Abstract
The word degrowth has been recently used in the ecological, economic and social debate; it started being used in 2002 as a provocative slogan to denounce the mystification of the ideology of sustainable development. It now designates a complex alternative project, with undeniable analytical and political significance. It is about first escaping from consumption society and then building a durable society of prosperity without growth or frugal abundance. Thus degrowth is not the alternative, but rather a matrix of alternatives that opens the human adventure to a plurality of destinies and space for creativity, while removing the lead blanket of economic totalitarism. Degrowth therefore offers a general framework that provides meaning to many sectorial initiatives or local resistances favoring strategic compromises and tactical alliances. This project may seem like a pipe dream today but it is extremely realistic if we want to avoid the collapse of human society in the future.
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Notes
- 1.
English: The Glorious Thirty.
- 2.
Proceedings published as Défaire le développement, refaire le monde, Parangon, Lyon, 2002.
- 3.
We tried to develop this in the book L’invention de l’économie (Latouche 2005).
- 4.
Degrowth in French.
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Latouche, S. (2018). The Path to Degrowth for a Sustainable Society. In: Lehmann, H. (eds) Factor X. Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50079-9_17
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