. So they’re ecologically destructive. If you look at the global market economy right now, it’s a very expansionary, highly articulated economic system. We would call it a superorganism. And systems like that are extremely difficult to disengage. And one of the reasons that we started looking at agriculture and started looking at this ultrasocial transition, is because we recognized that the altered dynamic that had taken hold with agriculture is still with us. I think about it in this way: when we engaged agriculture the trajectory of our social and economic evolution was altered profoundly. We think it was a major evolutionary transition for humans. So what does that do to the human being? First of all, individual humans become less important and it sets humans up in this vast, self-referential economic system that’s no longer engaged in the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human world. It sets humans up to have this kind of oppositional relationship with the non-human world.

Della Duncan: Not just oppositional but dominant over.

Lisi Krall: Right. We manipulate and control it and dominate it. And it is other than us. Not part of what we are, but other than us. And capitalism is really this kind of self-referential system with this imperative of growth and this internal kind of connectivity that is hell bent on domesticating every last smidgen of the wild earth before it’s done. So we’re involved in a system like that, that is going to leave us alone with ourselves. If you look at our evolutionary history you find that we evolved as human beings in a world where we were basically embedded in this vital, other-than-human world. And we came to know ourselves — what we were individually and how we fit in — through interaction with that varied, robust, non-human world. We as humans have a very long period of maturation. It takes us 20 years to reach maturity. That long stretch of maturation was timed and punctuated with deference to the non-human world. So that we became healthy human beings psychologically through this constant play between us and the non-human world. We came to know ourselves individually, to be able to see ourselves in the complexity of the world. Not to have to dominate, but to be one of many. And so the tragedy for us is that we have this very complicated evolutionary history where on the one hand we do best embedded in a robust other-than-human world. We do best, we’re healthiest in that kind of world. And yet we have this strange part of our social evolution now that has taken us on tract which is going to destroy every bit of the non-human world before we’re done. And so when I look at our present ecological crisis that’s how I see it. It’s a crisis of our own evolution.

Della Duncan: And one aspect of that which you talked about is that our current ecological and economic crisis is not human nature. It’s actually more of this kind of natural selection kind of accident or this kind of evolutionary — I guess what I’m saying is people will say, “Well, you know, we’re inherently selfish.” Or, “Capitalism is just the natural way that we are set to be.” But you’re saying, “No, actually natural selection was a part of it and we haven’t always been this way.”

Lisi Krall: I think human nature is really complicated matter. What is human nature and what isn’t human nature? Let me see if I can touch on kind of a number of things. I think our crisis is not a problem of human nature in the way that that you alluded to in that people often talk about how we’re inherently greedy, exploitative kinds of beings. And that this is the problem. I don’t think that’s true. I think the more serious problem is that we engaged a kind of social evolution, that started with agriculture, that put us on a path of expansion and interconnectedness and ultimately, in humans, hierarchy, and all that kind of stuff. That is a really difficult path to disengage now. Agriculture couldn’t have been engaged if humans didn’t have some kind of inherent capacity for task allocation, sociality. So there is an element of social evolution. What traits we have that allow for that kind of system to get going. But engaging that kind of system itself is a different evolutionary proposition. It has to do with the evolution of groups and cooperation. And so when we engaged agriculture we took off on this altered kind of trajectory. It’s not human nature in the sense that it’s about the evolution of a group and the force of group selection in human evolution, in a sense. But, I mean, that is a natural process that takes place. And so I suppose I sort of shy away from talking about human nature. It’s part of an evolutionary process, but we have a complicated evolutionary history, and evolution doesn’t just play out at the at the level of the individual. It also plays out at the level of the group. And so I would say that. Okay, so now on to Adam Smith and “capitalism as natural”. That too is a complicated proposition. Adam Smith thought that the market economy was the natural order of society because it takes our innate human tendencies and puts them together in an organized way, where people can be selfish because we have an innate tendency for selfishness, and that that selfishness is channeled into a socially optimal outcome. Adam Smith thought human beings have a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. He thought there was a natural human tendency to markets. So what do you get with capitalism? You get the development of markets. You get that development of exchange. People can pursue their self-interest and at the end of the day what do you get? Everybody gets what they want in the amounts that they want for the lowest possible price — if you have competition. Right. He thought it was natural order. Is it a natural order? I do think there’s something in our evolutionary history that puts us on a path of having these kinds of finely articulated, expansionary systems that started with agriculture. And they can take a variety of forms depending on the institutional clothing that humans give them. There is kind of a natural tendency in that respect. Now having said that, people need to understand that evolution is not necessarily about perfection. It can’t see ahead. And it is quite possible that we’ve been placed on an evolutionary dead end. So I don’t look at the process of evolution as something that is constantly creating ever more perfect outcomes. Evolution responds to the immediate circumstances. Things get selected or not based on whether they’re good at that moment. There’s no question that agricultural societies had a selective advantage. Ten thousand years later, can we honestly say that global capitalism and expansionary, highly interconnected systems are a good thing? No. But that’s where we’ve ended up.

Della Duncan: It really brings up for me the Native American concept of the Seventh Generation thinking. You know, what if all decisions and ideas that we made had this kind of real, futuristic thinking of how this would affect seven generations for now. So I wonder about that. And I also think about our being able to have a conversation about our own evolution. I’m imagining, is the difference between us and termites, or ants, the way that we have an ability to change it? I’m wondering if our awareness of this and the fact that we were organized in a different way, than maybe we have the potential to organize yet again in a different way? Can our awareness be that opportunity for change?

Lisi Krall: Well, you asked the ten thousand dollar question, and that is whether we have the capacity to reflect, and through that reflection to alter the path that we’re on. I don’t know the answer to that question. We also have things that ants and termites don’t have. We have institutional fabric, private property laws, the development of markets, methods of redistribution of income, and I could go on and on about the institutional fabric that humans have. We also have the capacity for technological change, and the creation of institutions and technological change makes us very different than ants and termites. It actually creates a situation where things might be even more problematic for us because of these institutions. We have this infinite variety of cultures that we can adopt. But once you adopt one it has a lot of staying power. So it’s actually hard to change institutions. And technological change, and the structure of technology at a given moment in time, is very difficult to alter. Look at the challenge of trying to change our energy economy. We have this entrenched kind of fossil fuel structure — very difficult to change. Not impossible, but it is difficult. So do we have the capacity? Well, we have all kinds of localized movements — movements of localization. And an extensive conversation about sustainability. We certainly have an ability to reflect and understand that this is not sustainable, that this path we’re on is not sustainable. But I think it is extremely difficult to dismantle a complex system like we have, because when you start pulling the threads you don’t know where you’re going to end up. And each and every one of us is articulated in some way with this system. So I think, yes, through reflection we can try to create different institutions, try to create change, and try to create different incentives and a different kind of system. Whether that will be sufficient to assuage the sixth great mass extinction, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question. And I don’t think anybody does. I always feel bad because I think, well, that doesn’t sound very hopeful. But I think that it’s important for us to understand the problematic economic structure that we have on our hands, and how difficult it is to undo that. And I don’t think people think about that enough.

Della Duncan: So what has been the response that you’ve gotten as you’ve uncovered this and as you’ve shared some of this thinking?

Lisi Krall: I think generally people want a message of hope, and I don’t necessarily think that the work that I’ve done offers a message of hope. What it offers is some serious thinking about the nature of economic structure and the complexity of it. When people ask me what my research is, I say, “well, I’ve come to the conclusion that humans evolved like ants and we’re screwed.” [Laughs] I get deer in the headlights eyes. Like, “What!?” Or even just the proposition that we have a lot to learn about our social evolution by looking at social insects. People don’t believe that’s true. If you want to talk about our sociality and talk about primates, people are open to talking about that. They see that connection. And yet I think that there’s as much to learn by looking at the evolution of social insects for human beings as there is by looking at primates, in terms of our sociality. I think that’s hard for people to embrace. Because you look at an ant and they’re so different than we are, for one thing. And then you look at those superorganism colonies, and for most people they find them kind of creepy. And so we look at those and we say to ourselves, “We’re nothing like that.” And yet I think it’s actually a case of convergent evolution that’s going on.

Della Duncan: So as we get into this more involved conversation of evolution, I know that you’ve described yourself as a closet evolutionary biologist, and I know this is partially because this idea of evolutionary biology, often referred to as sociobiology, can have some problems or challenges. It can connect with issues of biological determinism. Can you discuss this a bit and maybe just define the field of sociobiology?

Lisi Krall: Well, I think it means in a simple way that there’s a biological basis for social behavior. But sociobiology developed into things like social Darwinism — sort of survival of the fittest where you could justify the power of the robber barons because they were somehow better adapted and they won that competitive battle. I mean, I have problem with that kind of sociobiology. Also as a social scientist you don’t want to say behavior is genetically encoded. You can have all kinds of problematic plays on that right. Because then you can start to say, “Well, women are going to behave in certain ways because this is how they’re built. Men are going to behave in other ways.” We don’t like social scientists to do that — to think in those terms. But I guess for me I started to confront questions which didn’t have any easy answers. And I found I think the kinds of questions we are confronting right now, like the question of how we reckon this vast global economic system with a limited planet. How did we come to this? I don’t think those kinds of questions can be answered well unless you’re willing to go into interdisciplinary work. So interdisciplinary work provides the most fertile ground for trying to think about what happened to us, what the possibilities are for change, and how we might change. You know, for example, we have conversations about the energy transition and making the transition to renewable energy. I’m all for transitioning to renewable energy. Don’t get me wrong. But conversations about transitioning to renewable energy without conversations about employment, without conversations about what kind of world we want, what should the relationship with humans be with the non-human world, how much of this planet do we want to domesticate, what are the advantages to downsizing. Those are conversations that we never have when we talk about this transition to renewable energy. And in some sense the transition to renewable energy in that way is no more enlightened than talking about clean coal, because it’s a technological solution to what is actually a profound social and evolutionary problem.

Della Duncan: Particularly if we maintain the same level of consumption and try to have the same level of growth.

Lisi Krall: Yeah.

Della Duncan: So you’re questioning the goals of the system and what it means to live a meaningful life.

Lisi Krall: What it means to live a meaningful life and how do human beings — and I’ll use Wes Jackson’s words here — once again become a “species in context.” Because Wes says that with agriculture we became a species out of context. And he’s right. Our job here is not simply to map out a road to some kind of vague sustainability with renewable energy. That’s not what we want to do. It’s not going to be enough either. It’s not going to be enough and it’s not where we want to end up.

Della Duncan: It’s not fulfilling.

Lisi Krall: It’s not fulfilling. And, you know, at some level — and I know this sounds simplistic — but I look at the non-human world and I see such magic. I think about the sources of human imagination. That’s where they mostly come from. And that’s not a deep ecology perspective. I mean that’s a human centered perspective. Why in the world would we want to end up without that? I don’t think it’ll be the end of the world. Whatever happens to us. But it could be really tragic.

Della Duncan: It will bring about a lot of human and more-than human suffering.

Della Duncan: Yes. And a much less interesting world. And why would we want to do that? And yet how do we dismantle the structure and dynamic of this system? And so I want to see the conversations about ending growth ferreted out more carefully. Everybody knows we need it. That’s nothing new. The question is how we do that. And that goes back to your question: do we have that capacity? Do we have the capacity to change? And I think that’s the ten thousand dollar question. I don’t know the answer to that question. I think we should take seriously the power and evolutionary significance of a vast system like we have. It’s no small matter to change that dynamic at this point.

Della Duncan: And maybe it’s already changing as well? Maybe if we start to look for it and we start to bring out the stories or the examples where it is changing, it will kind of grow? And you mentioned localization — and so there’s localization. There’s also de-growth or steady state economy movements. And then also the change from GDP to Gross National Happiness — those types of movements. It’s almost like we haven’t found a new system, like the next system, or a new economic system, but that at some there’s multiple places of intervention that are being tried around the world. Different points, different attempts. It’s almost like a holistic approach.

Lisi Krall: I think that’s true. And I also think that the system itself has many contradictions and those contradictions lead to significant problems from time to time. So I think right now about kind of the movement of technology, the financialization of the economic system. The increased inequality. That creates some significant contradictions in the system because that’s not sustainable for the way this system has to work. You have to have people spending money on the things that are produced. If you’re producing things without people — and people are making a lot of profits on them — and you don’t have people with enough money to buy what’s produced you…I mean it’s a simple kind of circular flow problem. You’ll have a crisis. You’re going to have a crisis. And so I think that the system itself is unstable. It expands and it contracts. And now we’re in this period of what seems to be secular stagnation. Employment is a greater challenge in a period of secular stagnation. So we have that kind of ongoing problem and contradiction. And I do not believe that lowering taxes on corporations and the rich is going to resolve that problem.

Della Duncan: One thing that I like to do is try to connect the conversations with ways that individuals who are listening can really think about in their own lives, or change their own behavior potentially — just invitations for people. Based on what you’re saying, I’m really seeing an appreciation for foraging and relearning skills from the wild, like bushcraft and foraging. That kind of connection to nature that’s not just a garden or that’s not agriculture. That learning about place, and learning about natural seasons and things like that, and medicine, and all that kind of stuff. So Foraging and connection to nature. Another thing is I really do think that there is something with this idea of changing from growth to well-being, and looking at how can we change the goals of our economic systems from growth to well-being. Or to really explore steady state economics or degrowth, and understand that growth without regard to our planetary boundaries is a problem. People you’ve talked to have a hard time seeing themselves — seeing the relation between themselves and an ant. And being that cog in the machine, which I can imagine doesn’t feel good to me — to acknowledge the similarity. So what about an invitation to see one’s work as more of right livelihood, or to see one’s work as more purpose-driven, or to challenge ourselves to think about how can we live more in line with our integrity or our greater purpose. To just start to break out of that mentality of, “I’m just a cog in the machine,” and actually to look at our agency, our capabilities, what we see as our passion or purpose? And then the final invitation to people is around this idea that it’s not that we have cooperation as an innate capability or not. It’s what we use our cooperation for. What are we cooperating to create. And so to really invite people to cooperate to build on those qualities, to leave our children or future generations with the qualities of altruism, of giving, of cooperation — for these kinds of goals of well-being, of connection to nature, of harmony, of connection to the more-than-human, other-than-human world. Really seeing what it is that we leave beyond. And also what are we cooperating for, what are the goals that we’re working towards, the vision that we see. For me, hearing what you’re saying, maybe these can be invitations for people to explore in their own lives. What do you think? Is there anything that you would?

Lisi Krall: Well I think you articulated it in a very wonderful way. It’s a challenge for a more reflective existence, a more critical existence, in a world that doesn’t encourage it. What I would add to that is that I think people also need to pay attention to system-wide change, because it isn’t clear to me that those kinds of changes will change the system. It may change your participation in it. But it’s not clear to me that it’ll change the system. A starting point for system change, for example, is a much, much more expansive social welfare system. So when you engage in the push for expanding things like Social Security, opportunities for students to educate themselves without ending up two hundred thousand dollars in debt, having good quality, affordable child care, healthcare, maternity leave — all those kinds of things that an advanced economy ought to be able to offer. Once you put in place those kinds of things. Then people are able to think more critically about what they do. Because right now people are so harried and worried and stressed that it’s hard for them to stop and hear a bird song, you know? So, I think the broader kind of structural changes, I would say, in distribution, in the social safety net — let’s stop having the conversation of renewable energy in isolation. Let’s connect that conversation directly to the problem of employment for people. What’s connected to growth. Let’s take it out of this unimaginative, technological solution realm so that we can start to think about structural changes, in addition to the kinds of things that you’re talking about. Those are just a couple of things. I mean I could go on and on. I’d say in every revolutionary action that you take, reflect on how it interfaces with this vast system. Does it confront it? Or is it merely a way to keep it going? Because unless we can change the dynamic of this vast system, all of our individual actions — and I’m not saying they’re not virtuous or valuable — but I don’t know that at the end of the day they’re going to change the course of history. But I’m not the most optimistic person that’s ever walked the planet, you understand that right? I’ve been studying ants for too long. [Laughs]

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