Routledge Handbook of Degrowth

Abstract

This handbook takes stock of ‘degrowth’, a concept and movement gaining increasing visibility in the 2020s. Contributors explain contexts for degrowth’s significance, elaborate its diverse history and detail its unique approaches, practices, challenges and potential futures.

Part I sets the ecological, economic and political contexts framing degrowth’s evolution as a significant concept for societies facing the challenges of deepening socio-political inequities and ecological unsustainabilities. Part II identifies themes characterising degrowth movements in a sample of distinctive countries, starting with its origins in France. Part III shows degrowth ‘concepts in action’, explaining in practical ways the meanings of terms such as ‘conviviality’, ‘degrowth doughnut’, ‘frugal abundance’, ‘commoning’ and ‘defashioning’. Part IV offers analyses and forward-looking imaginaries for degrowth from the perspectives of distinctive agents, agendas and theoretical frameworks. Contributors engage with topics such as ecofeminist futures, utopian thought and show how degrowth is necessary to address poverty.

Highly experienced and knowledgeable contributors from varied scholarly and practitioner fields address a range of strategic, activist, policy and research questions in this handbook. Grounded in empirical cases, they identify significant social and ecological challenges, relevant to students, researchers, activists, policymakers and practitioners at various levels within the wide range of fields in which degrowth can be applied.