The recent social encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015) by Pope Francis, contains insightful considerations regarding the present ecological and economic crisis and it calls for an urgent and radical change in people’s lifestyles. Degrowth is an emergent social, political, and economic movement that praises the end of a growth-based society. Somehow, it seems that the ideas of degrowth have been not enough seriously considered by political and economic circles, and by religiously inspired social doctrines. This paper argues that the two, Francis’ text and degrowth’s principles, share some relevant points and they can be allied in prospecting and making effective a paradigmatic change in today’s socio-economic setting. After presenting degrowth’s main ideas, Francis’ text will be analyzed, for then summarizing the results of the analyses in the concluding part.
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See: Serge Latouche, ‘Degrowth’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 18:6 (2010), 519–22 at 519; see also: Serge Latouche, Farwell to Degrowth (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), p. 7.
See: Latouche, Farwell to Degrowth, pp. 23–5. See, as panoramic and introductory views on degrowth, Giorgos Kallis, ‘In Defence of Degrowth’, Ecological Economics, 70:5 (2011), 873–80; Latouche, ‘Degrowth’, 519–22. A brief review of contemporary literature is in Marjolijn Bloemmena, Roxana Bobulescu, Nhu Tuyen Le, and Claudio Vitari, ‘Microeconomic Degrowth: The Case of Community Supported Agriculture’, Ecological Economics, 112:1 (2015), 110–115 at 111. The main points of degrowth are also summarised in the Research & Degrowth, ‘Degrowth Declaration of the Paris 2008 Conference’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 18:6 (2010), 523–4.
See: Samuel Alexander, ‘Planned Economic Contraction: The Emerging Case for Degrowth’, Environmental Politics, 21:3 (2012), 349–68 at 349–50.
See: Joan Martinez-Alier, Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society (London: Blackwell, 1990); Robert Costanza, John Cumberland, Herman Daly, Robert Goodland, Richard Norgaard, An Introduction to Ecological Economics (Boca Raton, fl: St. Lucie Press, 1997). See also: Begüm Özkaynak, Fikret Adaman, Pat Devine, ‘The Identity of Ecological Economics: Retrospects and Prospects’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 36:5 (2012), 1123–42; Robert L. Nadeau, ‘The Unfinished Journey of Ecological Economics’, Ecological Economics, 109:1 (2015), 101–8.
See: Kent A. Klitgaard, Lisi Krall, ‘Ecological Economics, Degrowth, and Institutional Change’, Ecological Economics, 84:1 (2012), 247–53 at 247–8.
See: Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Marion Boyars, 2001); Ivan Illich, The Right to Useful Unemployment and its Enemies (London: Marion Boyars, 2000); Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (London: Marion Boyars, 2000); Ivan Illich, Beyond Economics and Ecology: The Radical Thought of Ivan Illich, S. Samuel, ed. (London: Marion Boyars, 2013).
See: Latouche, Farwell to Degrowth, pp. 13–14, p. 42, pp. 99–100.
See: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001); Karl Polanyi, For a New West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014).
See: Richard A. Easterlin, ‘The Economics of Happiness’, Daedalus, 133:2 (2004), 26–33; Richard A. Easterlin, Happiness, Growth and the Life Cycle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta, eds, The Handbook on the Economics of Happiness (Cheltenham, uk: Edward Elgar, 2007); Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta, eds, Economics and Happiness: Framing the Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
See: Serge Latouche, ‘Can the Left Escape Economism?’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 23:1 (2012), 74–8 at 77; Latouche, Farwell to Degrowth, p. 89.
See: Luciano Larivera, ‘Le Sfide Aperte sulla Casa Comune: L’Enciclica Oltre le Critiche Ideologiche’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 166:3961 (2015), 23–34 at 30.
See: Giorgos Kallis and Hugh March, ‘Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105:2 (2015), 360–8 at 361.
See: Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015), secs. 3–12. For an account of the environmental topic in the Roman Catholic social doctrine until Benedict xvi, see: Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Joining in the Dance: Catholic Social Teaching and Ecology’, New Blackfriars, 93:1044 (2012), 193–212; Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor and for the Earth: Catholic Social Teaching (Maryknoll, ny: Orbis Books, 2012), pp. 414–27; see also: Christiana Z. Peppard, ‘Hydrology, Theology, and Laudato Si’’, Theological Studies, 77:2 (2016), 416–35 at 417–21.
See: Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Church and Economy: Responsibility for the Future of the World Economy’, Communio, 13:3 (1986), 199–204 at 200–203.
See: John Sniegocki, Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization: The Quest for Alternatives (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), pp. 126–131.
See: Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003).
See: Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), sec. 57, secs. 189–90.
See: Dorr, Option for the Poor and for the Earth, p. 78, pp. 135–6.
See: Christiana Z. Peppard, ‘Pope Francis and the Fourth Era of the Catholic Church’s Engagement with Science’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 71:5 (2015), 31–9 at 37.
See: Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Gaudium et Spes (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1966), sec. 36.
See: Dorr, Option for the Poor and for the Earth, pp. 422–3; Marx, ‘Everything is Connected’, 305–6.
See: Dorr, Option for the Poor and for the Earth, pp. 432–7.
See: Steve Douglas, ‘Religious Environmentalism in the West. I: A Focus on Christianity’, Religion Compass, 3:4 (2009), 717–737 at 725–6.
See: Douglas, ‘Religious Environmentalism in the West. I’, 725–9; Willis Jenkins, Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Celia Deane-Drummond, Eco-Theology (Winona, mn: Saint Mary’s Press, 2008). On religious environmentalism focusing on the United States, see the studies in: Angela M. Smith and Simone Pulver, ‘Ethics-Based Environmentalism in Practice: Religious-Environmental Organizations in the United States’, Worldviews 13 (2009), 145–179; Laurel Kearns, ‘Saving the Creation: Christian Environmentalism in the United States’, Sociology of Religion, 57:1 (1996), 55–70.
See: Anthony J. Kelly, ‘The Ecumenism of Ecology’, Pacifica, 28:2 (2015), 160–175. See also the initiatives of the World Council of Churches on the topics of ecology and social justice such as the seminar: World Council of Churches, ‘Addressing Ecology, Theology, and Justice in Practice’, held on 23–27 June 2014 at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland.
See: Douglas, ‘Religious Environmentalism in the West. I’, 728.
See: Johan Verstraeten, ‘Towards Interpreting Signs of the Times, Conversation with the World and Inclusion of the Poor: Three Challenges for Catholic Social Teaching’, International Journal of Public Theology, 5:3 (2011), 314–30 at 329–30.
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The recent social encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015) by Pope Francis, contains insightful considerations regarding the present ecological and economic crisis and it calls for an urgent and radical change in people’s lifestyles. Degrowth is an emergent social, political, and economic movement that praises the end of a growth-based society. Somehow, it seems that the ideas of degrowth have been not enough seriously considered by political and economic circles, and by religiously inspired social doctrines. This paper argues that the two, Francis’ text and degrowth’s principles, share some relevant points and they can be allied in prospecting and making effective a paradigmatic change in today’s socio-economic setting. After presenting degrowth’s main ideas, Francis’ text will be analyzed, for then summarizing the results of the analyses in the concluding part.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 990 | 198 | 33 |
Full Text Views | 296 | 6 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 177 | 8 | 0 |