Volume 4 (2026)

This paper reasserts the question of human needs as a pivotal yet under-theorized issue within the degrowth (DG) discourse. While DG scholarship often draws on human needs to critique the dominant growth paradigm, it does not systematically engage with the analysis of human needs as a research question. The paper offers a threefold contribution. First, it reviews how universal human needs theories—especially those of Doyal and Gough, Max-Neef, and Helne and Hirvilammi—have been deployed in the DG literature, revealing their shared aim of establishing objective criteria for well-being and distributive justice beyond utility maximization. Second, it critically examines the assumptions underlying these frameworks, including the dichotomies between needs and wants, basic and non-basic needs, and true and artificial needs; arguing that they neglect the historical specificity of capitalism as a system of needs. Third, drawing on Marxian theory, the paper reconstructs an alternative approach that situates human needs within the dynamics of capital accumulation and the law of value, showing how capitalism produces unmet and outlawed needs while legitimizing only those satisfiable through exchange. Building on this analysis, it outlines the contours of a degrowth post-capitalist society grounded in democratic social planning, where collective deliberation defines legitimate social needs, determines appropriate satisfiers, and expands collective modes of provisioning. By keeping the question of human needs open—both quantitatively and qualitatively—the paper positions degrowth as a political project of emancipation aimed at reorienting social reproduction toward collective flourishing and ecological balance.

In times of deepening planetary and societal polycrises, accompanied by global uncertainty and a growing sense of hopelessness, education may serve as one of few leverage points capable of enabling meaningful social and ecological transformation. If configured appropriately, it can help address the root causes of current crises, including the persistent belief that endless economic growth is compatible with human-nature flourishing. This paradoxical belief shapes our imaginary of what constitutes a good life, essentially blockading meaningful sustainability transformations. Degrowth radically challenges this narrative, offering a transformative vision of human-nature thriving. Yet how such transformation is supported pedagogically in real-world education remains largely underexplored. This thesis investigates how degrowth-informed pedagogical approaches are reflected, challenged, or refined within nonformal Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Using a qualitative case study of the Austrian initiative WeltTellerFeld, it draws on document analysis, field observations, and semi-structured interviews with educators. Guided by a theoretical framework grounded in critical pedagogy and transformative learning, the findings reveal strong alignment with degrowth-informed pedagogical principles such as problem-based learning, redefined educator-learner roles, and the politicisation of education. Yet the initiative’s educational practice also challenges and refines degrowth pedagogy, suggesting its expansion to include learning approaches that incorporate emotional engagement and utopian imagination. Ultimately, the thesis argues that small-scale, nonformal initiatives like WeltTellerFeld can function as ‘cracks in the system’, ‘real utopias’ in the here and now, where alternative ways of living and learning beyond growth are cultivated, offering hope and direction toward urgently needed socio-ecological change.

Paul Kingsnorth, in his book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, asserts that the ecological destruction, consumerism, and social atomization that have come to define contemporary life are the product of a malevolent force he calls the Machine. This review finds that his proposed solution to these crises, namely a return to "traditional" forms of family and community, insufficiently addresses the material and structural conditions underlying the capitalist mode of production. Kingsnorth’s dismissal of Marxism is then interrogated by juxtaposing his critique of the Machine with Marx’s analysis of estranged labor. Finally, this review concludes that the political program that Kingsnorth outlines towards the end of the book (“reactionary radicalism”) shares several affinities with right-wing thought.

The contemporary eco-Marxist discourse is sharply divided between a degrowth position and an eco-modernist position. While degrowth views capitalism’s limitless growth as fundamentally unsustainable, eco-modernism regards growth as the only viable path to socialism. The eco-modernist criticism of degrowth has its roots in Marx’s theory of history. According to this theory, known as historical materialism, the continuous expansion of the productive forces is the driving force of history and carries the promise of a socialism of abundance. In the eyes of eco-modernists, degrowth represents a brake on the productive forces and is therefore incompatible with traditional Marxism. This essay refutes this claimed incompatibility. Drawing on G. A. Cohen’s analysis of Marx’s theory of history, it demonstrates that a degrowth society is not only compatible with historical materialism, but may in fact be its logical outcome. By demonstrating this compatibility, I hope to make eco-modernists more open to degrowth arguments.

Despite numerous proposals to address the twin crises of ecological overshoot and rising inequality, the structural transformations that degrowth scholars call for remain sparse - typically happening on a small scale and depending on the extractive structures of the present. This perspective reflects on personal experience with Kashiwa-no-Hatake (柏の畑), an experimental project established by an international group of PhD students and early career researchers at The University of Tokyo. We argue that degrowth and wider sustainability transitions debates would benefit from greater attention to liminality as a mode of existence in itself, rather than a state between states. Drawing on the Japanese concept of aida (間), interpreted through the philosophical framework of lemma, we suggest that in-between spaces offer fertile ground for advancing the praxis of futures beyond capitalism.

This article employs a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine how Croatian media represented degrowth in the aftermath of the 9th International Degrowth Conference held in Zagreb in 2023. By analysing 38 articles published shortly after the event, the study identifies a polarized media landscape structured around three dominant narrative framings: traditionalist‑populist, paternalist‑denialist, and ecological‑transformative. These narratives portray degrowth as a threat to national prosperity and identity, dismissed as impractical or naïve, or framed as a legitimate response to ecological and social pressures. Situating these representations within Croatia’s semi-peripheral, post‑socialist context, the analysis shows how media framings intersect with long‑standing developmental aspirations, public attitudes toward environmental and social justice, and local political dynamics. By deconstructing the discursive strategies through which degrowth is legitimized or delegitimized, the article contributes to understanding how environmental alternatives are negotiated in public debate and highlights the importance of context-sensitive communication in efforts toward socio-ecological transformation.

This article addresses the emerging interest within the degrowth community in the potential of the arts and artistic research to complement social-scientific methods in driving transformation towards more convivial and less materially intensive futures. There is an increasing acknowledgement that the type and scale of change implied by a societal transition beyond growth cannot be triggered only by scientific facts or macroeconomic perspectives. Change is also needed in collective imaginaries, cultural values, and practices. This requires situating the transformative process in everyday life and the lived realities of communities to collectively imagine a life beyond consumerism as possible and desirable. Artistic practices can play an important role in subverting hegemonic worldviews through different aesthetic propositions. In this article, I focus on their potential to shape alternative imaginaries and foster degrowth-aligned values by enhancing awareness of alternative paradigms through multi-sensory engagements in everyday public spaces that expose frictions. I do this by drawing on a collaboration with an artist collective involving a co-created walking-based method (‘walkshop’) carried out in a relatively new neighbourhood of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Reflecting on this experience, I propose situated civic-artistic pedagogies to cultivate degrowth sensibilities in everyday life. This proposition contributes to the debate on prefiguration and the popularisation of futures beyond growth by highlighting the need to anchor such futures in communities, local knowledge, and lived experience.