How is economic growth entwined with the social, environmental and financial turmoil of the past several decades? How can we have a stable and prosperous economy that does not grow - let alone one that shrinks to a sustainable level, relative to existing planetary boundaries?
The neoliberal capitalist system is caught in a double bind: its expansion disrupts the natural world, obstructs well-being and fails to curb injustices, while slowdown destabilises the inner workings of the system itself. Denying these contradictions will lead to uncontrolled economic decline, with severe social, psychological and ecological harm.
The Degrowth movement offers a radical critique and an alternative vision that draws from a range of unorthodox intellectual and philosophical traditions, such as political ecology, ecological economics, eco-Marxism and post-development. In this course, those insights are brought together to confront us with our own biases concerning growth, limits, money, quality of life and so on.
Mr Crelis Rammelt
Open for second-year and third-year Bachelor's students and other interested parties, such as contract students or students from other Dutch higher education institutions. Master's students can only participate if there are still spots available.
You can find the timetable on Datanose.
UvA Bachelor's students can register from 10 to 17 June 2024 in the GLASS registration rounds. Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.
‘Bijvak’ students and contract students can register from June 10 2024 until one week prior to the start of the course, by completing the online registration form.
If you have any trouble while registering, please contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl
Please note: as a contract student you can choose to participate either including or excluding assessment. If you choose the latter, you only have access to the seven lectures of the course. If you also wish to attend the seminars, please choose 'including assessment'.
Prices can be found on the IIS website.
The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes, and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website.