Jason Hickel on Degrowth & Good Lives For All
Throughout the Groundwork food systems fellowship, we meet for weekly seminars on alternatives to the mainstream culture that relies on destruction to produce economic growth. We study the cultural, political, and economic movements that are imagining and trying to bring into reality a more livable future.
Degrowth is one of our favorite movements. As a movement, degrowth is based primarily in the global north, focusing on how the wealthy societies of the world can craft a path forward that focuses on real measures of well-being rather than relying on infinite economic growth as the primary measure of societal and personal success. The name itself provides the roadmap: intentional, structured slowing of the economic engine that is harmful both to people and to the broader, more-than-human world. Degrowth is part political, part personal. It is based on the recognition that well-being is not the same as economic growth or material wealth. One of the core ideas of degrowth is that slowing economies in the right ways will not only reduce harm to people and planet, but can produce lives for its inhabitants that are more meaningful, joyful, and comfortable within a society that is more equitable and just. Degrowth pushes our society towards structure that are proven to be better for communities, families, and individual mental health.
Jason Hickel is a scholar working where anti-capitalist economic theory meets practice. In this podcast, one of his core points is that regrowth doesn’t need to mean austerity, and that we have more than enough for the entire world to live beautiful, vibrant, and comfortable lives if our resources were shared better both within countries and between countries.
More Resources On Degrowth