Building Land Degrowth Transitions

The Building Land Degrowth Transitions (BuiLDT) research project is a critical analysis of the role of agrarian movements in the creation of forms of livelihood and work that do not contribute to dominant capitalist relations of production, exchange, and consumption. Through an inquiry into the material and ideological aspects of social movements' relations with the land, this research elaborates the potential of movement social relations and economies to ameliorate some of the most pressing challenges of modernity, namely the ongoing exploitation of workers as well as non-human life for industrial food production and extraction of natural resources. BuiLDT integrates ethnographic methods in Indonesia with a comparative analysis of movement organizations in California, Amazonia, and Catalonia, focusing on places of political mobilization that have gone beyond resistance and conflict to establish spaces of alternative production and exchange with strong resonance with theorized post growth and degrowth trajectories of development. Specifically, this research asks how social movements can contribute to building degrowth transitions in the countryside through reworking the forms of access, control, and productive capacities of the land. Drawing on theories from degrowth and social movement studies, BuiLDT uses ethnography and spatial history methods to understand how movements create points of leverage that enable change, and how these movements are then able to establish low-carbon and non-capitalist economies. Supervision by Professor Giorgos Kallis and affiliation with the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) will provide me with leading training and career development in ecological economics, political economy/ecology, and degrowth research. In turn, I will bring expertise in agrarian change, social movements, and ethnographic approaches to ICTA and the European research community.