already existing resilience in re "degrowth movement"

[Thomas Love]

Dear SCORAI colleagues: I've only occasionally posted on this listserve, been lurking for the past year or so. I've been working on the socio-cultural dimensions of energy issues for over a decade now. It's been a wild and fascinating ride. Many panels I've organized or been part of, largely at the Amer. Anthro. Assn. annual meetings, but also Soc. for Applied Anthro., Soc for Economic Anthro. Several articles and a co-edited book...

As I wallow in the degrowth literature, I find much about intriguing inicipient movements - north and south, experimenting with and advocating for various alternative practices and living arrangements, drawing from various mixes of generally "left" causes/ideals as well as some indigenous beliefs and practices. I don't find much at all about examining the nature of "already existing resilience", a concept I'm developing (drawing from Frances Moore Lappe, Jacques Ellul, among others) to deal with practices, institutions, values, etc. already in place which broader publics can draw from (with some reframing) to deal with the increasing turbulence and general immiseration upon us. The Boy Scouts is an intriguing in this regard, for example. (This focus overlaps with the disaster literature.)

However framed, there are always already political implications to the approach taken of course. And of course the capitalist growth imperative as a congeries of forces and elements is driving us toward perpetual emergency, disruption and perhaps "collapse", so more-or-less explicitly anti-capitalist movements naturally coalesce around a broad degrowth challenge to BAU. 

But I find myself wondering to what extent the degrowth movement has "boxed itself in" by anchoring itself in these mostly left movements? Broadly speaking, tying degrowth so explicitly to these left movements seems unwise to me, not least in creating an unnecessary disconnect with broader publics who might actually resonate with resilience ideas and practices if framed differently. 

I'm not politically naive, but wonder about the nature and extent of communication outside the "walls" of the degrowth movement - ties to municipal, regional or even national governments, other social movements less explicitly "left". 

I am eager to learn from the many SCORAI folks who've thought about these issues. I am especially eager for examples in the literature of politically wider efforts to bridge these divides. 

All best,

Tom Love

Linfield College, Oregon

[Jean Boucher]

Hi Tom,

    I think it's a great question, and probably something many environmental groups struggle with. Even Citizen's Climate Lobby wants to have (in the USA) a Republican introduce a carbon tax bill as the presumption is that if a Democrat does it, it will be rejected. Sadly, in light of "issue sorting" (any pertinent political issue gets split and sorted to the corresponding left or right), I'm not sure how degrowth (and its multiple elements) could be conservatively reframed in the present historical context. As you know, degrowth does not only focus on de-growing an economy, but it has many other dimensions. As many of these dimensions are Left leaning, I'm not sure it could be "conservatively redeemed." But it sounds like a cool challenge.  Maybe others could chime in?  It wouldn't be the first time people have taken issues and straddled them across boundaries.  Two Cents,

Jean

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If there is no struggle, there is no progress. -- Frederick Douglass

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Tom

Th tissue of the environmental movement having always been ideologically left leaning is an issue that has bedeviled the movement from its very inception. Alienating half the population and adopting a condescending and hostile stance towards them was never going to be a successful political strategy. Extinction Rebellion is the latest incarnation of trying to achieve change through demonization.

The second issue is conflating environmental issues with capitalism - once more a sure way of alienating huge swathes of the population. The reality is that communism was even more environmentally destructive than the capitalist system. Once again, it's a false projection of many environmentalists' own ideological bent onto the issue.

But there is hope!

Capitalism has been a remarkably resilient concept over many centuries and in many forms. Forms of societal arrangement and governance have come and gone but underlying them all has been the system of private capital (capitalism) that has survived everything. But its form has changed and adapted.

My view is that there is now an opportunity to work towards a new form of capitalism that addresses some of the key issues of our time ( a degree of re-concentration of wealth, environmental degradation, etc). It is not yet clear what that will look like but some vague outlines are beginning to emerge.

The need to re-cast how our capitalist system works has broad support across the political spectrum though it's form remains, of course, contested.

If the environmental movement were to be able to jump credibly on that wave of change (credibly being the operative word), then there is real opportunity.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+31 646 86 21 76

jo...@me.com

radix.org.uk                                   amazon.co.uk    amazon.com

       

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[Colby, Ashley Lynn]

Hi Tom,

 

My work (and activism) is centered exactly around this question. I have a forthcoming book that addresses this issue (in the SCORAI book series!), but here’s an article, too.

 

‘It connects me to the earth:’ marginalized environmentalism and a resistance to capitalist logic among subsistence food producers in Chicago

 

The general idea is that there are a bunch of already existing pro-environmental practices and attitudes among people who feel alienated by political environmentalism, which is associated with typically urban, left-leaning, wealthier people. I interview rural white conservatives and urban people of color who both feel alienated by environmentalism while at the same time both decry environmental problems like pollution and biodiversity loss and are enacting solutions like composting, conservation efforts, self-producing food through agroecology, etc.

 

I make the argument that the best way forward in developing movements like degrowth is to move beyond an inclusivity framework of attitudes and instead move toward communities of practice who can connect over certain behaviors instead of identities. So, for example, to be an environmentalist you must believe in human caused climate change, which alienates a lot of people who have been told climate change is this super fraught issue made up by government, corporations, whatever. Instead, you say, “oh you produce food organically/keep chickens/hunt and fish sustainably/the list goes on?” and then you make connections around fomenting these shared behaviors.

 

In my study I found people bartering and trading buckets of compost for vegetables and animal products, sharing tools and knowledge, all outside of the formal marketplace. What could be more degrowth? And these people were extremely diverse in terms of political/social/age/gender/race.   The idea is to see these already existing communities of practice as a political movement in and of itself, even if it doesn’t see itself as degrowth, because that has been branded in a way that alienates them. Our political work, then, is to make these kinds of activities easier and to share information about them. We can have meetings to develop a tool and seed library, rather than a degrowth meeting. What kinds of people would show up to the former, and then to the latter?

 

I’d be happy to talk more about this, as I have been working more in the Global South with people doing absolutely astounding, innovative things that are simply not invited to the conversation created by environmentalists.

 

Ashley

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