The Routledge Handbook of Degrowth is a long-awaited review of the degrowth movement. To celebrate its launch, the book's editors, Anitra Nelson and Vincent Liegey are coming to the Islington Climate Centre in North London for a reading and panel discussion.
They will be joined on the panel by anthropologist Sandra Niessen of Fashion Act Now, from the Netherlands, who contributed a chapter to the book, ‘Defining Defashion’. Readings of excerpts will be followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Sara Arnold, co-founder of Fashion Act Now, on the degrowth movement and its relation to the concept of defashion. We will then open the panel to a Q&A.
Degrowth is a social movement that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction.
Through democratic means, degrowth strives to reduce our material footprint whilst improving social and ecological well-being.
Biographies
Anitra Nelson is an activist scholar and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Informal Urbanism Research Hub, University of Melbourne. Among numerous degrowth publications, she is co-editor of Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021) collections, and co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020).
Vincent Liegey is an engineer, interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer on degrowth. He has co-authored several books on degrowth including Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020), and Décroissance, Fake or Not (2022). He is one of the coordinators of the international degrowth conferences and of Cargonomia, a centre for research and experimentation on degrowth in Budapest.
Sandra Niessen is a leading scholar of the clothing and textile traditions of the Batak people of North Sumatra. She is a founding member of the ‘Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion’ and ‘Fashion Act Now’. Her publications include Legacy in Cloth, Batak textiles of Indonesia (2009), "Fashion, its Sacrifice Zone, and Sustainability" (Fashion Theory 2020) and “Defining Defashion: A Manifesto for Degrowth” (International Journal Fashion Studies, 2022).
Sara Arnold is a defashion and degrowth activist. She co-founded and coordinates the activist community ‘Fashion Act Now’ as well as ‘Our Common Market’, an online hub for community-based fashion, clothing and textile practices. Previous to that she coordinated Extinction Rebellion’s Fashion Action group (2018-2020). She lectures at London College of Fashion and Falmouth University on defashion, degrowth and fashion activism.
