Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology Volume 2
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Methods
- Part II Embodied Environmental Sociology
- Part III Beyond the Human
- Part IV Sustainability and Climate Change
- Part V Resources
- Part VI Food and Agriculture
- Part VII Social Movements
- 26 Alternative Technologies and Emancipatory Environmental Practice
- 27 The Global Fair Trade Movement: For Whom, By Whom, How, and What Next
- 28 Possibilities for Degrowth: A Radical Alternative to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Growth-Societies
- 29 Achieving Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Global South
- 30 Conclusion: Envisioning Futures with Environmental Sociology
- Index
- References
28 - Possibilities for Degrowth: A Radical Alternative to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Growth-Societies
from Part VII - Social Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2020
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology Volume 2
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Methods
- Part II Embodied Environmental Sociology
- Part III Beyond the Human
- Part IV Sustainability and Climate Change
- Part V Resources
- Part VI Food and Agriculture
- Part VII Social Movements
- 26 Alternative Technologies and Emancipatory Environmental Practice
- 27 The Global Fair Trade Movement: For Whom, By Whom, How, and What Next
- 28 Possibilities for Degrowth: A Radical Alternative to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Growth-Societies
- 29 Achieving Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Global South
- 30 Conclusion: Envisioning Futures with Environmental Sociology
- Index
- References
Summary
The neoliberal restructuring of society is presented in the paper as a renewed drive to enable the further expansion of the capitalistic mode of production threatened i.a. by the ecological crisis. Precisely because the warnings of the report to the Club of Rome “Limits to Growth,” sanctioning the end of the post-war dynamic stability rooted in economic growth and represented by Atlantic Fordism was taken very seriously by the economic elite, forces joined towards a radical restructuring of societies in order to unleash new possibilities for growth and profit accumulation. Neoliberal governmentality paradoxically embraces the challenge launched by Ecological Economists to focus on life as a productive and creative process and matures as a new mode of governing life that operate with and not against life’s power. Against the neoliberal stealth revolution, degrowth embodies a radical alternative project, both with respect to the substantial goals and to the mode of operation of neoliberal governmentality. In its heterogeneity, degrowth opens spaces for radical imaginaries, practices, and experiences that challenge the neoliberal, pervasive logic of growth and self-optimization, while experimenting possibilities for alternative subjectivities and new modes of being.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 478 - 496Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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