4^ International Conference on Degrowth in Germany – Summer 2014

 

“The Support Group has accepted the application of the German network “Netzwerk Wachstumswende”.

 

 

 

The preparations for the 4th International Conference on Degrowth – Ecological sustainability and social equity: Bridging movements and research for the great transformation towards Degrowth” in Leipzig in summer 2014 have run up.

Netzwerk Wachstumswende (NEWW) is a platform for scientists, practitioners and activists dedicated to research on and implementation of Degrowth. The conference will take place in Leipzig, a former shrinking city, which is a promising venue to illustrate how vacant space has been vividly reused and conversed by the creative economy and housing projects.
The German discourse on post-growth is diverse and has gained momentum in the last years. A central aim of the conference will be to connect the different discourses and to facilitate a common struggle for a world following the degrowth path. To bridge theory and action, the organizing team will take participatory and processual strategies into account, encompassing organizational structures, diversified assets of assemblies and actions on the conference, art and practical workshops, and the follow-up process of the event.
Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following fields:

• Imagining the future: transitions to post-growth societies, institutions and social systems.
• Dynamics and multiple crisis of growth: business-as-usual and (post-)collapse societies.
• Country specific context: The isles of Degrowth within the “economic motor of Europe”
• Bridging the “archipelago of Degrowth”: discovering differences and commonalities in concepts and practices.
• Region specific context: Shrinking cities and regions: opportunities between the dictate of development & planned Degrowth
• Building alliances between the Global South and the Global North movements and discourses.

To follow the Degrowth-path, logistics will be provided in cooperation with the numerous degrowth practicing projects, including fair mobility, vegetarian/vegan food and cooking sessions in cooperation with local CSAs and non-profit mobile kitchens.
The local scientific partners of the conference are Leipzig University, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, DFG Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie Leipzig. Relevant actors in the German post-growth and Degrowth debate have been mobilized for setting up the conference.
Further information will soon be presented on the project homepage.