Guests at the opening of the Honours Programme (Moritz Harzbecher and Linda von Faber 5th and 4th from right, first row; Photo: Christoph Worsch)
Two student employees of flumen have been accepted into the Honours Programme for research-oriented students at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. This is an initial one-year grant to enable particularly committed students to gain in-depth insights into research processes during their studies, to give them a share in the scientific community and to prepare them for a scientific career. Funding is provided for Linda von Faber with Dr. Martin Fritz as supervisor and the topic “Bioenergy Villages: Paving the Way to a Postfossil Future?”, in which survey data from flumen will be analysed, as well as Moritz Harzbecher with Dr. Matthias Schmelzer and Dr. Jörg Oberthür as mentors and the project “Protest against urban sprawl: A socio-ecological transformation conflict?”, in which interviews are conducted with members of a protest alliance against urban sprawl and analysed against the background of the research perspective developed in flumen.
We invite you to the 9th International Degrowth Conference, which will be held in Zagreb, Croatia from August 29 to September 2, 2023!
Zagreb is a city whose local government is headed by former degrowth conference speakers. By connecting degrowth’s international audience with the realities of a semi-peripheral capital developing new justice and sustainability pathways, the degrowth movement will broaden its scope and affirm its position in the everyday lives of European citizens.
To maximize networking and impact, the Conference will include a city-wide Degrowth Week alongside its research and activist part. The events and activities will take place at the Zagreb Fair, a valuable space and project from the socialist period which will host all the Conference sessions, the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we will have our opening ceremony, and the Youth Culture Centre „Ribnjak“, situated in one of the city’s most beautiful parks, which will house the festival part.
The Zagreb conference will feature prominent keynote speakers – Kohei Saito, Roland Ngam, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Paul Stubbs, and Karin Doolan – and a couple of hundred scholars from around the world eager to discuss different aspects of a believable degrowth future.
The day before the Conference opening – on Monday, August 28 – the 4thInternational Assembly of the Degrowth Movement will take place in the Youth Culture Centre “Ribnjak”, with plans to deliberate on the aims and organisation of the degrowth movement (more information here).
The Degrowth Week will include events such as an environmental film festival, a one-day activist-artistic festival, the presentation of the work of a thematic network for low carbon transition cooperation (METAR), and a number of activist/practitioner panels, presentations and workshops.
Since the call for proposals is closed, we invite anyone whose paper/presentation/workshop was accepted to register if they still haven’t (the regular conference fee is available until May 31 – https://odrast.hr/faq/#payment-accepted). If you don’t have a presentation and would still like to attend the conference, we invite you to register as well (https://odrast.hr/faq/#payment-participants) – the number of tickets is limited and will be granted on a first come, first served basis.
The LOC is currently working at full capacity to coordinate the Conference and the Degrowth Week program. After the program has been publish, in June, we will open a call for volunteers. We will be looking for volunteers to work on tasks in preparing the conference (knowledge of Croatian will probably be required), and for volunteers to manage the conference (English will be a must). All volunteers can expect free access to all Conference events.
Please follow our webpage and social media accounts for more information and Conference news:
The article “Rural bioeconomies in Europe: Socio-ecological conflicts, marginalized people and practices” was written by flumen-researchers Jana Holz, Philip Koch, Lilian Pungas and Dennis Eversberg in collaboration with the scientists Jonathan Friedrich and Jana Zscheischler from the ZALF (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research) and published in GAIA. GAIA is a transdisciplinary journal that publishes on ecological perspectives for science and society.
Abstract:
Bioeconomy policies claim to contribute to socio-ecological transformations and decreasing rural-urban inequalities. Based on examples of four bioeconomies in rural Europe, we argue that contrary to these claims, such policies to date have not de-escalated existing social conflicts but instead have often further contributed to polarization tendencies. To live up to those proclaimed goals, bioeconomy research and policy need to deprioritize economic growth and turn to more comprehensive considerations of socio-ecological contexts and the integration of the local population and alternative practices.
The article “How the Bioeconomy Attempts to be Sustainable – A Discussion Using the Example of European Bioeconomy Policy and Finnish Forestry” (original in German) by Jana Holz and Philip Koch is part of the anthology “Dilemmas of Sustainability” edited by Henkel et al. (2023).
The Working Paper No. 215/2023 from the Institute for International Political Economy Berlin at the Berlin School of Economics and Law was authored by Lilian Pungas in collaboration with Jana Gebauer and Gerrit von Jorck.
Abstract
This paper traces the links between post-socialist transformations and the degrowth movement. Based on a series of workshops entitled “Degrowth Enthusiasm and the Eastern Blues” that we organised in recent years, this paper focuses on the following questions: what can we learn from the state-socialist societies’ transformation processes into capitalist societies? What experiences and practices before and after these transformations can potential degrowth societies build on? To what extent can people’s experiences with an alternative system and its transformation contribute to unfolding their potential in a social-ecological transformation and to overcoming ‘change fatigue’? We present key findings from our workshops, which we combined with our own empirical evidence from Estonia and a theoretical examination of (post-)socialist economics to form six theses that we consider essential for a decolonial degrowth debate.
Journalist Florian Zinner takes a detailed and low-level look at flumen’s research on mentalities and the social-ecological transformation in issue #91 of MDR’s Climate Update, Friday, June 2, 2023.
The Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, Jena (Source: indeedous/Wikimedia Commons)
On 22.06.2023 Martin Fritz will give a talk at the colloquium on the history of science at the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus of the University of Jena entitled “A cartography of the social-ecological transformation in Germany: Exploring interconnections between classes, mentalities and practices”. The results of the relational analyses of the survey data of flumen will be presented and discussed with the participants.
On 05/31/2023, Martin Fritz and Linda von Faber presented flumen’s research at the Catholic Student Community in Erfurt. They gave a lecture on “Inequalities in the context of energy crisis and socio-ecological transformation” and afterwards discussed with the students about mentalities, ways of living and possibilities to cope with the double challenge of increasing inequalities and ecological crises.
Forests are a crucial and contested part of nature. Their management is at the center of policies and conflicts around global sustainability aspirations and potential futures. Human attitudes and practices play major role in these policies and conflicts. This article focuses on the meanings humans attach to forests. These meanings act as drivers influencing activities and decision-making from forest use to governance, and escalation of forest conflicts.
This article sets out 1) to establish and develop the concept of the human-forest relationship (HFR) in order to elaborate on people’s forest-related meanings, and 2) to discuss the potentials of the HFR concept for forest policy and research with a focus on forest conflicts and potential futures.
The HFR concept depicts a reciprocal relationship between humans and forests that is formed as a result of personal experiences, life histories, as well as cultural and societal backgrounds and environmental settings. HFR possesses the future dimension, as the forest-related meanings may be reflected in the expectations that humans connect to the future state of forests. As forests differ from other natural environments ecologically, culturally, politically, and socially, the HFR concept contributes in identifying, describing and analyzing these forest- specific meanings influencing forest policy and management.
“Von Yuppies, Ökos, Egos und dem kleinen Mann” is the title of Malene Gürgen’s interview with the two Flumen scientists Jana Holz and Martin Fritz for the taz. In it, the two talked about “how money, education and environmental awareness are connected” and “which clichés are true and which are not”.
Illustration: Anaïs Edely
The interview has been published in the weekly wochentaz and online here.
Additional Article
On the same topic Malene Gürgen also published the article “Alles eine Frage der Mentalität” (“It’s all a matter of mentality”) in the taz-newsletter.
