Care as pluriversal strategy? Caring in counter-hegemonic struggles in the degrowth and environmental justice movements

ABSTRACT

Overcoming the destructive power of the capitalist world system requires bringing relevant alternatives together in a way that respects their diversity. In this article, we investigate the significance of care – in its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions – in the task of uniting the pluriverse alternatives at moments and sites of counter-hegemonic struggle. Our analysis focuses on the degrowth movement and environmental justice movements. Adopting a post-Marxist discourse theory lens, we argue that care can mobilize and coalesce these pluriverse alternatives into temporarily united counter-hegemonic coalitions. For effectively disrupting the hegemony of the capitalist world system, we suggest that the pluriverse should meet the following three conditions: (1) the symbolic construction of the world system as an enemy to mobilize against, (2) a vision recognizing the foundational nature of care-based relations for pluriversal futures, and (3) practices of care fitting together with the parallel understandings and visions of the pluriverse.

KEYWORDS:

• Pluriverse
• care
• degrowth
• environmental justice movements
• post-Marxist discourse theory

Introduction

We live in times of global crises, precipitated by the global destruction of ecosystems and by the exploitation of people and other beings. In the twenty-first century, the growth-driven capitalist world system (e.g. Wallerstein, 2004) has expanded this exploitation across the globe, aided by agents of capital and the manifold processes of extractivism, colonialism, the economics of growth, and the politics of oppression and inequality (Gills & Hosseini, 2022). Numerous alternatives resist the self-destructive expansion of capital and the subsequent growth economics (Mészáros, 2010; Saito, 2023; Schmelzer et al., 2022), including several initiatives from the Global South (Hosseini & Gills, 2020). The various alternatives challenging the rule of capital, fossil fuel-based industrialism, and (neo-) colonial oppression comprise the pluriverse: the multiple social movements, worldviews, practices, and communities that produce qualitatively different worlds to the hegemonic world system (Demaria & Kothari, 2017; Kothari et al., 2019).

The pluriverse alternatives are diverse and sensitive to the geographical and historical contexts in which they emerge. But their diversity and contextual specificity lead to fragmentation and a lack of the coordinative capacity required to resist the world system. In practice, it is difficult to coalesce all the alternatives into a united project because of power imbalances, scepticism surrounding mutual understanding and support, and the risk of perpetuating Eurocentrism (Muradian, 2019; Rodríguez-Labajos et al., 2019). We argue that to overcome the destructive power of the prevailing world system, the pluriverse alternatives need to unite in temporally delimited, counter-hegemonic coalitions, but they need to be mindful that those coalitions respect the diversity of each alternative and foster mutual support and solidarity.

In this article, we ask: how could different pluriverse alternatives temporarily unite in counter-hegemonic struggles against the hegemonic world system? And what role does care play in such struggles? We address these questions by investigating how care could facilitate a temporary unity among the pluriverse alternatives and allow them to establish stable counter-hegemonic coalitions while respecting each alternative’s uniqueness. We adopt a particular theory of hegemony and counter hegemony, post-Marxist discourse theory (PMDT), to explore how care might enable the alternatives to unite and allow them to retain their differences. We exemplify the strategic relevance of care by focusing on two pluriverse alternatives: the degrowth movement, and environmental justice (EJ) movements in Latin America. We describe how care manifests in three dimensions – ethical, practical, and affective dimensions – and emphasize the common grounds care and caring establish for uniting the pluriverse alternatives. We argue that care can mobilize and coalesce the pluriverse alternatives into united counter-hegemonic coalitions at moments and sites of struggle by allowing the alternatives to symbolically and affectively identify with one another. To ground our argument, we provide evidence in the form of illustrative quotes from the members of both the degrowth and EJ movements.

Calling for temporary unity in counter-hegemonic struggles might initially appear to clash with predominant understandings of pluriversal politics. Decolonial scholarship tends to foreground the potential of the pluriverse alternatives to make different worlds by remaining external to the hegemonic world system, and scholars like Mignolo (2002; see also Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) insist on the pluriverse alternatives’ exteriority to capitalism and modernity. But the relentless force of the hegemonic world system does not allow for a clean-cut exteriority: the world system shapes the dynamics of governments and populations in the Global South by incentivizing them to reproduce the extractive dynamics of global capitalism, and it destroys ecosystems and cultures in order to bring them into its grasp (Arboleda, 2020; Ranta, 2018). The type of unity envisioned for counter-hegemonic struggles would not imply the erasure of ontological difference. Instead, it would be created through partial connections that cross differences between the pluriverse alternatives (Escobar, 2020). The coalitions formed on the basis of this temporary unity would be composed of complex organizational arrangements that distribute political agency between grassroots direct action and interventions within state institutions (Hurtado Hurtado & Glynos, 2024). The hegemonic world system threatens the existence of the pluriverse’s multiple worlds, and temporary unity in counter-hegemonic coalitions may allow the movements in such coalitions to sustain their efforts against this world system (Dunford, 2020; Kapoor, 2020).

We frame our article as a theoretical discussion informed by empirical evidence from interviews with organizations belonging to the degrowth and EJ movements, conducted as part of ongoing research. We position care as strategically important for effective pluriversal counter hegemony and use the insights of PMDT (as a theory of hegemonic politics) to propose that care could create the conditions for temporary unity among the pluriverse alternatives. Although we consider the three dimensions of care to be important for pluriversal political strategy, we foreground its affective dimension, which remains underexplored in the literature. In exploring care as a condition that might facilitate synergies and temporary unity among the pluriverse alternatives, we seek to (1) bring into dialogue the scholarship on political strategy and care and (2) identify some conditions that may allow the pluriverse alternatives to resist and disrupt the hegemonic world system while respecting the diversity of each alternative.

Hegemony and counter hegemony within PMDT

Critical perspectives on hegemony in the international order often draw from the neo-Gramscian tradition (Cox, 1981; Goodman & Salleh, 2013). While rich and insightful, these perspectives leave room for further exploring the ideational and affective forces that stabilize the order or that drive systemic change. PMDT, as an alternative critical perspective on hegemony, stresses the importance of affective forces in granting stability to a hegemonic international order and in forming counter-hegemonic coalitions that disrupt and restructure it (Stengel & Nabers, 2019).

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe developed the basic premises of PMDT in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) and further developed the theory alongside their students in later works (Glynos & Howarth, 2007; Laclau, 1990, 2005). In PMDT, discourse refers to the organization of all social relations as co-constituted by a symbolic system. A discourse is formed through articulatory practice – the act of connecting seemingly distinct objects, institutions, and social practices with concepts and ideas in specific ways through language, thereby creating meaning and shared understanding in social relations (Jacobs, 2022). In performing articulatory practices, the organizing patterns of social relations gain stability. Subjects recognize this stability in social relations as the social order. Articulatory practice is key in political strategy since it enables political projects to emerge: different ideas and demands are made compatible and find common ground through articulation.

At the same time, articulatory practice requires that some elements – ideas, practices, objects, subjects, institutions – are excluded from a discourse in order to give it stability and create meaning; otherwise, tensions would arise in the discourse and risk its dissolution. The excluded elements always render the discourse inherently unstable. Their collision with the discourse could lead to dislocation – the collapse of a discourse because the external element breaks the connections between the articulated elements and makes subjects realize that the social order could be different (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Pluriverse debates foreground the tensions between realizing the pluriverse’s transformative potential and recognizing the situatedness and diversity of its alternatives (Gills & Hosseini, 2022; Nirmal & Rocheleau, 2019). In this context, the inherent instability of a discourse means that a broad social coalition where many different pluriverse alternatives unite in a counter-hegemonic project at a site of struggle need not be permanent: once the struggle is over, the different alternatives can disband and pursue their projects and political vision independently.

PMDT’s approach to hegemony involves different social groups and political initiatives uniting their demands into a common political project that all member groups can identify with (i.e. a hegemonic discourse). The groups uniting under a common project elevate a specific discursive element, like the idea of economic growth or the subject position of the working class, into a symbol – an empty signifier. The empty signifier represents the whole political project and organizes discursive elements – ideas, practices, objects, subjects, institutions – around it (Laclau, 2005). In doing so, the groups at the forefront of a hegemonic discourse are able to establish a specific, historically contingent way of understanding and organizing the world as a universal idea, as the ‘only’ way that social relations can be organized and can function (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985).

Social change occurs when hegemonic discourses are dislocated and replaced by other discourses. This occurs as a result of counter hegemony: the formation of broad social coalitions with an opposing demand that form an antagonistic relationship with the hegemonic discourse and struggle to overcome it. From the perspective of PMDT, counter hegemony proposes an opposing arrangement to the prevailing social order and articulates various discursive elements in opposition to the hegemony. The forms this counter hegemony adopts can be formal-institutional forms, like the Peronist movements in Argentina, but they may also be informal and based on affinity and compatible interests, like the transnational activist networks converging in regard to food sovereignty struggles (Dunford, 2020; Laclau, 2005). Although other ways of practicing counter hegemony exist – such as grassroots uprisings against police repression, sabotage against infrastructure projects, and prefigurative political projects (Dunlap, 2023) – PMDT proposes that counter-hegemonic political movements increase their strength by articulating points of unity that create a (temporary) collective identity and support the mobilization against the hegemony.

PMDT would characterize the hegemony in the international order as the establishment and continued dominance of the capitalist world system. Mészáros (2010) described how the system is organized through capital’s order of social metabolic reproduction, which works through the processes of wealth accumulation, labour markets, and neo-colonial dominance (see also Saito, 2023). Each of these components of social reproduction organizes surrounding elements, like international organizations, social and economic policies, and trade agreements. To illustrate, the hegemonic organization of the international order manifests in how neoliberalism, the current ideology of the capitalist world system, shapes the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and national development agencies by imposing a specific vision of development for the Global South (Kutay, 2022). Even as the international order has fragmented in recent decades, with the BRICS and MIKTA countries emerging as middle-power groups, global capital now transgresses national borders across the world to implant new geographies of extraction (Arboleda, 2020). Similarly, as Kapoor noted (2020, p. xiv), ‘people are seduced by capitalist development in spite of its production of inequalities and environmental ills’. Empty signifiers (like money), in their linguistic and material dimensions, acquire a central position in the international order because they elicit the desire of subjects and occupy a privileged space in the world system’s hegemony (Wullweber, 2019).

PMDT suggests that affect is key in sustaining or disrupting hegemonic discourses. Affective forces explain the attachment subjects have for specific objects of identification, like an ideal (e.g. freedom) or a practice (e.g. vacationing), and hold political communities and projects together (Glynos, 2021; Stavrakakis, 2013). By implication, forming a successful counter-hegemonic project would see different groups (like the working class, peasants, and environmentalists) symbolically and affectively identifying with one another against a common enemy (Laclau, 2005).¹ For instance, different groups might unite under a common signifier or demand, like post-capitalism or socio-ecological justice, held together by affects as diverse as reciprocal love, fear of a threat, or rage against an enemy. Hegemony (and counter hegemony) can eventually dissolve by emphasizing the differences between groups or demands in a coalition, thereby disrupting their symbolic and affective identification.

The role of affect in granting potency to political projects is one of the key strategic insights of PMDT (Glynos, 2021; Palestrino, 2022). Care, in functioning as affect, would allow the pluriverse alternatives to identify with one another, find common ground in their demands – for instance, preserving life and ecosystems – and sustain their drive to resist the same structural maldevelopments. This symbolic and affective identification would enable the pluriverse alternatives to temporarily unite into broad counter-hegemonic social coalitions, which is necessary for different movements to coalesce in global efforts to oppose the power of capital and economic growth (Kapoor, 2020). For instance, care could prompt the united pluriverse alternatives to mobilize at moments and sites of struggle (like ongoing extractive mega-projects, fusion energy, or electric car battery mega factories) and defend one another against the common enemy since they would perceive any aggression against any pluriverse alternative as an aggression that ultimately affects all of them.

A methodological note

This article brings together insights from two ongoing but independent research projects that relate to each of the pluriverse alternatives discussed here: one on the politics of degrowth and one on the challenges of Latin American EJ movements since the COVID-19 pandemic started. We, as the authors, realized that the emerging results from both projects showed wider relevance for debates on how to create synergies among the pluriverse alternatives against the hegemonic world system without sacrificing their diversity. However, bringing together these insights involved some limitations. First, the participants only explicitly discussed potential convergences around the affective dimension of care because the interviews were centred on political strategy and affects, but not explicitly on care. Second, this meant that a unified research strategy was not followed for generating the data used in this article since each research project followed its own rationale. We therefore choose to frame this article as a theoretical discussion informed by empirical evidence. We address the ethical and practical dimensions of care with a review of the literature on care for each pluriverse alternative, and we show how our participants articulate care in its affective dimension with quotes derived from each research project.

We understand the degrowth movement as a loose but growing community of people that organizes collective action regarding the need for deep socio-ecological transformation in the growth-based overshooting societies, aiming to drastically reduce matter-energy throughput in a democratic, planned, and just manner (Demaria et al., 2013; Schmelzer et al., 2022). The degrowth movement is relatively young: it started growing in terms of numbers of people involved in the movement and in visibility in the 2000s and frequently allies itself with other movements, including land defence and squatting struggles (Demaria et al., 2013; Dunlap & Laratte, 2022). We characterize EJ movements as the collective struggles and local communities that demand a halt to resource extraction, pollution, unregulated waste disposal, and other environmental harms that affect people and ecosystems (Martinez-Alier et al., 2016). Though the concept of EJ movements initially emerged in the United States in the 1980s, we focus here on contemporary Latin American EJ movements that resist deforestation and the privatization of water. To us, the degrowth and Latin American EJ movements provide noteworthy contrasts: the degrowth movement is mostly led by academic activists and the middle classes in the Global North² whereas the Latin American EJ movements are place-based and located in the Global South. Despite these differences, we aim to show how each alternative displays an affective, caring affinity towards the other, thus showing the potential to temporarily unite in counter-hegemonic struggles.

We draw on empirical data obtained from interviewing members of the degrowth movement in Europe and the Latin American EJ movements. The interviews followed a semi-structured format across the two projects since this format allows researchers to investigate the symbolic and affective dimensions of participants’ views on political strategy (Hurtado Hurtado & Glynos, 2024; Van Brussel, 2018). Thus far, we have interviewed 22 members from eight European degrowth organizations and eight members from two EJ organizations in Peru (defending the Amazon) and Chile (protecting water rights). The degrowth organizations include regional working groups listed on the degrowth.info website, as well as degrowth communication collectives and food cooperatives that were referred to us in a snowballing manner. These interviews have been conducted in English using videoconferencing software since 2023. The EJ organization in Peru advocates for indigenous territorial rights in the Amazon and resists its deforestation and enclosure, while the EJ organization in Chile seeks to revert water privatization and ensure access to water across the country. Interviews with these EJ movement organizations were conducted in Spanish throughout 2022–2023 using videoconferencing software.

PMDT oriented us towards identifying how participants articulated a caring affinity towards other pluriverse alternatives through recognition and identification (Laclau, 2005; Van Brussel, 2018). Following a retroductive mode of reasoning, which implied re-reading the interviews from the degrowth and EJ movements and deliberating on possible interpretations (Glynos & Howarth, 2007), we explore how care’s affective dimension might provide a sense of ‘communitarian fullness’ to both alternatives and orient them towards temporarily establishing a collective identity (Saldaña-Portillo, 2003). Similar to previous research using PMDT (Lapping & Glynos, 2018), we map out sites of affective investment in our interviewees’ statements that reflect care as a form of affect. We identify care by finding affectively charged signifiers with positive emotional valence (e.g. love, enjoy, care, fight, aid, support, save) and signifiers that signal meaningful bonds and relationships (e.g. solidarity, community, friends, family, partners, fraternity, kinship). We also examine how these signifiers articulate to others in a manner that combines care with the common struggle against the world system in order to preserve life and ecosystems.

Dimensions of care in the pluriverse

This section explores how care manifests in the pluriverse literature. Following feminist care ethics, we understand care as ‘everything that is done to maintain, continue, and repair “the world” so that all can live in it as well as possible’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 161, as reformulated from Tronto & Fisher, 1990). Specifically, we study care in its three dimensions: its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).

First, we review the literature on the ethical and practical dimensions of care for the degrowth and EJ movements. Then, we showcase the strategic significance of care in regard to uniting the pluriverse by highlighting, in an illustrative fashion, the affective dimension of care with quotes from our interviewees. To us, the quotes suggest that care, as an affective force, can create a sense of community that is necessary in the degrowth movement and EJ movements if they are to create convergences and temporarily unite in a counter-hegemonic struggle against the hegemonic world system.

The ethical dimension

The first relevant stream of literature could be seen to advance care as a way to guide the relations between the pluriverse alternatives, as well as between humans and non-humans. Pluriversal ethics are guided by ‘diversity, solidarity, commons, oneness with nature, interconnectedness, simplicity, inclusiveness, equity and non-hierarchy, pluriversality and peace’ (Demaria & Kothari, 2017, p. 2593). Rooted in an understanding of the political nature of morality (Tronto, 1993, 2013), the pluriversal ethic of care assumes a relational ontology and foregrounds the mutual vulnerability of relational beings, demanding an awareness of power differentials that might suppress other ways of being in the world (FitzGerald, 2022).

The relational aspect of the pluriversal ethic of care surfaces in the degrowth movement’s approach to justice because the actions of the Global North impact on and exploit the Global South and the broader global ecosystems. Care frames how the goals of degrowth can be achieved in a just and equitable way, particularly when thinking about Global North–South relations. Singh (2019, p. 139) recommended that degrowth activists ‘present degrowth in the Global North as the only ethical way of responding to and standing in solidarity with environmental justice struggles in the South’. Buch-Hansen and Nesterova (2023, p. 3) foregrounded care as a principle that can guide a degrowth transformation, asserting that ‘gentleness and care for and towards nature (including non-humans), society, other people, and one’s inner being would have to be pervasive and sustained’. For the degrowth movement, care constitutes both an imperative to degrow the matter-energy throughput in the Global North for the improved autonomy of the Global South and a metamorphosis in being, which would then lead to respecting ecological boundaries and other, non-human species (Heikkurinen, 2019).

For EJ movements, care is a central element in their worldview and belief systems. Boogaard and van Norren (2021) observed that Buen Vivir communities place humans in nature, where all living beings are considered on an equal footing with human beings, and share ideas of mutual care between humans and the rest of the natural world. Singh (2019) also discussed how EJ movements in the Global South are rooted in an ethics of care that highlight a deep interdependence and relationality, forming relations of kinship between humans and the rest of life. The central positioning of care in these indigenous belief systems also constitutes the EJ movements’ ethical demand of ‘defending life and territories in all their contexts’ (Vela-Almeida et al., 2020, p. 279). For EJ movements, care becomes foundational in the imperative to defend life and territories and guides how different pluriverse alternatives relate to one another.

The ethical dimension of care can face obstacles when navigating the complexities of the global political economy. For example, Ranta (2018) noted how Vivir Bien ideals exhibited tensions when adopted by the Bolivian state because Bolivia occupied a disadvantaged position in the global economy as it relied on the extraction of natural resources for its development plans. Similarly, research has shown internal tensions based on conflicting interests and the diverging histories of the groups constituting an alliance complicate establishing an ethical foundation that guides the collective actions of the groups (Kröger & Lalander, 2016; Wilson, 2022). Without meticulous reflection, planning, and negotiations between different indigenous and non-indigenous groups, simply ‘defending life and territories in all contexts’ might deepen maldevelopment dynamics in countries in the Global South. Refining ethical discussions on how to defend life while ensuring the well-being of people who are currently dependent on extractivism and industrialism remains critical in regard to linking ethical ideas of care with how it can manifest in practice.

The practical dimension

A second stream of the pluriverse literature emphasizes the role of care for stable, mutually nurturing socio-ecological relations. Here, care manifests as a practice that enables the flourishing of pluriverse alternatives: care work sustains life and can enable communities to thrive while protecting the commons. Thus, care as a practice is a baseline for communal life and coexistence (Dengler & Lang, 2022).

Feminist scholarship has influenced degrowth discussions on care as practice. Dengler and Strunk (2018) saw degrowth as promoting the reorganization of societies around care by reducing the workday and liberating time that people can use for caring activities. Dengler and Seebacher (2019) and Salleh (2010) noted that though degrowth might rebalance the distribution of reproductive labour, this needs to be intentional and intersectional. For this to happen, they suggested adopting a relational, onto-epistemological stance. This would foster sensitivity towards historical processes and differentials in social power, dissolve the nature/culture divide, and reintegrate marginalized knowledge within degrowth proposals (Dengler & Seebacher, 2019, p. 250).

Akbulut et al. (2019) suggested that both the degrowth and EJ movements, alongside other pluriverse alternatives, share a similar view on care. Care is necessary for the reproduction of life and extends to the relations between humans and non-humans. For the degrowth movement, Dengler and Lang (2022, p. 3) proposed the ‘commonisation of care’, a form of reproductive labour that is ‘communal, largely unpaid, yet socially recognised’. This commonization of care would satisfy life-serving needs. Inspired by Latin American indigenous communities, Dengler and Lang (2022, p. 17) foregrounded communitarian caring commons, embedded in a specific territory, that allow humans to care for the surrounding non-human nature in interdependent relations. Dengler and Lang (2022) further discussed how communitarian caring commons, like the solidary healthcare system from the cooperative network Cecosesola or the itinerant community kitchens in southern Mexico that feed migrant communities, are dysfunctional from the perspective of capitalist accumulation because they decommodify relations and aim to satisfy needs.

EJ movements already practice communitarian caring for the commons. The movements aim to create harmonious and equitable futures in a struggle for ‘territory as a political, cultural and dynamic concept that links people with one another and with all beings’ (Ferrando et al., 2020, p. 1276). Some movements practice this as part of their lifestyle. For example, Maldonado-Villalpando et al. (2022) depicted how grassroots innovation in autonomous Zapatista education fostered territorial care, such as plant cultivation, cooking, and rituals related to caring for the environment. Other movements practice care as a form of resistance. For example, indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon use legal means to regain control and ownership over their ancestral lands to protect them against deforestation, fighting against transnational companies and national conservation projects, while Mapuche activists attack the local forestry industry network to stop extractivism in Chile (Merino & Chinchay, 2022; Schmalz et al., 2023). For EJ movements, care as practice thus involves creating the conditions that allow them to preserve the integrity of their territories or defend the territory against extractivist incursions.

Members of the degrowth movement and – particularly – the EJ movements in Latin America who are practicing care on the ground may have to confront the hardship of repression and risk their lives while defending the territories against extractivist projects. Ferrando et al. (2020, p. 1278) emphasized how their ‘stories of marches, pickets, mobilization and organization’ in the struggle against land commodification and the destruction of territories are also testimonies of ‘violence, fear, oppression, invisibility and tiredness that accompany them’. Our interviewees from the Latin American EJ movements have suffered violence and fear as well, with indigenous activists from the Peruvian organization facing threats and some being murdered and members of the Chilean organization being constantly monitored by state police forces.

The affective dimension

The affective dimension of care in the pluriverse literature remains underexplored. When addressed, care appears as a relational affect that circulates between bodies, facilitating new ways of living in a way that is respectful to all forms of life (Singh, 2018). Moreover, care as an affect forms subjectivities that drive collective anti-capitalist revolutionary struggles (Singh, 2017). Care as an affective force thus appears to enable two phenomena: sustainable and just lifestyles – such as learning agroecology and living within ecovillages that create a space for commoning activities (Swilling, 2019) – and political struggles that defend or create these lifestyles (Demaria & Kothari, 2017; González-Hidalgo, 2021).

Members of the degrowth movement display care as a form of affect when discussing their relationships to others:

I establish communion bonds with the people that I live closely with because we must help each other to survive because, in the end, the reality is that we must cultivate, we must clean, we must eat, we must care for each other, we must heal each other. So, this obviously generates strategies with people I feel close to, which would be my family. But to me, my family is any person, in the end. And, ultimately, also any living being. (Degrowth Participant 1, Spain)

In this statement, ‘family’ is articulated in relation to ‘any person’ and ‘any living being’, which suggests this member’s desire to broaden care beyond their intimate circle and extends to all human and non-human beings. Similarly, ‘communion bonds’ are articulated with actions like ‘survive’, ‘cultivate’, ‘care’, and ‘heal’, conveying the idea that meaningful relationships sustain the degrowth movement. Moreover, the use of ‘we’ underscores the relational quality of care as affect, suggesting that the members of the movement can identify with others in order to form a collective identity.

The interviewed members of the degrowth movement also value joining with other movements. They highly regard the indigenous movements in the Global South, emphasizing their contributions to the degrowth movement:

I think it is really necessary to establish connections, insofar as we respect others’ perspectives. At no point can a white [non-indigenous] person go to an indigenous organization and tell them how to apply the principles of degrowth. Particularly when you consider that they are, in a sense, the basis for degrowth. They do not destroy … [they live] this indigenous idea of ‘What nature gives us, we give back to it’. (Degrowth Participant 2, Spain)

As expressed here, both ‘connections’ and ‘respect’ suggest that the interviewed member of the degrowth movement affectively cares for indigenous movements and worldviews because the member considers them a reference for sustainable and just forms of livelihood and life. While the interviewee here draws inspiration from indigenous movements, the statement downplays the difficulties indigenous movements face when embedded in the global political economic system. Some indigenous groups do oppose capitalism and extractive industries, including the members of the Peruvian organization we interviewed. In contrast, others – like some indigenous groups in Bolivia under Evo Morales – co-exist and negotiate with capitalism as part of a political project that grants state institutions the authority to extract natural resources and allocate them for neo-developmentalist goals (Ranta, 2018).

When reflecting on other struggles against the hegemonic world system, members of the degrowth movement appear to be affectively touched: ‘I’m definitely encouraged when I see those people putting their own bodies on the land […]. Indigenous leaders, when you see what they’ve been doing for literal centuries, there’s ways in which that’s encouraging’ (Degrowth Participant 1, Switzerland). While the reference does not specify which indigenous leaders it refers to, it suggests an affective appreciation that motivates this member of the degrowth movement. Additionally, seeing other movements taking action elicits positive affective responses in degrowth members: ‘I do feel encouraged when it’s like, there are pictures of people on the streets, [I get a feeling] like, “This is happening” […] you see these things and it’s kind of hopeful’ (Degrowth Participant 1, Switzerland, their emphasis). We interpret these statements as implying that care as affect moves between beings and between movements. This movement of care might allow the members of the degrowth movement to join other movements in moments of struggle and at the sites of struggle. However, the members of the degrowth movement should critically reflect on their caring affects towards other alternatives in order to avoid romanticizing them. As Argyrou (2005) explained, romanticizing the ‘other’ reinforces myths of ‘noble natives’ living peacefully with nature and ignores the complex lived experiences of the other pluriverse alternatives, which include repression, marginalization, and racism.

A similar movement of care as affect appears in the EJ movements of Latin America. The leader of the indigenous EJ movement in Peru that defends the Amazonian jungle described her desire to ‘find new allies, new brothers to join our fight and make it visible. And to help us to pressure the Peruvian state to take actions, concrete actions’ (woman leader, Peruvian EJ movement, her emphasis). Here, the signifier ‘brothers’ – which expresses the desire to form caring familial bonds – is articulated with ‘allies’ and ‘fight’. This articulation suggests that care acting as affect may move between EJ movements and other pluriverse alternatives as this indigenous EJ movement connects with other movements, symbolically forming a familial identity. The leader reiterates this connection by saying: ‘anyone who wants to support in any possible way is a great help to us. And we recognize them as part of the Resistance of the Green Heart’ (woman leader, Peruvian EJ movement). Recognizing supporters as part of the Resistance of the Green Heart conveys an affective relationality between this movement and others in the pluriverse. This EJ movement symbolically integrates supporters into the same resistance, aided by caring, familial bonds.

The Chilean EJ movement fighting for water rights echoes this sentiment when explaining its political practices: ‘Our other axes [of action] consist of resistance in the streets, in the territories, and gradually adding minds and gaining hearts, as we say. And we do so through different territorial actions’ (woman leader, Chilean EJ movement). Through territorial actions, like collecting and treating water for communities affected by artificially induced water scarcity, this movement aims to modify the subjectivities of others so that they can identify with the struggle against water privatization in Chile. But the reference to ‘gaining hearts’ suggests that the aimed identification possesses an affective component, one that could bolster the EJ movement’s resistance against the hegemonic world system.

The statements of both the degrowth and EJ movements offer evidence that care as affect can sustain their struggles against the hegemonic world system. Moreover, the statements suggest that care as affect would enable the degrowth and EJ movements to unite, alongside other pluriverse alternatives, into temporary counter-hegemonic coalitions at moments and sites of struggle. This would occur because they care for one another and feel inspiration, hope, and solidarity in their collective action. However, the role of care as affect in sustaining pluriverse struggles should not be romanticized. Doing so would risk idealizing care in complex and sometimes divergent struggles that must confront power imbalances when challenging the hegemonic world system. In this regard, we acknowledge Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) insight which stated that the different dimensions of care – the ethical, practical, and affective dimensions – constitute one another but also involve tensions and contradictions that can be difficult to navigate.

For the ‘unity versus diversity’ debate in a pluriversal transition, care’s ethical dimension would make it imperative for each alternative to defend the other alternatives in their counter-hegemonic struggles as care guides the connections between humans, non-humans, and (in this case) between the degrowth and EJ movements. The practical dimension emphasizes two forms of action equitably distributed among genders: (1) the everyday labour of social reproduction that sustains households, communities, and movements and (2) resistance against neoliberal policies and extractivist megaprojects, preserving the integrity and well-being of territories and ecosystems. Finally, care’s affective dimension displays the movement of care as affect between beings and movements, facilitating each actor in a pluriverse alternative to identify with actors in other pluriverse alternatives. By identifying with each other, the degrowth and EJ movements might be able to create strong enough connections to resist the world system. While we agree with Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017, p. 7) argument that the question of how to care is not solved easily, we wish to highlight the strategic relevance of care’s affective dimension in regard to forming and sustaining successful counter-hegemonic coalitions, something we further explore in the next section.

Mobilizing the pluriverse’s counter hegemony?

Collective identification in the pluriverse

To further illustrate the relevance of care as affect in regard to mobilizing the pluriverse, we first explore the role of affect in temporarily uniting the pluriverse at moments of struggle. Two examples from the academic literature of counter-hegemonic coalitions led by pluriverse alternatives illustrate how collective identification and affect can form counter-hegemonic coalitions that challenge the hegemonic world system. The examples we include here focus on Latin American EJ movements and not on the degrowth movement because, to our knowledge, degrowth members have not yet spearheaded a counter-hegemonic coalition; instead, they have formed part of broader coalitions (Dunlap & Laratte, 2022; Schmelzer et al., 2022).

The first example is the Zapatista struggle against the neoliberal NAFTA trade agreement, co-signed by the former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Saldaña-Portillo (2003) documented how the Zapatistas, in their uprising in 1994, centrally positioned the notion of ‘Indian difference’ (articulating around it a set of demands and groups) in their communiqués against the neoliberal regime in Mexico. These groups included multiple indigenous groups (the Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Mixtec, Zapotec, among others), alongside peasants, workers, and mestizos, all of whom became identified with the notion of ‘Indian difference’ that the Zapatistas emphasized. In the process of articulation, ‘Indian difference’ no longer referred only to the struggle of indigenous communities but became infused with other, wider demands for societal change, like demands for revolution, nation, and liberty.

This symbolic articulation of numerous demands and groups into a counter-hegemonic coalition was aided by rituals that promoted collective and affective identification, even with supporters of the Zapatista uprising that arrived from other countries. Saldaña-Portillo (2003) depicted how the Zapatistas requested their visitors to identify with ‘Indian silence’ in the 1996 ‘International Meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism’. The visitors realized that neoliberal policies had neglected and silenced them as much as it had silenced other indigenous groups in Mexico. For Saldaña-Portillo, the ‘Indian silence’ was ‘filled with noise, with planning, communication, movement, tactics, coercion, frustration, ties, networks, suffering, satisfaction – a silence so filled with activity that it ruptures from within, a truly deafening quiet’ (Saldaña-Portillo, 2003, p. 207). Identifying with ‘Indian silence’ elicited the conflicting affects of suffering and satisfaction in the visitors. But it also allowed them to affectively invest in the Zapatista struggle against neoliberalism in new ways.

The second instance is the uprising in the Savage Road, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, in 2017, as documented by Japhy Wilson (2023). When the Global Andean Construction (CGA) company, a subsidiary of a conglomerate subcontracted by Schulmberger, refused to pay its workers the utilidades (shares of the profits) they had been promised for extracting oil, an uprising was formed against the CGA at the location of Obrador Central (their workplace) in the Savage Road. This uprising was led by a ‘motley crew’, comprised of Huaorani, Kichwa, and Shuar indigenous groups, mestizo peasants, Afro-descendant communities, and CGA workers. A particular moment in this conflict encapsulates how collective and affective identification held these disparate factions of the ‘motley crew’ together. Wilson (2023) described how Bolívar Naichap, a leader of the Shuar community, made a call that elevated the indigenous identity to a universal category, saying ‘Here we are all Indigenous!’ This call articulated the identification process of the members of the uprising to an indigenous identity. Elsewhere, Wilson (2022) explained how the crew performed various rituals, like songs and dances, that affectively resonated with other members of the ‘motley crew’ who felt dispossessed and exploited by the extractive frontier, represented by the CGA. This affective resonance united all the factions against the common enemy of the CGA and state representatives, mocking their supposed authority over them.

Contrasting affective forces held together the social coalitions depicted above, but ultimately resulted in different consequences for each coalition. The coalition led by the Zapatistas navigated between the affects of suffering and satisfaction, and it contemplated their political relevance. This calm navigation of their affects led the members of the coalition to understand the complexity and history of the Zapatista struggles and find that neoliberal policies and proceedings harmed all the coalition groups (Saldaña-Portillo, 2003). In contrast, the affects of the ‘motley crew’ of the Savage Road were passionate, driving the insurgency against the exploitative (working and living) conditions in Ecuador for a short time while its representatives reached a deal. Though the Zapatista movement did not overcome neoliberalism in Mexico in 1994, it resisted its incursion. Currently, the Zapatista struggle continues and its members have engaged in mutual support (a form of care) in international networks, though they recurrently face paramilitary violence and – more recently – attacks from organized crime. However, the ‘motley crew’ disbanded after a few months because of internal conflicts (Wilson, 2023). We could surmise that affects that foster a stable identification among the pluriverse alternatives may form stronger coalitions against a common enemy, allowing them to continuously resist its incursions.

Care as affect for mobilizing the pluriverse

For pluriversal political strategy, key questions become: can care, in its affective dimension, become a mobilizing force for the pluriverse alternatives that allows them to resist, and potentially transform, the world system? And can it unite them while respecting their diversity? By posing these questions, we do not aim to suggest that care is the only necessary attribute required to realize the transformative potential of the pluriverse alternatives. Rather, we highlight that care can play a key strategic role, alongside other attributes, like collective learning, common and open grounds for dialogue, and concrete actions against the hegemonic world system (Dunlap & Laratte, 2022; Hosseini et al., 2017). We now provide preliminary evidence that for two pluriverse alternatives – the degrowth and Latin American EJ movements – care holds the potential to temporarily unite them in a counter-hegemonic struggle.

Some members from the degrowth movement discussed how affective bonds have facilitated their political mobilization:

I did feel like being part of the degrowth movement and going to protests with all of my friends … made it easier and more enjoyable […] Since I have been a member, I’ve joined many protests, for example. So, also a kind of collective action shift happened there. (Degrowth Participant 3, Switzerland)

For this member, affectively investing in the degrowth movement drove her to join protests, a form of political mobilization. But friendship with the other members, which elsewhere in the interview is mentioned as a source of mutual support and care, elicited joy in participating in those protests. The importance of friendship for this degrowth member resonates with Gustavo Esteva’s (2023, p. 277) discussion of the importance of friendship and social change: ‘Friends come together and begin learning what they can do in the current transition. Which are the challenges of the current horror. How can you begin an alternative path? Together. With friends’.

Beyond this affective grounding for mobilization and collective action, care also manifests in the relationality the members intuitively feel towards other pluriverse alternatives. A degrowth movement member expressed the following when discussing political strategy:

To me, they [indigenous movements in Latin America] are obviously part of degrowth. Degrowth is born by recognizing that indigenous thought teaches us about living well. And when we fight for degrowth, we are not only fighting for our sake, we are fighting for their sake as well. Degrowth, in principle, does not breach the ideas of indigenous groups, it supports them. (Degrowth Participant 2, Spain)

By articulating the signifier ‘fighting’ with the collective signifier ‘we’, this degrowth member affirms that actions against the world system are beneficial for degrowth members and for other movements. Fighting for degrowth would defend the other pluriverse alternatives against the world system because the alternatives would comprise a collective identity. Care as affect underpins this fighting drive as it prompts the degrowth movement to mobilize for collective well-being. However, recalling Argyrou (2005), when degrowth members seek to establish a collective identification with other pluriverse alternatives, they should be mindful not to perpetuate ‘othering’ narratives and engage with their counterparts through open intercultural dialogues.

Care and collective identification appear to bolster the struggle against the world system for EJ movements, too. The leader of the Peruvian EJ movement aims to create meaningful relationships and exchanges with other movements that have similar goals:

We would love to add many green hearts to this resistance, to form bonds of fraternity in this collective struggle to defend life. We want them to come visit us and learn from us, and come and take home our medicine, our indigenous clothing, our necklaces as theirs [talking about gifts and exchange, not pillaging], and we want them to return to their place of residence and become ambassadors of the Resistance of the Green Heart. (woman leader, Peruvian EJ movement)

Here, ‘love’ – an affective manifestation of care – is articulated with ‘bonds of fraternity’ and the ‘collective struggle to defend life’. This articulation suggests that, for this EJ movement, the fight against the world system is entangled with caring affects that create meaningful connections with others. The reference to adding ‘many green hearts’ implies that a process of collective identification is occurring: others who share their aim, like the pluriverse alternatives, become part of the same Resistance of the Green Heart.

In the Chilean EJ movement fighting for water rights, care similarly manifests in reaching out to other movements and communities in defence of the territory. A leader of this EJ movement described how virtual tools allowed for greater connection:

We were able to strengthen our bonds with others. Previously, it was challenging because of the geographical distance. Since we found the marvels of virtual media, we have improved our work tools and ensured that all communities in this struggle for water rights feel represented. (woman leader, Chilean EJ movement)

Here, care as affect surfaces in the drive to strengthen ‘bonds with others’, eventually forming communities that collectively identify with one another in this struggle. Making communities feel represented also implies the articulation of different demands into a counter-hegemonic coalition that elevates the struggle for water rights as the main goal to be achieved.

In the above examples, care appears to operate as an affective force that binds each pluriverse alternative to the others in a common struggle. That is, it drives them towards temporary unity. Importantly, this would result from creating a collective identity, like that of the degrowth movement or the Resistance of the Green Heart, or recognizing one another as part of the same struggle. Nonetheless, the creation of a collective identity seems to occur with equal respect between the degrowth and EJ movements. The statements above suggest that care would appear as continuous affection, built gradually by each alternative. This characteristic of care holds the potential to sustain a common counter-hegemonic struggle over time.

However, the question remains: how can we respect the diversity of the pluriverse in such a way that movements can be united while retaining their uniqueness? Here, the affective, the ethical and the practical dimensions of care play a role. PMDT suggests that diluting each member’s specificity in a counter-hegemonic coalition is only temporary and can never be complete: they are made equivalent in the struggle, but they can regain their specificity when the coalition is dissolved (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Slowly forming affective caring relations might allow each alternative to respect the others’ differences after victory is achieved at a moment and site of struggle: care as affect could make the alternatives unwilling to transgress the others’ boundaries. In its ethical dimension, care generates respect for other humans, non-humans, and movements, viewing them as being on an equal footing. It also demands equitable treatment among the pluriverse alternatives and highlights the diversity, interconnectedness, and awareness of power differentials (Demaria & Kothari, 2017). In turn, the practical dimension would facilitate the material conditions for the sustenance of the counter-hegemonic struggle, translating the affective and ethical dimensions into concrete actions (like commoning resources in order to feed members on the frontlines of the struggle or to provide communal childcare support). Affectively caring for the other alternatives would, in our view, facilitate complying with the ethical and practical demands of care and allow each alternative to build context-sensitive political projects in places where the struggle has succeeded.

The conditions for effective pluriversal counter-hegemonic struggles

Beyond temporarily uniting and mobilizing the pluriverse alternatives, caring individuals and communities need to constitute a more integrated political project to resist the incursions of the capitalist world system and dislocate it. That is, a new counter-hegemonic discourse should replace the dislocated world system in an antagonistic struggle wherein relations of oppression are displaced and new emancipatory relations where the many pluriverse worlds co-exist are established. We propose some conditions that should underpin the political projects of a temporarily united pluriverse, recognizing that these projects should be context and location specific and led by local pluriverse alternatives. In these conditions, we describe the role of care in its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions.

In line with PMDT, the first condition is symbolically constructing the hegemonic world system as an enemy because the capitalist world system disrupts care-based relations and threatens the existence of the pluriverse’s many worlds. The expanding and colonizing capitalist world system dispossesses indigenous communities, peasants, working classes, and other subaltern groups of their means of life and exploits them in the name of capital, growth, and power (Dunlap, 2022; Gills & Hosseini, 2022). Symbolically constructing the capitalist world system as an enemy would enable the pluriverse alternatives to direct affects (such as rage and indignation) towards it and mobilize against it in an antagonistic struggle to restore care-based relations. Ferrando et al. (2020, p. 1278) showed that this condition is surfacing in struggles against land commodification and dispossession: ‘People across the globe are resisting now, in the present, because they are aware of the urgent need – and possibility – for another relationship between humans and the earth – Mother Earth for some, commons for others, ancestral territories for still others’. As illustrated by the Zapatista uprising (Saldaña-Portillo, 2003), the symbolic construction of neoliberal capitalist policies and proceedings as an enemy should appeal to multiple groups, not only to the pluriverse alternatives. This would enable forming a broader, stronger coalition against the common enemy.

The second condition moves from the problems presented by the world system to the envisioned – and desired – futures proposed by the pluriverse, which would be underpinned by care-based relations. These futures surface in the ideal societal visions of each pluriverse alternative, which reflect mutually nurturing socio-ecological relations. Pluriversal political imaginaries are not fully developed on this front. As presented in Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (Kothari et al., 2019), the alternatives vary from worldviews to practices, but political struggle requires an integrative political vision to be articulated. In practice, the pluriverse alternatives resisting the world system would need to articulate a set of demands, identities, visions, institutions, objects, and practices together, forming a political vision that promotes care-based relations. This vision needs to appeal to subjects currently accepting the hegemony of the world system. PMDT suggests that the alternatives should unite under a contextually specific empty signifier (like Earth’s defenders or socio-ecological justice) that creates a collective identity in which the pluriverse alternatives can affectively invest. This is necessary to gain support and form broad social coalitions, grip subjects, elicit their desires, and animate their political actions. More developed imaginaries that portray the care-based relations as part of everyday life and the institutional landscape of future pluriverse societies might grant potency to political projects that aim to resist and overcome the world system.

The final condition involves practicing care and fitting the practices of care together with the parallel understandings and visions of the pluriverse. We subscribe to the idea that engaging in pluriversal world-making practices shapes subjectivities and guides subjects to establish new, mutually-beneficial socio-ecological relationships (D’Alisa & Kallis, 2020). Engaging in these practices requires trust, respect, and reciprocal relationality, all cultivated through equitable exchanges and empathetic dialogue between the actors in pluriverse alternatives (Singh, 2019). Under these conditions, each pluriverse alternative would value the unique features of the others and encourage mutual support with the goal of common flourishing. Practicing care, in this context, would manifest in prefigurative political projects, like land-based eco-villages, agroecological peasant communes, and establishing communities that defend territories of life, all of them adapted to the context in which they emerge. But it can also manifest in mobilizing at sites of struggle in support of a local pluriverse alternative in order to resist the world system’s incursions, directing funding towards supporting both prefigurative political projects and revolutionary struggles that erode corrupted institutions and assisting in everyday care work that supports pluriverse practitioners. Practicing care, then, recognizes contextual differences and carves out spaces for pluriverse alternatives to flourish.

While the three conditions might be necessary to articulate the successful counter-hegemonic struggles of the pluriverse, a latent risk involves reproducing hegemonic relations and ‘othering narratives’ within the constitutive groups (Argyrou, 2005). A way to mitigate this is to establish ‘transversal linkages’ (Hosseini et al., 2017) before and throughout the process of articulating the counter-hegemonic struggle. Transversal linkages means that the different pluriverse alternatives recognize one another as autonomous and that they build connections through solidarity and openness, exemplifying thus the ethics, practice, and affects of care. This would allow the pluriverse initiatives to negotiate values and demands which can strengthen the affective dimension of care and drive the alternatives’ mobilization and support actions at moments and sites of struggle.

How could transversal linkages be created? The literature suggests integrating practices that develop affective connections at meetings of convergence. A central practice has been mística, a pedagogical practice that facilitates forming shared subjectivities through activities such as theatre and joint singing. Organizations like La Vía Campesina and the V Dialogues of Knowledges and Movements use mística to articulate shared visions (Dunford, 2020; Leinius, 2020). Other actions include co-developing translocal organizations with other pluriverse alternatives, as discussed by one of our interviewees:

[the platform we are building] has this strong decolonization aspect of finding out, together with the organizations and associations of the Global South, how the North can help, what support the North can offer, and also what are the inspirations that are transferred from the South to the North. (Degrowth Participant, Czech Republic)

Co-developing these organizations since their inception aims to identify specific support actions that movements like the degrowth movement can offer to Global South movements, thereby gradually developing mutual trust. This trust is key to also building symbolic and affective identification between the pluriverse alternatives and facilitating complying with the demands of care. Finally, a practical way to manage any tensions may be to involve different groups in a coalition discussing emotions, historical divisions between individuals and groups, and difficulties in caring for one another and for the commons in strategically designed workshops (González-Hidalgo, 2021). Such organizational efforts may direct the members of each movement towards navigating tensions in a reflexive manner and addressing them so that both joint demands can be articulated and counter-hegemonic coalitions are sustained over time (Hurtado Hurtado & Glynos, 2024; Dunford, 2020).

Conclusion

In this article, we explored the potential for care to create temporary unity among pluriverse alternatives while allowing them to retain their diversity. We used PMDT to describe how counter-hegemonic struggles can disrupt the hegemony of the current world system. We argued that care – in its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions – could form the basis for temporary counter-hegemonic unity. At the same time, PMDT highlighted the relevance of affect for counter-hegemonic struggles. While pluriversal politics and counter hegemony might have some tensions as regards political strategy, the hegemonic world system is a structural enemy that threatens the existence of a world wherein many worlds fit. We argued that pluriversal care, in its affective dimension, can act as a mobilizing force for the pluriverse alternatives to temporarily unite in counter-hegemonic coalitions by allowing them to identify with one another. Based on our data, we offered initial evidence that these two alternatives can relate to each other through care as affect.

In our account of counter hegemony, how care also allows the diversity of the pluriverse to be preserved is important. Informed by PMDT, we suggested that care as affect can maintain respectful relations wherein the differences between alternatives are valued and each alternative retains its autonomy after a counter-hegemonic coalition disbands. Affectively caring for the other alternatives might encourage them to comply with the ethical and practical demands of care, as outlined in the pluriverse literature. However, to disrupt the hegemony of the capitalist world system, the pluriverse should meet three conditions in an integrative political project: (1) the symbolic construction of the capitalist world system as an enemy to mobilize against, (2) a vision recognizing the foundational nature of care-based relations for pluriversal futures, and (3) practices of care fitting together with the parallel understandings and visions of the pluriverse.

We therefore argue that the dilemma of realizing the transformative potential of the pluriverse does not necessarily entail choosing either only unity or only diversity. A temporary unity built on the basis of partial connections that cross differences may sustain the drive of each alternative to care for others and resist the hegemonic world system. This can manifest, for example, in organizations that are co-developed between pluriverse alternatives that acknowledge the lived realities of each alternative. The pluriversal care could consequently unite the alternatives at specific moments and sites, but also help them retain their diversity as long as solidarity, openness, and respect for autonomy shape this unity.

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the individual and organizational participants in this research. The authors also wish to thank the editors of the Special Issue for their valuable feedback and the anonymous reviewers who provided meaningful and insightful comments that helped improve upon previous versions of this manuscript. This project was supported by the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation (Hurtado Hurtado’s PhD work) and by the Research Council of Finland (grant number 343277). Joshua Hurtado Hurtado also wishes to thank María José Camacho Gómez and Mariana Gabarrot for their helpful feedback in early versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Joshua Hurtado Hurtado’s work is funded by the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation, Project Number 202200237. The work of Ruuska and Heikkurinen was supported by the Research Council of Finland (part of the ‘Skills of self-provisioning in rural communities’ project) Grant Number 343277. Ruuska’s work was also funded by the Kone Foundation (part of the ‘Underdogs of the just transition’ project), grant number 202302807.

Notes on contributors

Joshua Hurtado Hurtado

Joshua Hurtado Hurtado is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, studying degrowth as a political project from the perspective of post-Marxist discourse theory. He also conducts interdisciplinary research on Futures Studies and on death studies.

Vilma Hämäläinen

Vilma Hämäläinen is an independent scholar and a graduate of the Global Development Studies programme at the University of Helsinki. Her master’s thesis investigated the relational foundations of degrowth, focusing on its ontological and axiological premises.

Toni Ruuska

Toni Ruuska (DSc) is a lecturer in food economy and Adjunct Professor in Sustainable Economy at the University of Helsinki. In his research, Ruuska seeks to find avenues for an alternative agrarian political economy. Theoretically he is involved in ecological Marxism, feminism, and phenomenology.

Pasi Heikkurinen

Pasi Heikkurinen (DSc) is professor at LUT University, Adjunct Professor in Sustainable Economy at the University of Helsinki, Chair of the Finnish Society for Environmental Social Science, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Sustainable Change Research Network.

Notes

1 The working class, peasants, and environmentalists are analytical categories, among others, which conceal the diversity and tensions within the wide array of struggles and movements that embody them. Dunford (2020), for example, discussed the many food sovereignty movements across different geographies and how they converged around La Vía Campesina. Because PMDT tends towards abstraction and discussions of political strategy as opposed to thick descriptions of on-the-ground events, a limitation of this approach resides in often overlooking tensions within alliances and coalitions.

2 There is controversy surrounding the ‘movement’ status of the degrowth movement. We subscribe to the idea that it is a loosely connected movement with shared frames, as discussed by Demaria et al. (2013).