How Culture and Worldviews Shape Development and our Environment

Abstract

Degrowth Decolonization and Development offers a collection of seven original case study analyses, followed by a synopsis of concepts contributing to decolonize development by shaking the hegemony of the Western paradigm. The participating researchers met when presenting their work in Decolonization and Degrowth panels within two International Degrowth Conferences held in July (organized by Manchester University together with the Ecological Economics conference) and in August 2021 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ranging from cultural studies, critical development studies, cultural policy, cultural political economy, political economy, heterodox economic approaches, eco-feminist political ecology, to anthropology and sociology, the collection of chapters provides a broad interdisciplinary oversight of the contemporary (developmental, environmental, economic, social, cultural) challenges. Precisely this interdisciplinary approach facilitates the understanding of the critical contemporary context with its complex intermingling of (positionality) crises. Our multiple analyses of Western thought, capitalist and patriarchal systems rooted in case studies depict rebellions to this hegemonic system and challenge it from complementary angles, which is the reason why we found the degrowth as most suitable framework to understand the current contemporary context and seek for post-growth alternatives. The first chapter introduces the most important concepts such as: permanent crisis, modernity and colonnialism, with associated dichotomies encaptured in the Western paradigm. We embrace the position that colonialism is not derivative but constitutive of modernity as “there is no modernity without colonialism” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018: 4; 107) and modern capitalism, where the cultural potential for radically necessary changes is essential—as a driver of the degrowth forces that reflects the eternal relations between man and nature.