Description
by Soper, Kate | Society & social sciences
Published 21/02/2023 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 240 pages
Staff pick, Kate: Degrowth can conjure visions of an austere and restricted future. In this book, Soper offers a remedy to that anxiety. Post Growth Living explores an optimistic and joyous vision for a post-growth future, wherein we are invited to reimagine our conceptions of prosperity and joy. A better future is possible, one full of intentionality and fulfilment. For me, this book was a warm and optimistic antidote to climate anxieties, and an invitation to dream of a new future for us all.
The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn’t only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on? In Alternative Prosperity, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth.
Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.
