Volume 3 (2025)

In this interview, conducted at the historic Café Le Metro in Paris, Serge Latouche—a foundational thinker in degrowth—explores the often-overlooked relationship between anthropology and degrowth. The idea of conducting this interview emerges from co-teaching an anthropology course, where we identified a gap in addressing Latouche’s anthropological foundations. Although he has frequently highlighted anthropology’s role in conceptualizing degrowth, his personal reflections on this connection remain underexamined. Drawing on his intellectual and life experiences, Latouche offers some provocative ideas on this relationship, as well as on the degrowth movement and literature at large. This dialogue responds to a growing academic interest in this intersection, illustrated by recent events such as the Anthropology and Degrowth seminar at the London School of Economics (Cabaña et al., 2023a, 2023b) and publications like Degrowth and Anthropology in the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology (Paulson et al., 2024).

As a degrowth scholar, I confront an uncomfortable irony: I built my early career through the very “growth” behaviours that degrowth scholarship critiques, i.e., publishing prolifically, accumulating citations, and competing for recognition and funding. This reflects a broader “degrowth academic trap” in which scholars committed to sufficiency, conviviality, and care find themselves rewarded for contradictory behaviours. Thus, it is not arbitrary to say that the field's exponential rise may mirror the growth patterns we critique. We build personal academic brands while preaching collective action, allow corporate oligopolies to commodify our critiques of capitalism, and compete within metrics-obsessed systems while advocating alternatives. Drawing from my trajectory—initially chasing conventional metrics before shifting toward participatory action research—I examine how structural pressures trap even critical scholars. I explore emerging alternatives: narrative CVs, triennial conferences, diamond open-access publishing, and other institutional experiments. The challenge remains whether we can collectively redesign academic structures to make degrowth principles professionally viable, ultimately embodying the sufficiency and care we advocate for broader society.

Sustainable food systems are essential for societies to be able to thrive within planetary boundaries. Multiple visions compete to cast light on the future of food production and consumption worldwide. However, it has become difficult for many to imagine pathways to just and sustainable food systems. To navigate this bloc, this essay explores food system sustainability from a degrowth perspective. Departing from socio-technical and socio-ecological readings of food systems’ unsustainability, degrowth builds on a critique of our dominant socio-economic system that pursues growth at all costs, resulting in human exploitation and environmental destruction. Thus the purpose of this essay is to sketch visions and pathways for post-growth food systems, stimulating readers to imagine and practice food systems – and other forms of society and economy more broadly – that ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

This article reflects on the 2025 International Degrowth Conference in Oslo, highlighting the tensions revealed in its treatment of Eurocentrism and “development alternatives.” It argues, first, that degrowth is Eurocentric, since it is rooted in critiques of capitalist modernity from the North; however, this does not preclude dialogue with the South as it can serve as a resource among other critical traditions. Secondly, the article contends that degrowth must move beyond blaming the North alone, by also interrogating the complicity of Southern states, elites, and NGOs in sustaining extractivism and dependency. Drawing on postdevelopment, decolonial thought, and Ivan Illich’s notion of the war on subsistence, the article argues that one of the central tasks of degrowth should be to confront the coloniality of development itself, rather than simply managing scale. It concludes that degrowth embodies contradictory impulses—between critique and reproduction—and that its relevance depends on orienting material downscaling toward concrete alliances with pluriversal, decolonial struggles.

Skeptics of degrowth often place their hopes in clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines, to offset the consequences associated with a growing economy that demands equally high rates of energy. Rather than reduce economic production, as proponents of degrowth argue is necessary to mitigate social and environmental consequences, clean energy is held up as a perfect ‘business as usual’ solution that will allow economic growth to continue. Taking a degrowth perspective, this paper uses a supply chain analysis to de-fetishize the wind turbine as a source of immaterial clean energy. While affirming that renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels are necessary, they are insufficient from a degrowth perspective to offset the consequences of continuous growth. Instead, technological improvements, including wind power, must be complimented by policy that reduces economic impact overall.

‘Degrowth’ is increasingly relevant as a transdisciplinary research and political discourse field. This makes it a key journalistic topic, especially with regard to climate and economic policy. Ultimately, media discourse shapes its political implementation, making examining this discourse relevant. This research analyses 389 articles from 27 different daily and weekly newspapers and political magazines using critical discourse analysis (CDA); in turn, determining the patterns, trends, and influencing factors informing the media discourse on degrowth in leading British and German print media sources between 2015 and 2023. This discourse was analysed using general structural features such as publication frequencies, time trends, sections, and outlets. Then, the sentiment of articles concerning degrowth was analysed, considering variables of political orientations of the media, their section (e.g. ‘Economy’, ‘Environment’), the gender identities of the authors (derived from the names), and frequent writers' respective institutional backgrounds. Overall results showed the prevalence of degrowth discourse is growing, albeit predominantly in superficial terms. Degrowth-negative articles are most likely to be written by men in conservative media, especially in the ‘Economy’ sections. By contrast, positive articles are most likely to be written by women in progressive media, especially in the ‘Environment’ sections. In addition, within the first few years of this timeframe (2015-2019), there were more articles on degrowth featured in leading progressive print media than in their leading conservative print media counterparts. However, from 2020 onwards leading, conservative print media dominated the discourse with degrowth-negative articles. In Germany, degrowth opponents in leadership positions at leading conservative print media outlets shape the degrowth discourse in the media landscape. This can be interpreted as a structural barrier to a positive media discourse on degrowth. In British outlets, there were fewer frequent writers on degrowth, which is a barrier at the agenda-setting level. In this article, the influence of mainstream economics, economic education, and cultural gender bias are discussed as possible causes for these results.

While health expenditure per capita has more than doubled since 2000—both in low- and middle-income countries and in high-income countries—and its increase has been above GDP growth in most countries, health care systems are not only drivers of economic growth but also have significant ecological impact. Overall, the organization of health care is defined by the biomedical model while other determinants of ill health are vastly ignored. To explore concepts of health and health care in the degrowth movement, attendees of the 9th International Degrowth Conference that took place in Zagreb in 2023 were invited to fill in an online questionnaire on health, illness and death, the perceived causes of ill health, the use of health care services, and policies to take a degrowth transformation of health care forward. This paper reports back on the results of the questionnaire. While respondents were apparently caught between the desire to reduce the ecological footprint of health care and, at the same time, the wish to preserve its current achievements, the scope of current biomedical health care went without being truly challenged. In the face of these intricate uncertainties and dilemmas of increasing complexity, I argue for using a post-normal science framework—together with the inclusion of extended peer communities in the form of deliberative mini-publics and citizens’ assemblies—to develop a degrowth ethics of health and care, where all lives are considered equally valuable.

A small Basque town within the province of Gipuzkoa is experimenting with a convertible local currency and seeking to set up a wider solidarity economy project. This article explores residents’ interpretations of the currency and its potential for revitalisation of the local community and economic life. The history of the Basque separatist movement, and its ties to Euskara revival efforts, have shaped the political identity of the town; in turn, creating a hospitable environment for such an initiative to thrive. Spearheaded by a leftist, pro-independence local government, this project of radical democracy and local economic sovereignty represents an interesting case for the possibilities of localised, postcapitalist futures. Employing theories of social capital and a framework of symbolic consumption, this study posits that community members identify an intrinsic connection between a thriving local economy and a good quality of life. Therefore, the use of the convertible local currency has become synonymous with acts of community revitalisation; therefore, building upon social capital and further enmeshing intimate and economic relations. Moreover, this study identifies numerous factors which contribute to the goals of the initiative, such as a strong degree of idealism among residents, an intergenerational nature of the community, high levels of community trust, and socially motivated businesses.

Like other societal institutions, academia today faces an existential crisis. Rising inequality and authoritarianism, coupled with climate breakdown and collapsing ecosystems, are threatening the conditions under which academic knowledge is produced and shared. At the same time, academics are coming to terms with their institutions’ role in contributing to these processes, particularly in the Global North. Many are recognising the historical and present-day injustices underpinning the hegemony of Western universities, as well as the links between growth-oriented capitalist logics—reproduced, embodied and often sanctioned by academics—and the ongoing environmental crisis. How can academia transform into an institution that contributes to a just and sustainable future for all? In this study, we argue that transformations towards degrowth and decolonisation are already happening in many pockets within this institution, and describe the strategic logics behind them. Thinking with various degrowth scholars, we present our vision for an academic system characterised by radical abundance—meaning a reorganisation and reorientation of the social goods produced by universities through practices of public provisioning and communal sharing, rather than the currently dominant state of artificial scarcity. We then make use of the “strategic canvas for degrowth,” developed by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, as inspired by the work of Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright, to understand how power is today challenged within the university’s walls, and how transformation towards radically abundant alternatives can be enacted. Using the case of a pro-Palestine student encampment at a Danish university—including how some academics engaged with this student-led initiative—we identify a shared thread across strategies towards degrowth and decolonisation: the critical contestation of what a “university” is, how it functions, and the purposes it is meant to serve.

How can transitions to eco-socialist degrowth happen? And who will lead them? This essay engages with Matt Huber’s recent work on questions of eco-socialist strategy and offers, hopefully, an opportunity to advance a theory of change beyond single political agents and strategies to encompass different forms of organizing based on varied repertoires of contention and disruption. We wish to sustain an expanded understanding of who may be the political agents of change and how they can effectively organize into a powerful alliance of unions, parties, and social movements across differences, recognising the critical role of workers, trade unions, and disruptive industrial action in fossil fuel sectors, that are central in Huber’s model.

Drawing on Marx's previously unpublished research, Saitō argues for a radical rethinking of Marxist theory. The book critiques both green capitalism and state-led climate solutions, revealing how market mechanisms merely displace the contradictions of capital. Instead, Saitō advocates for degrowth communism through commons-based production, shortened work weeks, and worker cooperatives. These findings suggest that a revolutionary strategy of class war is more suitable to achieving social-ecological transformation rather than a reformist approach to markets and states. 

This book review discusses Ulrike Herrmann’s The End of Capitalism: Why Growth and Climate Protection Are Incompatible—and How We Will Live in the Future, situating it within contemporary climate debates. Herrmann’s central claim—that capitalism’s dependence on perpetual growth renders meaningful climate protection impossible—is presented as a clear, accessible synthesis of degrowth arguments. The book is particularly notable for its rejection of techno-utopian solutions such as carbon capture and its skepticism vis-à-vis large-scale renewable transitions under market conditions. However, the review ultimately questions the feasibility of Herrmann's proposed alternative (the “survival economy”), demonstrating that it overlooks political power, class interests, and the growing danger of fossil fascism.