A rich, new tome on degrowth has just been published. Congrats to the eds and authors, some of whom I truly admire. But I have a big concern. Searching the book for the words 'business' and 'enterprise' to see how the authors tackle these, it appears that the degrowth community's strategy continues to involve criticising business, centring it as the problem and advocating for grass root change.
Utopianism and anti-business language are not helpful. We are in for a long and difficult degrowth transition and we need so many of our existing businesses to thrive through radical change. We must develop transitional business thinking by exploring themes like tension and hybridity. Of course, we need both purists and the pragmatists in degrowth, but when multi-author books fail to include voices that reach across the divide to develop dialogue, it just looks like niche building, not world building.
Nonetheless, the book’s contents look rich and brilliant. I can’t wait to dive in.
Image by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
Heliocene 