Making Degrowth Real
Aaron Vansintjan
đź—“Â SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2022
⏰ 10am-1pm PDT || 1-4pm EDT || 6-9pm BST
(See time zone converter if you’re in a different location to make sure you get the time right.)
Cost:
$50 for non-members
$40 for Explorers
$25 for Scholars
$0 for Seekers
REGISTER HERE
Incite Seminars is a 100% member-supported learning community. We refuse to participate in the philanthropic industrial complex (see this powerful book by a different INCITE! collective). Instead, we depend on member contributions to continue holding space for radical study and practice groups, putting on rigorous seminars and courses, and providing our facilitators and organizers with fair compensation.
About this event
The theory and social movement of Degrowth argues that it is possible, and necessary, to radically decrease the material and energetic throughput of the economy. In addition, it argues that, in order to address the current crises, we must dismantle the hegemony of growth.
In this workshop, we will discuss how to make degrowth real: how to make it happen, but also how to relate it to our own lives. It will be a deep dive into the how of degrowth: what collective path can make it possible, and how we can orient our lives to help this process along.
The session will be organized around the forthcoming book, The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to A World Beyond Capitalism, by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan. The book, to be published by Verso Books in June 2022, is the first book to provide a rigorous survey of degrowth concepts from an anti-capitalist perspective. Participants will have the chance to engage with a selection of the book’s contents and arguments.
In this workshop, we will explore:
- What is meant by growth and how it structures our lives, such as by trapping us in aspirations of “an imperial mode of living”
- How degrowth aspires to break alienation and isolation in our lives and build “public abundance”
- Examples of “now-topias” — spaces of social experimentation that break with the logic of growth
- Ways we can apply degrowth theory and policies to our own lives, communities, and political projects
The seminar will be participatory, encouraging discussion, brainstorming, debate, and critique.
Readings:
The future is degrowth: A guide to a world beyond capitalism, Chapter 1 (will be emailed prior to the seminar)
Optional reading:
From Taming to Dismantling: Degrowth and Anti-capitalist Strategy, by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya
Facilitator: Aaron Vansintjan is a writer and researcher, focusing on degrowth, urban social movements, and ecological thought. He is co-editor of Uneven Earth, a website on ecological politics, the editor of In Defense of Degrowth by Giorgos Kallis, and co-author of The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to A World Beyond Capitalism, forthcoming with Verso Books.
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