PhD Annual Seminars PhD researchers from the Post-Growth Innovation Lab present the results of the work they are carrying out as part of their doctoral thesis

Casa das Campás (Don Filiberto St., Pontevedra)

In pursuit to enhance the conversation on how social movements contribute to the transformation towards post-/degrowth societies, this doctoral study aims to bring forth lessons from a militant ethnography (Juris, 2007) situated in an anti-capitalist and student climate movement. The combination of disruptive protests through occupations at schools and universities in order to contest the growth economy allows for new perspectives for degrowth where so far disruptive and/or combative grassroots movements have been neglected and instead policy proposals or non-disruptive activism has been favoured. This is matched with a focus on the prefigurative elements of the movement. Where usually decision-making structures are common examples, here the study will draw out various tactics from the groups focusing on de-hierarchisation and anti-oppression politics and praxis; and how this relates to degrowth, adding to the conversation how “decolonising the imaginary’ (Latouche, 2010) can become a more material struggle in degrowth. The doctoral study aims to contribute with its methodology, as well as its empirical work. 

Communication is considered one of the most important tools for raising awareness and educating people about the environmental crisis we are facing. The more tangible the problems become and the more technocratic solutions fail, the more urgent the need for cultural change becomes.

This year, I have been looking at how communication studies address the socio-ecological transition to a fair and just system that works within planetary boundaries. As this is a pluridisciplinary field of research, there are many perspectives on the table. Therefore, this presentation is a review of the literature on environmental communication studies and its relationship to the dynamics of change. The analysis corresponds to the first step of the objective of this work, which is to explore the role of communication practices that reveal obstacles and opportunities in the decarbonization of the food chain in Galicia.