Accidental degrowth practices: Illustrations from Czechia

Abstract

This chapter in the Routledge Handbook on Degrowth challenges prevailing conceptualisations of degrowth, which portray it mainly as a result of deliberate political strategies. It argues that this perspective often overlooks practices that align with the degrowth movement in various ways, but which are undertaken outside of it, by actors who are unaware, who lack specific degrowth goals, and often result from trajectories which are not straightforward. Using an empirical example from Central and Eastern Europe, from an applied research project in the Czech Republic focusing on the introduction of a collaborative housing concept, a practice aligned with degrowth, the chapter engages in a conversation with authors who focus on similar practices, calling them everyday degrowth, quiet degrowth or real-existing degrowth, and proposes a new concept of accidental degrowth. By using the word ‘accidental’, the focus is on practices characterised by not only a lack of intentionality, but also by haphazardness, uncertain goals and non-linear, fuzzy results, as well as by the crucial role of affects and emotions when engaging with unaware actors outside the movement. The concept reflects the inevitable complexity and accidentality of the processes by which new realities potentially aligned with degrowth principles emerge, and sometimes disappear.This chapter in the Routledge Handbook on Degrowth challenges prevailing conceptualisations of degrowth, which portray it mainly as a result of deliberate political strategies. It argues that this perspective often overlooks practices that align with the degrowth movement in various ways, but which are undertaken outside of it, by actors who are unaware, who lack specific degrowth goals, and often result from trajectories which are not straightforward. Using an empirical example from Central and Eastern Europe, from an applied research project in the Czech Republic focusing on the introduction of a collaborative housing concept, a practice aligned with degrowth, the chapter engages in a conversation with authors who focus on similar practices, calling them everyday degrowth, quiet degrowth or real-existing degrowth, and proposes a new concept of accidental degrowth. By using the word ‘accidental’, the focus is on practices characterised by not only a lack of intentionality, but also by haphazardness, uncertain goals and non-linear, fuzzy results, as well as by the crucial role of affects and emotions when engaging with unaware actors outside the movement. The concept reflects the inevitable complexity and accidentality of the processes by which new realities potentially aligned with degrowth principles emerge, and sometimes disappear.