Degrowth content - “inter-thinking” degrowth - developing dialogue between all the visions.

Namur, Vevy-Weron, Wednesday 12 Nov - 11h30

Do we need to focus on the local or rather on the global level? Shall we better work from inside the system or shall we develop disobedience and oppositions to existing institutions? Is the key problem a cultural one or a physical one? Is it speed or is it money that needs to be limited? Shall we go into practice or into research? Or is it rather activism that is needed?

These are some of the key challenges faced by degrowth. Two approaches are possible there. Either one person believes that s-he detains the "right way of acting" and needs to convince others of the superiority of his or her approach. This is what we call the “mono-thinking”. Or one will believe that we require simply a multiplicity of approaches: multilevel, multi-strategy, multi-themes, multi-limits etc.

We will here support a third option: the “inter-thinking”, the idea that we do not simply need a multiplicity of approaches but rather a constructive dialogue between many approaches. We do not just need “diversity”, but what some Caribbean poets have call the “diversel”, or the pluriversal, some kind of universality that comes from the "bottom", conjugating a variation of world views, perspectives, angles… a fructuous dialogue between all the visions.

This is nowhere easy.

Let us work on this little game of “degrowth approaches”. The game of the 5 families.

There is no single definition of degrowth, degrowth is a concept to make alliances in diversity.

Steps

0- Identification of groups with small papers

1- Formal presentation with feedback from participants

2- Collective dynamics

3- Identification of problems with the mono-thinking - Each participants defends the perspective assigned.

4- Identification of problems with the multi-thinking - Participants try to give voice to all perspective.

5- Initiation of inter-thinking with building of "diversal stories"

6- Reporting