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Abstract
Post-Development has reproduced the ‘development gaze’ by focusing on interventions and struggles in the South. This paper draws attention to the German version of degrowth, Postwachstum, as a possible Post-Development approach in the North. It thus contributes to the Post-Development agenda by including the North as a ‘development’ problem and by overcoming the view of the North as a homogeneous neo-liberal, capitalist, Eurocentric bloc. The paper examines key Postwachstum contributions with regard to their correspondence to insights of and gaps in the Post-Development debate. It argues that Postwachstum needs to include a postcolonial perspective on global inequalities and question the ‘development’–modernity–coloniality nexus more profoundly in order to provide a valuable contribution to the Post-Development agenda.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Aram Ziai and the reviewers for their helpful advice. This work was supported by the DFG Research Group ‘Landnahme, Acceleration, Activation. Dynamic(s) and (de-)stabilisation of modern growth societies’ at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Notes
1. Escobar, Encountering Development, 155.
2. Corbridge, “Beneath the Pavement,” 144.
3. Kiely, “The Last Refuge,” 38.
4. Ziai, “Post-Development,” 849.
5. Muraca, Gut leben, 33–6.
6. Demaria et al., “What Is Degrowth?”
7. D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis, Degrowth, pt. 3.
8. Latouche, Survivre au Développement; Entre Mondialisation et Décroissance.
9. Martinez Alier, Environmentalism of the Poor.
10. Escobar, “Degrowth, Postdevelopment, and Transitions”; Ziai, “Post-Development Concepts?”; Kothari, Demaria, and Acosta, “Buen”; Fees, Lauth, and Weichelt, “Der Globale Süden”; Thiele, “Post-Development Discourse.”
11. Kothari et al., “Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj,” 366.
12. Ziai, “Post-Development Concepts?,” 150.
13. Sachs, Development Dictionary; Ferguson, “Anti-Politics Machine”; Escobar, Encountering Development.
14. Escobar, “Degrowth, Postdevelopment, and Transitions,” 4.
15. Biccum, “Development and The ‘New’ Imperialism?”; Noxolo, “Claims.”
16. White, “Thinking Race”; Kothari, “‘Race’ in Development.”
17. Eriksson Baaz, Paternalism of Partnership; Heron, Desire for Development.
18. Crush, Power of Development; Cooke and Kothari, Participation.
19. Wainwright, Decolonizing Development; Bendix, “Curbing Population Growth.”
20. Dussel, Invention of the Americas; Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
21. Corbridge, “Beneath the Pavement”; Kiely, “Last Refuge.”
22. McGregor, “New Possibilities?”, 1693.
23. Gibson-Graham, “Surplus Possibilities.”
24. Sachs, Development Dictionary.
25. Ziai, “Post-Development.”
26. Dussel, Invention of the Americas; Kothari, “History, Time and Temporality”; Kebede, “African Development”; Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
27. Chari and Corbridge, Development Reader, 1.
28. Bennett, “Under-Development, Over-Development, Post-Development,” 983.
29. Power, “Anti-Racism”; Bennett, “Under-Development, Over-Development, Post-Development.”
30. Power, “Anti-Racism,” 36–7.
31. White, “Thinking Race,” 413.
32. Kiely, “Last Refuge,” 38.
33. Cowen and Shenton, “Invention of Development.”
34. Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Federici, Caliban and the Witch.
35. Habermann and Ziai, “Development, Internationalism and Social Movements.”
36. D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis, “Introduction,” 1.
37. Ibid., 2.
38. Muraca, Gut leben, chap. II.
39. Escobar, “Degrowth, Postdevelopment, and Transitions,” 4.
40. Latouche, Farewell to Growth, 56–7.
41. Demaria et al., “What is Degrowth?,” 192–3.
42. Ibid., 209.
44. Fees, Lauth, and Weichelt, “Der Globale Süden,” 52.
46. Schmelzer, “Spielarten der Wachstumskritik,” 118.
47. Miegel, Exit.
48. Seidl and Zahrnt, Postwachstumsgesellschaft.
49. Paech, Befreiung vom Überfluss.
50. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum.
51. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben.
52. Muraca, Gut leben, 35.
53. Miegel, Exit, 15.
54. Ibid., 134.
55. Ibid., 145.
56. Ibid., 149.
57. Ibid., 134.
58. Paech, Befreiung vom Überfluss.
59. Ibid., 39, 46, 49, 53, 61.
60. Seidl and Zahrnt, Postwachstumsgesellschaft, 9.
61. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 11.
62. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben, 10, 20.
63. Ibid., 26.
64. Mies, “Notwendigkeit, Europa zu entkolonisieren,” 32.
65. Miegel, Exit, 228.
66. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 84.
67. Ibid., 87.
68. Paech, Befreiung vom Überfluss, 114.
69. Ibid., 116.
70. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben, 74.
71. Ibid., 37.
72. Miegel, Exit, 40.
73. Ellmers, Developing Country Debt, 3.
74. Røpke, “Konsum.”
75. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 84.
76. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power”; Bernstein, “Colonialism, Capitalism, Development.”
77. Anon., Great Newes, 6–7.
78. Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America; Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science.
79. This estimation is based on the major publications analysed here. Within the internationally connected German degrowth movement, the anti-capitalist position has developed further and the North–South dialogue has also intensified. The former can be recognised in the contributions at the Leipzig Conference 2014 and at the Degrowth Summer Schools of 2015 and 2016. The latter is inter alia evident in the wide discussion of Acosta’s and Gudynas’ work on Buen Vivir as well as Ashish Kothari’s on radical ecological democracy.
80. Die Ökofalle.
81. Postwachstum, 67.
82. Ibid., 20.
83. Ibid., 67.
84. Ibid.
85. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben, 32.
86. Ibid., 33.
87. Seidl and Zahrnt, Postwachstumsgesellschaft, 18, fn. 1.
88. Ibid., 9.
89. Cf. Kebede, “African Development.”
90. Miegel, Exit, 100.
91. Ibid., 45.
92. Ibid.
93. Cf. Dussel, Invention of the Americas.
94. Ziai, “Ambivalence of Post‐Development.”
95. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 90.
96. Befreiung vom Überfluss, 11.
97. Kebede, “African Development.”
98. Miegel, Exit, 96.
99. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 73.
100. Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science.
101. Ibid., 118.
102. Schmelzer and Passadakis, Postwachstum, 78.
103. Ibid., 68.
104. eg Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies, Eine Kuh für Hillary.
105. Befreiung vom Überfluss, 145.
106. Ibid.
107. Cf. Fees, Lauth, and Weichelt, “Der Globale Süden,” 15–6, 39.
108. Miegel, Exit, 187.
109. Ibid., 29, 100.
110. Ibid., 193.
111. Ziai, “Post-Development Concepts?,” 149–50.
112. “Last Refuge.”
113. Miegel, Exit, 99.
114. Cf. Santos, Epistemologies of the South.
115. Miegel, Exit, 43.
116. Ibid., 44.
117. Ibid.
118. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben, 13, 24–6.
119. Ibid., 26.
120. Mies, “Notwendigkeit, Europa zu entkolonisieren,” 21.
121. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Geld oder Leben, 26.
122. Ibid., 27–35.
123. Dussel, Invention of the Americas; Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
124. Casas, “Transcending the Coloniality of Development.”
125. Brand, “Degrowth und Post-Extraktivismus,” 34.