Educational approaches to degrowth

Supervisor: Dr Peter Sutoris

A) Rationale for the project

Degrowth has emerged as an alternative to the mainstream narrative of “green growth” in thinking about the future of society in the face of the unfolding environmental multi-crisis. Recognising the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, degrowth questions the ideology of extractivism as well as the instrumentalisation and commodification of nature that underpin the contemporary international economic regime. This project will explore how education, schooling or informal learning processes in society, might enable or get in the way of a degrowth society.

B) References that should be read

Caradonna, Jeremy L. ‘An Incompatible Couple: A Critical History of Economic Growth and Sustainable Development’. In History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth, edited by Iris Borowy and Matthias Schmelzer, 154–73. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.

D’Alessandro, Simone, André Cieplinski, Tiziano Distefano, and Kristofer Dittmer. ‘Feasible Alternatives to Green Growth’. Nature Sustainability 3, 4 (2020): 329–35.

Hickel, Jason. ‘The Anti-Colonial Politics of Degrowth’. Political Geography 88 (2021): 102404.

Hickel, Jason. Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Random House, 2020.

Kallis, Giorgos. ‘In Defence of Degrowth’. Ecological Economics 70, 5 (2011): 873–80.

Rodríguez-Labajos, Beatriz, Ivonne Yánez, Patrick Bond, Lucie Greyl, Serah Munguti, Godwin Uyi Ojo, and Winfridus Overbeek. ‘Not So Natural an Alliance? Degrowth and Environmental Justice Movements in the Global South’. Ecological Economics 157 (2019): 175–84.

Sutoris, Peter. ‘Politicising ESE in Postcolonial Settings: The Power of Historical Responsibility, Action and Ethnography’. Environmental Education Research 25, 4 (2019): 601–12.

Sutoris, Peter. Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022.

C) Research aims / questions

The research questions explored in this project will include: What is the relationship between current education models and degrowth? In what ways might education enable or constrain the emergence of a degrowth society?

D) Methods

This is an ethnographic research project, which will rely on extensive fieldwork research, a deep immersion in the field, relationships of trust with research participants and meaningful co-production of knowledge between the researcher and the researched. Depending on research location, language competency in local language may be required. The use of innovative and transdisciplinary methods will be encouraged.