PurposeWhilst there is a growing recognition of environmental degradation, the policies of sustainable development or ecological modernisation offered by national governments and international institutions seem to do little more than "sustain the unsustainable". By promising to reconcile growth with the environment, they fail to question the economic principle of endless growth that has caused environmental destruction in the first place. In this context, alternatives based on critiques of growth may offer more promising grounds. The aim of this paper is to explore how the degrowth movement that emerged in France over the last decade resonates with, and can contribute to, green politics.Design/methodology/approachAfter locating the movement within environmental politics and providing a brief account of its development, the paper focuses on its core theme – escaping from the economy.FindingsHere it is argued that the movement's main emphasis is not merely on calling for less growth, consumption or production, but more fundamentally, in inviting one to shift and re‐politicise the terms in which economic relations and identities are considered. This politicisation of the economy is discussed in terms of the movement's foregrounding of democracy and citizenship, and it is argued that the articulation of these two concepts may offer interesting points of departure for conceptualising and practising alternatives to consumer capitalism.Originality/valueThe final part of the paper explores how the degrowth movement's stance on democracy and citizenship could help address two problematic issues within environmental politics: that of inclusion, and motivation
The aim of this article is to flesh out gender by drawing connections between the experience of pain and the experience of womanhood. The article builds upon two themes in feminist work (the constitution of woman through her effacement, and the inscription of gender on the body) and proposes to analyse `effacement' in terms of an embodied sense of being `gutted out', or made `immaterial'. I use this imagery of `gutting out' to suggest that effacement is experienced through the body, and in terms of the presence of pain rather than merely in terms of lack or absence (of voice or subjectivity). Thus I share the view that gender is performed through inscriptions on the body, but I argue that this work of gendering involves hurting and injuring women's bodies; and it is this pain that I attend to in the article. I draw upon Scarry's analysis of the body in pain as a symbolic framework to discuss the pain of womanhood in terms of the annihilation of the self as it is engulfed in a mass of hurting flesh.
The successful institutionalisation of Critical Management Studies is now beyond doubt; but the consequences of this process on the efficacy and legitimacy of critique are more contentious and require attention. Despite recent calls by senior critical scholars to make critique more relevant by engaging with pressing political and social issues and addressing a broader public, there have been few attempts to reflect upon the way our own personal positions and choices are implicated in the realities being denounced. Yet, we argue here that taking risk and making choices that would achieve some consistency between what we say and what we do, are essential elements of critique. We also explore what it would mean to make our critique more personal and give example of the choices we could make to bring some consistency between our critique and our personal position. ; Peer-reviewed ; Publisher Version
