Degrowth and the meaning of freedom

• Autor(a) principal: Terhorst, Laura Carlotta
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/22980
• topic: Ecological crisis; Degrowth; Freedom; Non-domination; Crise ecológica; Crescimento económico -- Economic growth; Decrescimento; Liberdade; Não domínio

While the belief in progress through economic growth dominates the world, a small group of academics and activists are calling for radical changes in the way we produce and consume to fight the environmental crisis. But their voices are not being heard. In order to deepen the understanding of the marginalization of degrowth ideas, the aim of this dissertation was to understand how conceptions of freedom can influence people’s attitudes towards degrowth principles. Through a theoretical analysis of degrowth principles in regard to three different conceptualization of freedom, this dissertation demonstrates that degrowth principles are not compatible with conventional concepts of freedom, but rather seem to align with the alternative conception of freedom as non-domination, postulated by Pettit (1997) and Skinner (2002). In the empirical part of this dissertation those theoretical assumptions were investigated though semi-structured interviews with five degrowth activists from Spain, Portugal and Germany. The thematic analysis of these five interviews revealed that the five activists conceptualize freedom beyond conventional concepts. Instead, their views on the nature of freedom seem to align with the concept of freedom as non-domination. Whilst the findings of this qualitative research cannot be generalized, they do implicate that conventional concepts of freedom could indeed prevent our societies from entering in a discussion about degrowth.