For a more equal, just, and sustainable society to emerge, much of the human population will have to change some of its paradigms and consequently behaviour in one way or another.  While part of society will need to learn how to live without unsustainable conveniences and control unconscious consumption, others will need to adapt their capabilities to deal with the effects of climate change. The urgency of the current environmental and humanitarian crises combined are forcing society to explore alternative solutions to such problems.  Some post-development scholars and agencies are also looking at the role of grassroots movements, such as degrowth, self-sufficiency and permaculture, to replace obsolete practices. This research is based on these post-development thoughts which, among other things, argues that less consumption in the industrialised world, facilitated by grassroots local actions, and learning from the epistemology of the South, is more effective in addressing inequalities and contribute to beneficial change in the world than traditional practices. This thesis examined who is part of the ‘grow your own’ community, how it is practiced, motivations and the impact growing your own food can have.  It also attempted to analyse the promotion of ‘grow your own’ as a contributor to tackle the excessive consumerism of the more affluent as well as a contributor to improve food security for the more deprived, in both, the Global South and North. The main methodology used to collect primary quantitative and qualitative data was surveys.  The data was analysed via a mixed approach, mainly using descriptive statistics and content analysis. This study found that most growers were based in the UK and above 50 years old.  The most popular produce were fruits, herbs, and tomatoes.  The main motivations to grow were, to buy less from shops, save money and eat more seasonal, local and organic food.  The main practice dissemination was word of mouth with some use of social media.  This research found that a local authority intervention in providing free plants to community groups in Bristol had a huge impact and the scheme expanded 66% over three years.

No description available.

This thesis seeks to forge a conversation between two schools of contemporary political-economic thought - degrowth and modern monetary theory. With today's urgent, multiple, and interlinked socio-ecological crises, the degrowth school of thought has become increasingly relevant. While the degrowth movement has proposed a range of policies and visions for a post-capitalist future, the structural growth imperatives of capitalist states make degrowth visions politically and economically challenging to realize. Thus far, degrowth policies that aim to weaken society's growth imperative and start building a post-capitalist society have largely been raised from the assumption that governments are limited in budgetary terms, implicitly informed by the hegemonic neoclassical economics lens. However, modern monetary theory (MMT) has recently permeated the public debate, offering an alternative take on public spending, deficits, and the government’s fiscal policy space. MMT argues that monetary sovereign states are not fiscally constrained in the same way that households and non-sovereign entities are - instead, the actual limitations to spending are the resources available to a given nation. Yet, MMT theorists give insufficient attention to ecological considerations, exemplified by their tendency to take continued economic growth for granted and overlook ecological limits, particularly from a global justice perspective. Using an Ecological Political Economy lens, this thesis initiates a conversation between the degrowth and MMT scholarship, finding that while there are both distinct tensions between the two schools, there are also many synergies and possibilities for further cross-fertilization between them within the normative goal of socio-ecological sustainability and justice.

This is a project to design digital technologies to promote uses of public spaces challenging the social religion of productivism + consumerism. Instead I celebrate participative leisure, free time, political involvement and social relationships. Digital artefacts for what I'm calling the "unproductive city". The goal is to incorporate a different set of values where the “paid work” is not as relevant in our life as it is today.The project is focused on life in cities and works with the integration of computing technologies into everyday urban settings and lifestyles. What it is called “urban informatics”.Participative processes as well as user center design have guided the design. It comprehends different services and activities: A collaborative urban jukebox, exercises with locative media, participative design as a leisure activity, technological infrastructures for meetings and game design for public spacesThese activities are examples and explorations to find future challenges and different ways to design technologies for the unproductive city.

In light of the global climate crisis and the worldwide focus on ecological economy policies, this study aims to analyze what role the economy has in the quest for a sustainable future in Uppsala. How do urban planning documents as well as regional and municipality employees interpret and value economic sustainability in relation to ecological sustainability? The methodology includes two different types of document analysis as well as qualitative interviews. Finally, an ideal type analysis has been used to place the urban planning policies of Uppsala on a scale between ecological modernization theory and degrowth theory. The thesis shows a view of an economic sustainability in terms of economic growth as being the prerequisite for a sustainable development. Furthermore, the analysis shows an ambiguous portrayal of the relationship between the ecological and economic dimensions of sustainable development. The documents and employees depict the urban planning policies of Uppsala as being ecologically modernized. Despite relatively advanced climate policies, Uppsala has yet to articulate more bold views of a sustainable future.

Une opération économique, en fin de compte, repose sur une seule chose. Une chose des plus élémentaires qui soient, à savoir, tout simplement : l'emploi d'un objet. C'est bien là le socle de toute action économique. C'est-à-dire de toute action qui, à un moment donné, se veut utile ou rentable. Mais un tel acte a pour effet d'annuler toute la valeur que l'objet peut toujours présenter dans l'instant (comme son charme, sa drôlerie ou, encore, son étrangeté). Autrement dit, l'emploi d'un objet remplace toute la valeur sensible dudit objet par une valeur d'un autre ordre qui n'est autre que la valeur d'usage. Mais, le fait est qu'employer utilement quelque-chose n'a rien d'automatique. C'est qu'un tel acte revient très concrètement à s'opposer délibérément au cours habituel des choses qui, lui, consiste en une dépense inutile de chaque chose... Mais ce n'est pas tout car, au bout du compte, d'un point de vue général, l'action délibérée contre ce cours habituel des choses ne fait en réalité jamais que de l'accroître. Tout simplement parce qu'une telle action (n'étant donc pas automatique) se doit d'abord de dissiper pour son propre compte tout un tas de forces disponibles ; cela, avant même d'avoir pu commencer son œuvre. Tout ceci doit nous forcer à reconnaître que le véritable produit d'une opération économique n'est jamais qu'une meilleure dilapidation des richesses disponibles. Et c'est bien sous cet angle que sera envisagée, dans le cadre de ce travail, la notion de Décroissance. Cela grâce à la mise en perspective de la théorie d' « économie générale » de Georges Bataille avec les travaux de l'économiste Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. / An economic operation relies, after all, upon one single thing. Upon one of the most elementary things, that is, simply: the use of an object. Such is the root of any economic act, i.e. of any act which, at some time, purports to be useful or profitable. But one effect entailed by such an act is to cancel all the value that such an object may instantaneoulsy present (such as its spell, drollery or, yet, its oddness). In other words, the use of an object implies that the sensitive value of that object be substituted by another sort of value, namely its use value. However, as a matter of fact, the useful employment of something is in no way automatic. Indeed, such a useful employment of things is actually equivalent to a deliberate opposition to the usual course of things, which consists, on the contrary, of a useless expenditure of all things... Still, from a general point of view, such a deliberate act against this usual course of things only achieves, after all, to always increase it. Just because such an act (thus, not being automatic), yet before it may have started to operate, first has to dissipate for itself a whole bunch of available forces. All of this leads us to acknowledge that the true product of an economic operation is always only a better squandering of the riches at disposal. It is according to this point of view that my research has focused on the notion of Degrowth, by combining Georges Bataille’s theory of “general economy” with economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s works.

Au début des années 2000, un mouvement de pensée politique se forme en France autour du terme « décroissance ». Il formule une critique radicale des sociétés contemporaines dont l’organisation ne tient pas compte des limites écologiques de la planète. L’une des réponses apportées est la relocalisation ; elle est étudiée en tant que dimension spatiale structurante de la décroissance. Cette thèse est fondée sur une enquête par immersion de longue durée dans le réseau français des militant-es politiques pour la décroissance, ainsi qu’une enquête de terrain plus courte à Montréal, associant observation directe et participante, entretiens et récolte documentaire. L’analyse montre d’abord le rapport entre les ressources et dispositions des militant-es et les modes de structuration et de fonctionnement des organisations politiques visant l’échelle nationale. Elle distingue ensuite une pluralité de modes d’actions défiant les frontières établies entre champ intellectuel, champ politique, mouvements contestataires et alternatives locales. L’étude de séquences de mobilisations montre l’ancrage des militant-es dans la gauche de (la) gauche écologiste tandis que l’analyse de trajectoires d’engagement dévoile la valorisation des alternatives concrètes dans le répertoire d’actions collectives des militant-es pour la décroissance. La multipositionnalité apparaît alors comme un moyen de garantir la reconnaissance militante et l’engagement local comme une condition de la mise en cohérence de soi. La relocalisation, mise en jeu dans le répertoire contestataire des militant-es, est finalement présentée comme la (re)construction collective d’espaces de vie appropriés, point de départ de la transformation sociale souhaitée / An activist movement around the political concept ‘degrowth’ originated in France in the early 2000s. It formulates a radical critique of unsustainable contemporary development patterns and ways of life. ‘Relocalization’, which the movement puts forward as an alternative, is analyzed as degrowth’s fundamental spatial dimension. This thesis uses data gathered through multi-sited ethnography in the French degrowth political network and a political organization in Montreal, including participant observation and interviews. The analysis begins by showing a relationship between activists’ critical dispositions and national political organizations’ modes of structuration and functioning. Furthermore, it identifies several modes of action that blur the distinctions between intellectual and political fields, social movements and local alternatives. The analysis of mobilization sequences shows activists’ affiliation to the ecological and radical left. Their careers reveal how concrete alternatives are valued within degrowth militants’ collective action repertoires. Maintaining multiple commitments becomes a way of guaranteeing activist recognition and local activism a condition of individual coherence. Within the action repertoires, relocalization emerges as the collective (re)construction of appropriated living spaces, a starting point for the social change wished

Des origines de l'écologie politique à nos jours, beaucoup d'écologistes pensent qu'ils participent à la réalisation d'une transformation politique et sociale de leur univers social, ainsi que de l'univers scientifique, cela dépasse les limites d'un pays et d'un continent, mais cela recouvre aussi certaines particularités au niveau national. Nous nous proposons d'étudier les spécificités de l'écologie politique française en la mettant en relation avec l'écologie politique américaine, puis en insistant sur le rôle des acteurs radicaux pour redéfinir une écologie radicale moins consensuelle que l'écologie institutionnalisée. Au XXIe siècle, l'intensité du besoin social d'un courant politique et d'une science écologique s’accroît avec la multiplication des catastrophes humaines et naturelles et avec l'augmentation de leur visibilité dans les médias. L'écologie radicale se propose de répondre à ces nouveaux défis. Nous pouvons en dégager une spécificité de l'écologie politique française placée à la fois à proximité des acteurs politiques conventionnels acceptant les règles du jeu existant et à la fois à la lisière, ainsi qu'à l'écoute, des marges politiques. / From the origins of the political ecology to now days, many ecologists think they are involved in the process of political and social transformation of their social and scientific universes. But it exceeds national borders and also continental limits. We will study the specificity of the French political ecology and outlook it with the American political ecology and, then, we will incite on the role of radical actors to redefine a radical ecology less consensual that the institutionalized ecology. In the 21st century the social need for a political stream and an ecological science increases trough the multiplication of human and natural disasters and the rise of their visibility in medias. Radical ecology suggests answers to those new challenges. We could then draw the specificity of the French political ecology which is, at the same time, close to conventional political actors by accepting the rules of the political field, at its frontiers, and, finally in touch with political margins.

The United Nations member states adopted and signed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, establishing a framework for global discussion on sustainable development. The inclusion of 'Economic Growth' in these goals begs the question of what constitutes sustainable economic growth in the eyes of the UN. This insight, in conjunction with the ongoing debate about the growth paradigm, growthism, and the limits to growth, is, to put it mildly, fascinating and worth examining. Numerous studies conducted on this issue reveal that conventional economic growth is unsustainable and that alternative strategies must be used to bring about a paradigm shift. The purpose of this research is to determine whether traits of a competing discourse known as 'Degrowth' may be detected in the United Nations' discourse of sustainable economic growth. Whilst sustainable development has been a prominent topic for decades, Degrowth can be perceived as a more recent, less mainstream, and even radical discourse. The discourse emphasizes the limits to growth and advocates for democratically-led shrinking in production and consumption with the goal of achieving equality, justice and ecological sustainability. In order to accomplish the research project’s objective, the discourse and key characteristics of Degrowth are explored.  The study was conducted as a qualitative case study (design) using document analysis as the method. The analysis was guided by the theoretical lens combining Dryzek’s discourse analysis approach and Cosme et al.’s framework. By examining solely documents produced by the UN itself, this analysis concluded that while there are some parallels between the UN’s discourse of sustainable economic growth and Degrowth, there is a distinct difference between the two. The SDGs represent the traditional understanding of sustainable development, a discourse in which it is believed that economic growth can and will be decoupled from ecological degradation and that growth, in fact, is the key to poverty eradication, whereas Degrowth represents a school of thought in which the capitalistic system is viewed as the culprit to a majority of issues at hand and that decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation has been declared as debunked.

För att lösa hållbarhetsproblem krävs fokus på mer självförsörjande samhällen som kräver ett lägre behov av konsumtion, energi och transporter då människans nuvarande livsstil och samhällsmål inte går att kombinera med hållbart, klimatvänligt och rättvist. Vår livsstil är dock inte bara orsaken utan även lösningen på hållbarhetsutmaningar. Forskare och medlemmar av gemenskaper menar på att den miljömässigt fördelaktiga livsstil som förknippas med ekobyar och kollektivboenden kan bidra till att uppnå hållbarhetsmål, samt att gemenskaps-baserade initiativ har potential att utgöra en mer hållbar livsstil i jämförelse med konventionella samhällen. En litteraturöversikt och tre intervjuer genomfördes med syftet att undersöka hur ekobyar, som en avsiktlig gemenskap, kan hjälpa oss att leva innanför planetens gränser och vilka sociala utmaningar som ekobyar möter. Resultaten analyserades med hjälp av planetära gränser, donut-ekonomi och nerväxt som en del av emergent normteorin. Studien visar att ekobyar som en avsiktlig gemenskap kan hjälpa oss att leva innanför planetens gränser och bidra till en miljömässigt hållbar utveckling inom sex kategorier: ekologiska system, ekologisk arkitektur, energisystem, transportsystem, matsystem och miljövänligt beteende Sociala utmaningar som upptäcktes i ekobyar är otydliga normer och regler, brist på deltagande och egenemang, ledarskap, beslutsfattande, kommunikation, odelade visioner och mål, ojämn maktbalans, etiska frågor, arbetslöshet, organisering och olika bakgrunder. / To solve sustainability problems we need to pay more attention to self sustainable societies with demand for less consumption, energy and transport as our lifestyle can not be combined with sustainability, climate-friendly and fair. Researchers and members of communities believe that the environmentally beneficial lifestyle that is associated with ecovillages and collective housing can contribute to reaching sustainable development goals and a sustainable lifestyle. A literature review and interviews were carried out with the purpose to investigate how ecovillages can help us live within the planetary boundaries and which social challenges ecovillages face. The results showed that ecovillages can help us to live within the planetary boundaries within six categories: ecological systems, ecological architecture, energy systems, transport systems, food systems and environmental friendly behaviour. Social challenges in ecovillages were leadership, decision making, undivided visions and goals, uneven balance of power, ethical questions, unemployment, organisation and different backgrounds.