In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Degrowth and Anthropology

  • Introduction
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Anthropology Degrowth and Anthropology
by
Susan Paulson, Gabriela Cabaña Alvear, Lucía Muñoz-Sueiro, Lorenzo Velotti
  • LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0303

Introduction

Degrowth brings together a global network of ideas, actors, and practices around shared goals: reduce quantities of material and energy used by wealthy economies; curb cultural and personal obsessions with growth; and reorient institutions and worldviews around equitable well-being and caring regeneration of life. In the 1970s, Europeans began to formulate decroissance as a response to growing ecological and social costs of economic expansion; in the twenty-first century, degrowth has exploded in political debates and social movements, as well as in academic programs, research, and hundreds of publications in many languages. Anthropology, the holistic study of humans interacting with diverse environments, informs and is influenced by degrowth in fundamental ways. In the absence of a subfield called “degrowth anthropology,” the term “degrowth/anthropology” is used here to invoke a realm of overlaps and synergies among two currents of thought and practice. Recognizing that capacities to change are constrained by modes of knowing and being that make it difficult for mainstream actors to imagine alternatives, and that undermine struggles of non-dominant groups to sustain different lifeways, degrowth/anthropology celebrates opportunities to learn from and with people around the world who are mobilizing a pluriverse of worldviews and lifeways in pursuit of healthier and more just futures. The bibliography includes authors and publications inside and outside of formal disciplinary boundaries, all characterized by anthropological questions, concepts, and approaches. The heterogeneity and heterodoxy of degrowth/anthropology resists consolidation into a single canon of literature. Among countless ways to select from and organize relevant sources, this bibliography focuses on five areas: degrowth basics and thought leading to degrowth; key resources in special issues, reviews, and websites; cultural phenomena examined with anthropology of growth and degrowth; conversations with disciplines and movements advancing various forms of critical theory (including feminisms and anti/de/post-colonialisms) and engaged experiments in learning and teaching.

Overview and Foundational Texts

Literature gathered here reveals deep resonances between recent transdisciplinary research around degrowth and long-evolving anthropological work, starting with centuries of archaeological and ethnographic studies of cultures organized around (re)generating abundance, rather than accumulation and growth. Multifaceted and holistic expressions of degrowth/anthropology have evolved in mutual influence with other currents featured in this Oxford Bibliography: environmental anthropology, economic anthropology, feminist anthropology, political ecology, Anthropocene, capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, and social movements. In contrast to “green growth,” which focuses on technological innovation, degrowth research and practice collectively engage manifold phenomena that anthropologists recognize as integral to (re)production of biocultural worlds, from everyday practices and relationships to worldviews, social structures, and institutions.

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