Abstract
In his recent book on Degrowth, Degrowth: An Experience of Being Finite, Heikkurinen invites the reader to conceive of Degrowth first and foremost as an experience. Departing from the assumption that ‘Degrowth is a necessary condition for continuing diverse life on earth’ (p. 4), for there is no agrowth, post-growth or sustainability without a Degrowth phase, Heikkurinen engages with deep concerns of the Degrowth movement and scholarship in several short chapters, each accompanied by Jani Anders Purhonen's drawings. In doing so, the author gets not only to the core of manifold issues, discussing themes like our relation to technology (chapters 1 and 2), change (chapters 3 and 4) and nature (chapters 5 and 6) but also, I expect, to the hearts of readers, who will be encouraged to revisit their own assumptions of and experiences with degrowth.
I write at a time of clear seasonal change, as we move from summer to autumn in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a period that highlights the phases of growth and degrowth and post-growth any lifecycle experiences. As I am reading this book, I am struck by the author's critical writing not only about the techno-capitalist system (as we suspect from a Degrowth scholar), but the degrowth movement itself. He does so by introducing the notion of a ‘will-to-transform’ (based on Nietzsche's ‘will-to-power’) (p. 51), the seemingly endless urgency many humans feel to act, to craft, to ‘leave a mark’, all of which, however noble many pursuits may be, result in increasing change from nonhuman nature into the human and resulting in higher levels of matter-energy throughput. Whilst acknowledging that this will-to-transform is not equally distributed across human cultures, and the techno-capitalist system is the most extreme form of it, Heikkurinen accuses the Degrowth movement itself of being part of this ‘transformation paradox’ (p. 55): In what respect is the Degrowth movement limited? This is just one example of several fundamental themes being discussed in Degrowth scholarship, others revolving around the role of technology, the possibility of increased wellbeing ‘for everyone, everywhere, all the time’ (p. 106), as well as critiques of expert knowledge. First and foremost, the author argues, we must experience degrowth in being, thereby offering an experiential basis for a theory of degrowth.
Whilst the book contains much-needed reflections on key debates in Degrowth scholarship, I am left with some important questions as well. For instance, according to Heikkurinen, transformation discourses (degrowth included) overemphasize top-down governance solutions (see p. 50), hinting (but never explicitly stating) that a degrowth transition must be necessarily anarchist, and, given his stance on technology, I assume anarcho-primitivist. However, since this is not made explicit, nor illustrated with examples or case studies, I am left in the dark. Degrowth scholars certainly study various change agents. For instance, in another book on Degrowth theory (Buch-Hansen et al., 2024), the authors describe a degrowth theory of transformations through the lens of a state, business and civil society triad. As a sub-discipline, scholarship of degrowth organizations, businesses, community-based initiatives, has been sprouting (Banerjee et al., 2021; Colombo et al., 2023; Hinton, 2021). Why must we choose one trajectory upfront?
Furthermore, Heikkurinen proposes a general human will-to-transform (see pp. 60–64). However, he argues, the fact that we have this will does not mean that we use it per se. Consequently, the solution is to refrain, to practice what the author terms ‘releasement’ (for an elaborated explanation of this notion see Heikkurinen, 2018). The argument of an essential will of all human beings is nuanced by the acknowledgment that some humans and cultures have managed to escape this will and become ‘releasers’ (p. 69). To me, the fact that there's empirical differentiation between places, cultures, diminishes a generalized ‘human will to transform’, and certainly, human beings have many (other) inclinations, such as a disposition to care (see works by (eco)feminist and degrowth scholars, e.g. Dengler and Lang, 2022; Plumwood, 1991). Whilst the author does see releasing as a collective process, he offers few concrete clues or illustrations as to how he envisions this. Still, in my view, collective action is needed for sustainability to arise. I cannot shake the feeling that urging people to start releasing echoes a kind of escaping to the woods, which leaves me wondering what happens to people who currently do not have this option, because their lives may be endangered either directly (as a result of violence), or indirectly (because they do not have the means to escape) (for a similar discussion see Ehrnström-Fuentes and Biese, 2023).
The questions raised above lead me to conclude that the theory of Degrowth offered in the book is certainly an ecological one, less so a social one, while it is, in my perspective, in the uniting of ecosocial concerns that Degrowth offers important insights. Nonetheless, as Degrowth increasingly enters the mainstream and runs a risk of being selectively ‘muted’ (Vandeventer and Lloveras, 2021), Heikkurinen's call for introspection, as well as discussion, about what we actually mean by degrowth is an important one and should be taken to heart.
