Degrowth implies a critique of ‘commodification’ or ‘economization’, that is the increasing “conversion of social products and socio-ecological services and relations into commodities with a monetary value” (Kallis et al. 2014:4). Commodification is a fundamental tool for making economic growth possible (Altvater 2012; Victor 2014). Escaping the ‘tyranny’ of economic growth means opposing economism as a thinking and behavioural paradigm and root ourselves in the terrain of the political (Fournier 2008). In doing so, we need to be attentive to micro- and macro-level transformations (Sekulova et al. 2013) and to challenge the imaginaries of instrumental rationality, consumerism, utilitarianism and productivism (Muraca 2013). In this regard, Kallis et al. (2014) have provided a review of practices, institutions and actors that might facilitate a degrowth transformation “to convivial societies who live simply, in common and with less” (ibid: 11). Non-capitalist grassroot economic practices including eco-communities, cooperatives, ethical banks, urban gardens, time banks and community currencies contribute to secure the basic needs of people relying on new processes of commoning with low material throughput. New welfare institutions such as an unconditional basic income, taxation on resources or resource caps, redistribution policies, job guarantee, socialization of care, public control over the creation of money, reduction of working hours and work sharing can secure a basic level of subsistence for all and liberate time from paid work, thus expanding voluntary and convivial activity and autonomy (Kallis et al. 2012, 2014). Care, education, health or environmental restoration can be the basis of a new, labour-intensive economy, prosperous without growth (see Jackson 2009). The role of the state is hence deemed crucial to facilitate the degrowth transformation through the implementation of ‘non-reformist reforms’.3 Socially sustainable degrowth should thus be conceived as a consequence of multiple strategies, ranging from oppositional activism to building alternative institutions to reforming some existing institutions, simultaneously implemented across multiple scales, from the local to the global (Demaria et al. 2013). In terms of actors, the evidence highlighted above suggests that activists, practitioners and researchers have played a key role in promoting degrowth, alongside policy makers, politicians, trade unionists and other lay citizens. What political subjects will be important in the future remains an open question.
There is a growing consensus among degrowth actors that degrowth involves a multi-scalar transformation beyond capitalism. In contrast to a marginal adjustment of economic and social systems resulting from multiple and overlapping crisis, the concept of transformation indeed “conveys something more radical than mere change or even transition to a new world” (Tschakert et al. 2013:346; Brown et al. 2012). The concept of transformation implies the need to go beyond pursuing or simply protesting against business-as-usual to actively constituting new meanings and practices. Radical diversion from existing pathways, as Burch and Harris (2014) assert, may only occur with intentional action in the realms of practice and policy, which O’Brien (2012) calls ‘deliberate transformation’, through the imagination of a post-capitalist future. This differentiates degrowth from previous approaches to sustainability based on a transitory or reformist pathway.
Therefore, the transformative nature of socially sustainable degrowth breaks with the political and cultural status quo and opens up spaces for new political and cultural imaginaries. Degrowth is both a critique of the ideology of growth (so-called ‘decolonization of the imaginary’, see Latouche 2014) and a proposal for an alternative desired direction. Transition discourses instead entail the persistence of pre-existing trajectories without changing the end goals (i.e. economic growth) and do not question the hegemonic neoliberal mode of governance (Brown et al. 2012). Incremental changes, the realm of sustainable development and mainstream sustainability thinking, may end up resulting in obstacles to sustainability by increasing investment in the existing system and narrowing down alternatives for change (Rickards and Howden 2012). Transition approaches fail to fundamentally rethink social structures, because they do not engage critically with the root causes of unsustainability.
However, we acknowledge that transformation is a concept with diverse, fragmented and, at times, contested meanings manifested at both agency (personal attitudes, political organization) and structure (institutions, socio-economic arrangements) levels (Brown et al. 2013). Transformative approaches go far beyond keeping the main functions of a given socio-ecological system intact by adjusting to changing conditions (Brown et al. 2013). They aim instead to alter the fundamental attributes of a system, such as the economic mode of production, political institutions, ideologies, societal norms, everyday life, ecology (ibid; Brown et al. 2012) and so-called ‘social natures’, i.e. combined socio-ecological assemblages that are spatially, temporally as well as socially and materially produced, a result of power relationships and cultural meanings (Heynen et al. 2006; Swyngedouw and Heynen 2004). Transformations involve non-linear processes, because they deal with dynamic multidimensional and complex systems and understand social innovation as a key driving force of such processes (Brand et al. 2013). They involve multiple scales and system levels, from the local to the regional, national and international levels, and functional levels such as the markets, states and civil society (Brand et al. 2013).
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