Three memebers of the UNMAKING team presented at the 5th Network for Early career researchers in Sustainability Transitions (NEST) Conference ‘Widening Sustainability Transitions’ on 7-8 May 2020. Giuseppe Feola gave a keynote talk titled ‘Why sustainability transition research cannot ignore capitalism‘, which discussed some of the ideas presented in this paper. Laura van Oers presented…

Laura van Oers, Giuseppe Feola and former UNMAKING researcher Olga Koretskaya are among the organizers of the Second Utrecht Degrowth Symposium, which will be held online on 15 May 2020.   During the event participants will discuss what a circular society can look like and how it can be achieved from the perspectives of practitioners…

Call for papers for the Session “Degrowth, rurality and agri-food systems” @7th International Degrowth Conference – Manchester (UK), September 1-5 2020   Session convenors: Dr Giuseppe Feola (g.feola@uu.nl), Julia Spanier (j.r.spanier@uu.nl), Jacob Smessaert (j.d.a.smessaert@uu.nl), and Leonie Guerrero Lara (l.guerrerolara@uu.nl), all at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University   So far, the degrowth scholarship…

Giuseppe Feola presented the paper Unmaking capitalism in transformation to sustainability: a politics of loss and sacrifice at the ‘Contesting Loss & Damage’ Workshop hosted by the Environmental Humanities Lab at KTH, Stockholm. Abstract The current social-ecological crisis is largely an outcome of the capitalist modern development project, which has been pursued through the production…

Giuseppe Feola and Olga Koretskaya discuss how we can enrich our understanding of disruptions of capitalism in a way that goes beyond the notion of ‘decolonization of the imaginary’. Liberating our minds from the imperative of endless economic growth and profit maximization is one of the key inspirational ideas of degrowth. Scholars and activists call…

Giuseppe Feola discusses the use of historical analogies to develop strategies for degrowth transformation. Degrowth scholars and activists often turn to past cases of social or socioecological transformation for inspiration to inform transformative action in the present. Yet, there has so far been insufficient awareness of the bias that comes with using any historical analogy….

“Green growth is doomed to fail, since it refuses to acknowledge the root cause of climate change: continued economic growth which proves impossible to dematerialize”. This is an excerpt from the short essay PhD researcher Jacob Smessaert submitted to The Economist when they asked young citizens of the world “What fundamental economic and political change,…

Julia Spanier, Jacob Smessaert, Leonie Guerrero and Guilherme Raj are organizing a conference session at the next Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Third Biennial Conference: ‘Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration‘. Instructions for submitting contributions Please send you abstract proposal (250 words) to Julia Spanier (j.r.spanier@uu.nl) and Jacob Smessaert (j.d.a.smessaert@uu.nl) until the 10th of November 2019. Session…

We have published the second publication of this research programme! Feola., G. 2019. Degrowth and the unmaking of capitalism: beyond ‘decolonization of the imaginary’ ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 18(4): 977-997. [open access] Degrowth is incompatible with modern capitalist socioecological configurations, and in fact requires their ‘unmaking’ to open space for post-growth and post-capitalist alternatives. The…

30 August 2019. Giuseppe Feola presented the paper De-growth as deliberate and generative ‘space making’ for post-capitalist alternatives at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference in London, United Kingdom. The paper is forthcoming as a full journal article in ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.