Philosophy of Degrowth Panel – MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory

Philosophy of Degrowth Panel at 2025 MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, Sep 3-5.

Convenors: Caleb Althorpe (Utrecht University) and Catarina Neves (Utrecht University)

The concept of ‘degrowth’ and a degrowth economy are increasingly being proposed as a solution to a range of challenges facing contemporary political communities: such as deepening environmental crises, growing wealth and income inequalities, and pervasive corporate power. Given the lackluster response to these crises in recent years, the call to move beyond growth and GDP is part of a wider set of movements aiming to rethink and challenge the central assumptions that make up modern capitalist systems. Yet so far debates about degrowth have been dominated by ecological economists, political scientists, and policymakers, with political theorists and philosophers only beginning to examine the host of normative and ethical questions raised and touched upon by degrowth proposals (Rose, 2020; Rose et al. 2022; Parr 2024; Plunkett 2024).

Proponents of degrowth argue that it is fundamentally misguided to use growth-based measures like GDP as indicators of human and economic development (Durand, 2024; Gomez-Baggethun, 2022; Schmelzer, Vetter and Vansintjan, 2022; Jackson, 2021; Hickel, 2020). Instead a degrowth economy would, as one leading proponent puts it, be a “planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being," with a particular focus on targeting the economies of the Global North (Hickel 2021). To achieve such an aim, degrowthers argue for the implementation of a range of policies and initiatives: including descaling ‘excess production’, work-time reduction policies and the abolishing of some forms of work (Bärnthaler & Gough, 2023), the promotion of new ways of living (Gough, 2023; Soper, 2020), the redistribution of income and wealth at a global scale, the implementation of an unconditional basic income (Cosme et. al., 2017), promoting non-profits and cooperative enterprises, the localization of financial institutions, and monetary reform (Dittmer, 2013).

The aim of this panel is to contribute to the growing philosophical literature on degrowth by exploring normative questions about degrowth’s aims, the institutions required to realize it, and its political implementation.

We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

· The normative values achieved by growth and their contingency.

· The relationship between a degrowth economy and democracy (including economic democracy).

· Degrowth and distributive justice.

· The relationship between degrowth and calls for a post-work society.

· Ethics of planning production and economic descaling.

· Degrowth and environmental ethics.

· Degrowth and global and/or intergenerational justice.

· Degrowth and corporate governance.

· The political justification and feasibility of degrowth proposals.

If you want to apply, please submit an abstract (500 words) along with five keywords and a short bio (300 words) by email to both [email protected] and [email protected]. Deadline for submissions is May 7th.