In search of both vision and strategy for degrowth

Noortje Keurhorst ^a

More than 1,000 texts have been published about degrowth in the last fifteen years, yet a thorough synthesis complementing the recent inventory of degrowth policy proposals by Fitzpatrick et al. (2022) was missing. Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan’s The Future is Degrowth fills this gap by providing an extensive account of degrowth, spanning from its visions to policy proposals to bottom-up strategies. The book is laid out as follows: Chapter 1 serves as an introduction, Chapter 2 gives a comprehensive definition of growth, Chapter 3 critiques growth from seven different perspectives, Chapter 4 elaborates different currents of degrowth and combines the different critiques and visions to formulate a holistic definition of degrowth, Chapter 5 suggests actions to get to a degrowth future, Chapter 6 shares examples of transformational strategies, and finally, Chapter 7 Degrowth Journal Volume 1 (2023) 00027 2 considers the gaps that degrowth still needs to address. In this book review, I will briefly summarize the chapters before providing some final reflections on the book.