A review of the degrowth literature (561 studies) find that ‘few studies use quantitative or qualitative data…’ and those that do ‘tend to include small samples or focus on non-representative cases’. Finally, ‘large majority (almost 90%) are opinions rather than analysis’.
Per Jason Hickel, one of the leading advocates of degrowth, this review is selectively excluding a large amount of degrowth studies.
This hit piece has already come under heavy criticism and for good reason. The methodology really is extremely flawed.
The authors look only at studies with “post-growth” or “degrowth” in the title, but this ignores much of the key empirical work that has shaped and advanced the field recently. The strange thing is that the authors are fully aware of this broader literature, and yet they exclude it.
Not all degrowth research has “degrowth” in the title! Just as not all research on political economy has “political economy” in the title. Basics. Huge swathes of research are ignored… all the work on demand-side mitigation, sufficiency-oriented approaches, energy convergence, ecosocialism, decoupling, doughnut economics, etc — including work reviewed by the IPCC — all of it is ignored.
As Julia Steinberger pointed out, of the 33 papers published under her last major grant on degrowth, only two of them would qualify under this criteria.
Also, if you design your review to include opinion, guess what, you’re going to get a lot of opinion! This is true of any field. This tells us nothing about whether the empirical basis of current degrowth arguments is sound. For that, you need to assess the empirical studies that people actually use for this purpose. And again, most of those are not covered in this review.
In my opinion, the main problem is that I don’t see any actual path towards even attempting degrowth under capitalism. The whole economy is structured around consumption. Seems to me that’s really the problem that needs to be focused on before any talk of degrowth or other approaches to sustainability can be entertained. Capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable and that is the problem that needs to be addressed as a prerequisite for any sustainable future being possible.
I agree similarly. Degrowth includes a critique of the consumption economy and overproduction of unnecessary products, but there’s no incentive for capitalists and governments to actually pursue that in a way that makes sense for capitalism, so there’s no concrete path towards degrowth policy until something necessitates it. I do however appreciate the research being done as it provides a vision for socialists in industrialized and post-industrialized countries.
I very much agree. Sustainability has to be the priority for socialist societies, and research into how sustainability can be achieved practically is valuable for that.
