Degrowth Decolonization and Development: When Culture Meets the Environment

Contents
1 How Culture and Worldviews Shape Development and our Environment
1.1 World Crises, Western Paradigm, Modernity and Colonialism
1.2 Interdisciplinarity and Positionality in Cultural Analyses
1.3 Central Dichotomies Regarding the Western Paradigm, Modernity and Coloniality
1.4 Cultural Change for a Decolonized Development and Human Relation With(in) Nature: A Collection of Case Studies
References
2 The Progressivity and Transformative Role of Culture
2.1 Introduction
2.1.1 The Main Points of This Chapter
2.1.2 Methodology and Concepts
2.2 Critical Developmental and Decolonization Discourses—Towards Deeper Understanding of the Progressive and Transformational Potential of the Culture
2.3 The Permission to Say “Workers Self-Governance in Socialist Yugoslavia” as a Dissonant Heritage
2.3.1 Why the Self-Governance is Essentially Important for the Future Degrowth Policies?
2.4 The Lessons from Self-Governance in Cultural Policy of Yugoslavia as Endogenous Know-How
2.4.1 The Second Yugoslavia Phase
2.4.2 The Third Yugoslavia Phase
2.5 Discussion: For the Future Built up on the Decolonized Knowledge Integration—Towards the Life-Centred Development
2.6 Conclusion
Appendix 1
References
3 Anticipation of the Degrowth Concept in the Socialist Republic of Poland of the 1970s
3.1 Introduction to the Authorship Approach
3.1.1 Is the Post-Dependent Decolonizing of Knowledge Possible?
3.2 Decolonization Degrowth Turn
3.3 General Frame of the Chosen Case
3.3.1 “Glocal” Chosen Context
3.4 The Case of the Open Plain Air in Opolno-Zdrój
3.5 Discussion
3.6 Conclusion
References
4 A New Wave of Civic Activism
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Ecological Movements in Post-soviet Armenia
4.3 Amulsar’s “Golden Project”
4.3.1 The Fight for Amulsar
4.4 Conclusion
References
5 On Cultural Direction of Socio-Ecological Transformations: Lessons from Degrowth and Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Research in Times of Civilisationary Crisis
5.2.1 Colonial Natures
5.3 A Brief History of Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay in Ecuador
5.4 The Realities of Reciprocity
5.5 An Inter-Epistemic Dialogue Between Degrowth and Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay
5.5.1 A Pluriverse Avenue for the Cultural Politics of Degrowth
References
6 Decolonizing Nature? Worldviews of Agroecological Farmers in Germany to Address the Global Environmental Crisis
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Background: The Emergence and Establishment of the Western Worldview in Agriculture
6.2.1 The Emergence of a Mechanistic Worldview of Nature
6.2.2 Western Worldview and Agriculture
6.3 Theoretical Developments Towards a Decolonized View of Nature and Practice
6.3.1 The Limits of Current Environmentalism
6.3.2 Principles for a Decolonized Worldview and Relation to Nature
6.3.3 Agroecology as the Enactment of the Gaia Hypothesis?
6.4 Methods and Case Study: Agricultural Narratives and Metaphors
6.4.1 Qualitative Reconstructive Analysis
6.4.2 Case Study: Sampled Agroecological Farmers in Central Germany
6.5 Individual Worldviews: Kaleidoscope of Motives
6.6 Cross Analysis: Qualifying the Relationship of the Farmers to Nature
6.6.1 From Western to Gaian Representations of Nature?
6.6.2 Power Relationships Between Man and Nature: From Design to Dialogue
6.6.3 On the Role of the Mind: Mystic and Spiritual Relationship to Nature—The Irreconcilable?
6.6.4 “Lebensgrundlage”: Creating a Life-Basis for One Self and the Rest of the World
6.7 Discussion: Decolonizing the Relation With(in) Nature?
6.7.1 Methodology: How to Escape One’s Culture
6.7.2 On Co-creation and Reproduction: Beyond Cartesian Dichotomies
6.7.3 The Hardship of Cracking from Within: Internal Conflicts
6.8 Conclusions
References
7 Aestheticizing Catastrophes?
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Aesthetics in the Western Tradition and Japanese Art
7.3 US Artworks on Hurricane Katarina
7.3.1 Shelton Alexander’s Super dome Poem
7.3.2 Rolland Golden’s Katrina Series
7.4 Japanese Artworks on 3/11
7.5 Discussion and Conclusion
References
8 The Absence of Gendered Management of Climate Change in China
8.1 Climate Change, Gender Mainstreaming and Climate Policy in China
8.2 Applying a Gender Lens to Climate Change—Climate Change Affects Women and Men Differently
8.2.1 Achieving Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Policy is Challenging
8.2.2 Gender Differences Are Ignored in China’s Climate Change Policies?
8.3 Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Change Adaptation
8.3.1 What is Gender Mainstreaming?
8.4 Importance of Climate Change Adaption
8.4.1 A Content Analysis of Policy Documents
8.4.2 Analysis: China’s Climate Change Adaption Policies
8.5 Conclusions and Proposals
References
9 Beyond Western Dichotomies of Power: Life-Centered Development, Reciprocity and Co-creation Within Nature
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Questioning the Western Ontology: An Attempt to Transcend Western Dichotomies
9.3 Science’s New Clothes? Decolonizing Scientific Analysis
9.4 Conclusions
References