[PeDAGoG] Arturo Escobar & Winona LaDuke: Latin American and Indigenous perspectives on degrowth

Wed Dec 2 17:27:36 CET 2020

The Case for Degrowth with Latin American and Indigenous Perspectives
Monday 7 December 2020 11am – 12:30pm EST

Live online: www.youtube.com/user/UFLatinAmerica<http://www.youtube.com/user/UFLatinAmerica>

Please join the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida to explore radical moves toward more resilient and equitable worlds advanced in the book The Case for Degrowth<https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Case+for+Degrowth-p-9781509535620> by Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa, and Federico Demaria.

In the face of mounting environmental degradation and uneven sacrifices demanded by expanding economies, authors and commentators from three continents make a case for abandoning the struggle to sustain relentless growth.

In dialogue with Latin American and Indigenous perspectives and proposals, we consider degrowth, a network of movements striving to forge healthier futures by slowing down global use of material and energy, and by reorienting institutions, politics, and worldviews around care and equitable wellbeing.

Commentators

Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabe environmentalist, economist, and industrial hemp grower, is a renowned leader in tribal land claims and preservation, indigenous and human rights, local foods, and sustainable rural economies. Living on her ancestral territory, Ojibwe White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, LaDuke is executive director and co-founder (along with the Indigo Girls) of Honor the Earth, a national advocacy group that educates and creates public support for native environmental groups, playing an active role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. In 1996 and 2000 LaDuke was candidate for US Vice President, joining Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket.

Books include: To Be A Water Protector, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, Last Standing Woman, Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming, The Militarization of Indian Country, The Sugar Bush, The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings.

Co-authored books: Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism; Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community; Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Colonization; Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions; New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism; Earth Meets Spirit: A Photographic Journey Through the Sacred Landscape.

Arturo Escobar, activist-researcher from Cali, Colombia, works on territorial struggles against extractivism; postdevelopmentalist, post-capitalist and non-patriarchal/non-racist transitions. Emeritus professor of anthropology and political ecology at University of North Carolina, Escobar is affiliated with the PhD Program in Design and Creation, Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, Colombia, and the PhD Program in Environmental Sciences, Universidad del Valle, Cali. Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked closely with Afro-Colombian, environmental and feminist organizations on these issues.

Books include: Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible; Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds; Territorios de diferencia. Lugar, movimientos, vida, redes; Sentipensar con la tierra; Women and the Politics of Place; Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.
Co-edited books: Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Revisioning Latin American Social Movements; Women and the Politics of Place;The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires; The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy.

Escobar writes: "Latin America and the Caribbean urgently need degrowth of many activities portrayed as ‘development,’ especially those that rely on large-scale extractive operations that, besides wounding and abusing the Earth, create inequality and untold suffering.  If ‘growth’ is needed at all, it is in those activities that bring genuine wellbeing to all living beings --humans and the Earth. That's called ‘buen vivir,’ and it is a far cry from the ideology of endless growth."

REVIEWS of The Case for Degrowth (2020)

“COVID-19 is the symptom; the profit-driven destruction of natural and social habitats is the disease. There's only one cure consistent with global social justice.  Read this eloquent and urgent book and find out what it is.”
Mike Davis, University of California and author of Ecology of Fear and Planet of Slums

“Degrowth is one of the most important ideas of the 21st century. Here it is in compact form. Clear, timely, urgent. Don't miss this book.”
Jason Hickel, London School of Economics and author of The Divide and Less is More

“This is a major contribution to the current debate on growth and degrowth. The authors lay bare the innards of each and show us the importance of degrowth. Wellbeing, equity, and sustainability are key vectors organizing this text. These should be understood in the fullness of their capacities to move us out of our current modernity --a decaying order that is today still dominant. But history has shown us across the centuries that no system of power can last for ever, and nor will our current system. Indeed, it is busy destroying itself.”
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University and author of Expulsions

“The COVID pandemic is laying bare dysfunctions of the growth model and the urgency of a pathway to sanity, climate protection, and security for all. This wonderful and accessible introduction by leading degrowth scholars is a vital resource for anyone interested in viable alternatives, rooted in cooperative economic relations and respect for planetary limits.”
Juliet Schor, author of After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back

“Decrecer es la consigna. Más y más crecimiento económico en un mundo finito es una locura. Más todavía si éste ahonda las diferencias sociales, las frustraciones y la infelicidad. No podemos mantener ese ritmo despiadado de acumulación del que afloran múltiples pandemias, como la del coronavirus. No hay duda, requerimos una desaceleración programada de la actividad económica para reencontrarnos armónicamente con los ritmos de la Madre Tierra, así como para construir otras sociedades basadas en la diversidad, la sostenibilidad, la pluralidad y la reciprocidad; bases fundamentales del Pluriverso: un mundo donde quepan todos los mundos posibles que aseguren una vida digna a humanos y no humanos.”
Alberto Acosta, former president of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador and author of Buen Vivir

“A superb account of why capitalist economies fail life on Earth, even as peoples’ initiatives in community sharing already revive joy and hope for our futures. This small book teaches economics like no other. It will reply to your doubts about change. It should be on every public library shelf and every syllabus; give copies to your friends.”
Ariel Salleh, activist and editor of Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women write Political Ecology

“As the panoply of growth-induced disasters becomes ever more evident with the COVID-19 crisis, it becomes patently clear that the growth imperative must come to a stop. A new vision of the economy –and, hence, of economics—is absolutely essential to the welfare of Earth and all its beings. With The Case for Degrowth, Kallis, Paulson, D’Alisa and Demaria give us a decisive chapter towards such reframing. They show that degrowth is about much more than just the economy: it’s about a radically different way of being, doing and world-making. Degrowth enlightens us on the design of wiser societies that go at a slower pace precisely because they are attuned to Earth. By incorporating the paradigms of care, mutual aid, commoning, and justice, this stunning short book by the foremost thinkers of degrowth finally makes tangible a radical transition towards the peaceful and mutually-enhancing co-existence of humans and the Earth.”
Arturo Escobar, author of Encountering Development, and Designs for the Pluriverse and Professor of Anthropology at University of North Carolina

“The case for degrowth as argued in this book is so well rounded and compelling that it is difficult to imagine how progressive politicians could avoid integrating the many policies advocated here into their party manifestos . . . unless of course they cannot escape the growth mentality that has suffocated progressive policies for decades. But even in this case, the book offers ways of changing that mentality through commoning and collective action.”
Massimo De Angelis, University of East London, editor of The Commoner, and author of Omnia Sunt Communia

“The degrowth movement now has its Manifesto. A rigorous, practical analysis that will guide grassroots and institutional politics so they can realize a transformation akin to degrowth and turn the current global crisis into a new opportunity and pathway towards more sustainable and carrying societies.”
Isabelle Anguelovski, Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ) and author of Neighborhood as Refuge

“Degrowth is one of the most exciting approaches to emerge from the belly of the industrialised and colonising world, fundamentally challenging its unsustainable and inequitable path of 'development'. But approaches and concepts also need praxis, else they remain in rarified ivory towers. Perhaps for the first time, here, degrowth proponents transform visions and recommendations into a coherent set of actions, from our individual choices to macro-economics and politics. Essential reading for anyone interested in transforming society to be crisis-resilient and crisis-avoiding!”
Ashish Kothari,  Kalpavriksh/Global Tapestry of Alternatives and co-editor of Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary

"Is there life after economic growth? Kallis and his co-authors have taken up the baton from the early proponents of degrowth and created a vibrant, accessible discourse for the 21st Century. The Case for Degrowth provides the why, the where and the how of a better economy and a richer society. Its vision is needed now more than ever."
Tim Jackson, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, author of Prosperity without Growth

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