Authors:
Vishal Sharma, Bonnie Nardi, Neha Kumar
HCI researchers have begun to question the ideology of economic growth that is ingrained in our economy and in our field. This growth has placed immense burdens on Earth's resources and climate, leading to a global metacrisis, the breakdown of multiple, interconnected global systems arising from inattention to planetary limits. In seeking alternatives, we turn to a post-growth philosophy that provides ways to chart a path to a postcapitalist world. In our recent Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction paper, "Post-growth Human-Computer Interaction" [1], we discuss ways to identify hidden assumptions of growth and examine how HCI can orient to post-growth futures. The paper was an attempt to lay down the foundation to critically reflect on how to liberate HCI and the larger computing discipline from the growth paradigm. It took four years of rejected papers at three consecutive CHI conferences for us to make a compelling case for post-growth and its relevance to HCI. Some specific critiques repeatedly came up during the reviews. In this article, we provide responses to doubts, misunderstandings, and reservations that we could not include in the TOCHI paper. We conclude with a call to action for the HCI community to embrace post-growth philosophy and collectively work toward realizing futures where technologies promote well-being for all.
Insights
→ Moving away from endless growth is our only shot at surviving climate catastrophe.
→ Post-growth ideas are already seeding a global shift from overconsumption to a more sustainable, equitable, and pleasurable living.
→ HCI needs to move beyond incremental change to a paradigm shift via critical deliberation and action aligned with post-growth.
 | Go Native, a farm-to-table café and shop in Bangalore, India, that provides alternatives to mass-produced items. |
Engaging with Critiques
Post-growth is "too radical."
The steering arms of society including embedded financial, legal, political, and governance systems must be radically realigned and recognize the connectivity among social, ecological, and technological domains of urban systems to deliver more just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient future.—Timon McPhearson et al.
Post-growth asks for a radical civilizational shift. It suggests altering the growth economy by moving from production to redistribution, from acquisition to sharing and community, and from industrialized development to development appropriate to local circumstances. For example, post-growth proposes limiting consumption by defining legally allowable minimum and maximum standards of consumption. Minimum standards could be implemented through a universal basic income and services such as healthcare, ensuring that everyone's basic needs are met. While trickier, maximum standards of consumption could be achieved by limiting maximum wealth, through taxation and other mechanisms to reduce consumption, especially in affluent societies.
Proponents of growth or those who have not yet questioned the depth of the metacrisis may disagree with the radical changes post-growth demands. They may suggest more-moderate changes: decoupling the economy from environmental destruction—that is, achieving economic growth without a corresponding increase in environmental damage—and decarbonizing (i.e., reducing or eliminating emissions of greenhouse gases associated with economic activity). Historical records, however, show that decoupling environmental impacts from economic growth is extremely rare, and decarbonizing is not enough. In an analysis of 835 empirical studies of decoupling GDP, resource use, and GHG emissions, Helmut Haberl et al. [2] noted that "large rapid absolute reductions of resource use and GHG emissions cannot be achieved," concluding that "decoupling needs to be complemented by sufficiency-oriented strategies and strict enforcement of absolute reduction targets." Carbon dioxide emissions are just one among many environmental pressures, including ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, air and water pollution, loss of fresh water, erosion, and deforestation. Post-growth emphasizes the imperative to move beyond piecemeal "solutions" and holistically embrace the social, economic, political, and cultural transformation crucial for addressing the metacrisis.
The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that we can affect radical transformation, instigating changes previously considered impossible. New regulations were rapidly implemented. We shifted to remote work. The state intervened in the market and placed restrictions on economic activities. The reduction of economic activity gave nature a chance to recover. We enjoyed cleaner air and improved water quality. More-than-human life-forms enjoyed less noise pollution and human disturbance. Although the pandemic forced these changes upon us, it showed that we can, if needed, alter business as usual.
Such changes could be implemented in a planned and proactive way to enable a transition to more sustainable and just futures. If we are determined enough, we can act with the care and agency necessary to alter our modus operandi radically. Post-growth offers a road map for transitioning voluntarily to a future in which we live in harmony with other life-forms on this beautiful planet all of us call home. Some suggestions from post-growth philosophy to reduce growth include universal basic income, greater wealth and inheritance taxes, decommodification of public goods, reduced work hours, granting rights to natural resources, supporting care work, building worker cooperatives, and reducing consumption.
Post-growth is "too idealistic."
[Post-]growth is utopian only because it contradicts one of the common senses of our time: the imperative for endless economic growth…. Call it a concrete utopia, a subversive concept to educate our desire for a future we didn't know was possible even though it actually is.—Timothée Parrique
Post-growth ideas may seem unrealistic and unattainable to some, but organizations across the globe have already implemented some of the ideas. In 2010, Bolivia passed the Mother Earth Law, establishing legal rights for nature, including the right to exist and thrive and to maintain natural cycles and processes free from human alteration, as well as plants' and animals' right to access clean air and water. In 2017, New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River, which allows it to act as a person in a court of law. For example, if the river changes the course of its flow, interrupting it would be a violation of its rights. Over the past several decades, many ecovillages have been established globally, such as Findhorn in Scotland, Earthaven Ecovillage in the U.S., Ökodorf Sieben Linden in Germany, Auroville in India, and transition towns in the U.K. Ecovillages support small-scale, sustainable living with community-based governance, participatory democracy, community economics, cohousing, and localized agriculture and energy production.
Post-growth is about creating a "world of less" by reducing resource and energy consumption and a "world of more" through equality, democracy, health, and well-being.
Scholars from diverse disciplines, backgrounds, and identities have assisted in the development of post-growth philosophy. For example, Latin American anthropologist Arturo Escobar rejects economic growth masked as "development" in which the Global North exploits resources in the Global South, originally through colonization, and now through imperialism. Escobar calls for post-development in the Global South: decentralized and localized production, distribution, and consumption. Post-growth ideas have been influenced by many others, including philosophers André Gorz, M.K. Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Vandana Shiva. Among the economists who have written about post-growth are Herman Daly, Serge Latouche, and J.C. Kumarappa, and the theorists include Ivan Illich and Murray Bookchin. Tagore, for example, argued that the accumulation of capital and resources will never end poverty. We would need to shift our attention from money and possessions to fulfilling basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter for everyone.
Post-growth inherited many of its ideas from traditional wisdom that has guided humanity for centuries. Ubuntu from Africa, buen vivir from South America, Indigenous sovereignty from North America, and ahimsa, swaraj, and dharma from South Asia all inform post-growth philosophy. These approaches suggest localized development and sovereignty in order to live in harmony with the human and more-than-human world. These philosophies are still practiced across the globe, even after their countries of origin have suffered from colonialism. For example, the belief that all living and nonliving forms are animated beings with agency and free will is still part of African practice. Vasudhaiva kutumbakam, the belief that the world is one family, with an emphasis on the interconnectedness of all life-forms and the importance of global unity, is part of contemporary Indian society. It was the theme and the logo for the 2023 G20 summit held in India. These philosophies are not idealistic; they stimulate practical, everyday activity and have the potential to guide us away from capitalist logic as we prioritize providing care to all, including the planet that gives us a home.
The interdisciplinary field of ecological economics is another influence. It considers the economy as part of the finite planetary ecosystem, with ideas consistent with post-growth thought. Beyond academia, post-growth has entered mainstream conversations, with articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, and Vogue. There is a growing consensus on post-growth [3]. Seventy-three percent of 800 climate policy researchers surveyed worldwide supported post-growth. Seventy-seven percent of 500 sustainability scholars favored post-growth. Sixty-one percent of the European population favored post-growth. Fifty-six percent of the global population criticized capitalism. Even in the highly capitalist U.S., 70 percent of the population believes that "environmental protection is more important than economic growth" [3].
These developments suggest that post-growth values are not unattainable. Such values have existed in many traditional cultures and are now finding a wider audience, flourishing in the cracks of capitalism. We can see glimmers of the beginning of a transition to post-growth. The transition is yet to be labeled post-growth, just as changes in the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had no name until after they were well underway.
Post-growth is "regressive."
A [post-]growth economy would be the inversion of austerity. For the majority, it would mean a more abundant, more convivial, more fulfilling lifestyle. For the wealthy few, it would mean the end of private abundance, excess emissions and concentrated power. For humanity, it would be our only shot at a future worth living in.—Matthias Schmelzer and Aaron Vansintjan
Post-growth is about creating a "world of less" by reducing resource and energy consumption and a "world of more" through equality, democracy, health, and well-being. Downscaling economic activity is not regressive in the sense of a return to a primitive past, implementation of austerity, or voluntary poverty. Knowing the limits of our planet yet continuing to organize limitless production and consumption within an economic system devised in the 16th century is backward. Capitalism only seeks opportunities to accumulate more. Rampant wildfires? A chance to sell insurance. A plague of locusts? A reason to sell more fertilizer. Decreasing natural resources on Earth? An occasion to sell shares in plots on celestial bodies. Failing to question this growth ideology and failing to innovate a sustainable and just economy is regressive.
Post-growth is progressive. It challenges the centuries-old economic growth model that is taken for granted and entirely normalized and accepted without critical assessment. In 2017, Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was asked if the Democrats, the more progressive of the two parties, support an alternative economy. Pelosi replied, "I thank you for your question, but I have to say we're capitalist, and that's just the way it is." The normalization of capitalism prompted an unreflective reply from an incredibly savvy politician who occupied an important leadership position yet did not think we should even consider another economic system.
Engineering a Shift
We can change voluntarily, smoothing the transition through civilized redistribution, or it will happen, probably with dire consequences, involuntarily. Rather than letting circumstances become intolerable for billions, we should take heart and listen to those telling us to slow down, to organize our lives around caring and conviviality, to intervene in processes of capital accumulation. Thoughtful people [post-growth proponents] have offered sound, reasonable alternatives, and, in my view, responsible design practice should act on them.—Bonnie Nardi
Critical reflection. What can we do to embrace post-growth philosophy? First, we need to acknowledge that our planet cannot produce resources at the rate we currently consume them. It cannot dispose of waste at the rate we produce it. Planetary limits need to become a default consideration in all our doings. Second, we need to utilize our tool of imagination. At any point have we said that we have now achieved technologies that will never be surpassed? So why have we stopped imagining and realizing social innovation? Why have we stopped at capitalism, an economic system devised in the 16th century? We cannot keep following après moi, le déluge, an expression of indifference to events after one has gone. Le déluge is already here in the form of wildfires, floods, droughts, biodiversity loss, and other calamities. We need to ask why we have created an entire social, political, and economic infrastructure to support the imperatives of growth. Why do we have stock markets, GDP, credit scores, limited liability, shareholder value, and corporations as persons? Why don't we open ourselves up to a new political vision? Asking these critical questions is crucial. The questions, however, cannot be addressed through immediate "solutions." We need to sit with them, pause, and reflect.
We need to center our work around the fact that if the planet fails, it is game over for us: There is no plan(et) B. The gravity of our current situation—an impending "biological annihilation" and a "frightening assault on human civilization" [4]—requires us to ask thought-provoking, thoroughgoing, and soul-stirring questions. Instead of avoiding conversations about the political economy, we should reflect on HCI's fundamentals, which are rooted in economic growth, and question them. Why is sustainability an add-on, an afterthought, or simply neglected in most HCI work? Why are CHI submissions that focus on critical and progressive accounts restricted to the critical computing, sustainability, and social justice subcommittees? Why cannot all subcommittees make such accounts fundamental to their call? We are approaching tipping points, after which there is no turning back—our questions should reflect this urgency. It is important that we do not act just because we need to "do something." We have to take careful and calculated steps to head in the right direction. Post-growth provides a path.
Critical action. HCI has always provided a space for radical, subversive thinking where change can happen. It offers a space where scholars from diverse disciplines—sociology, anthropology, engineering, computing, policy, and many more—can come together to discuss alternative possibilities. HCI scholars Christine Wolf, Mariam Asad, and Lynn Dombrowski [5] call for "designing within capitalism," saying that "we can, through our projects and design praxis, wrestle with and struggle against the institutions that we ourselves live and work under, at the same time we try to create alternatives that are more equitable and make possible anti-capitalist futures." We can think about mediating socioeconomic innovations beyond capitalist logic to restore Earth with a better life for all, human and more than human. We can work toward transforming the computing discipline, rippling outward to the larger academic community. Considering that digital technologies underlie the infrastructure of our global society, HCI can work to enable real-world social change and postcapitalist futures.
Many HCI researchers have initiated such critical conversations. They have, however, encountered challenges. Nardi [6] shared: "When I talk to people about ecological and social devastation, they often say they feel overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. Sustainability is 'too hard,' in the words of one of my colleagues. Because the issues are overwhelming, we often approach them with dread, denial, or resignation. We give up and give in to soothing but preposterous stories (e.g., coming technological miracles)." We, in HCI, can build a community to support one another, stand in solidarity, and continue to ask critical questions. We can use questioning as a constructive process to instigate critical reflection and action to take the community forward. Increasingly, HCI work is centered on care: for the self, one another, and the planet. HCI professionals can join efforts for the cause of planetary care subsuming humans, computers, and the natural ecosystem.
Shifting a paradigm—in our case, that of economic growth—will be a laborious process. Introducing a new way of thinking that challenges long-held beliefs requires significant effort and time. But there is hope: A growing HCI community dedicated to cultivating postcapitalist ideas offers a fertile ground for raising HCI's collective critical consciousness toward post-growth. We encourage those with creative ideas and analyses across the Global North and South to reach out to us and join the growing Post-growth HCI Collective. We need to work together, as sustainability predicaments are, after all, global. We can support one another in challenging unjust and unsustainable narratives in HCI. We need to remember that we are not just passengers. Rather, we are a crew on a collective journey; it is our shared responsibility to nurture better futures in and through HCI. A better HCI is possible; it is necessary. Let's join forces to translate post-growth ideals into tangible design solutions that benefit all. We can make this happen.
References
1. Sharma, V., Kumar, N., and Nardi, B. Post-growth human-computer interaction. A CM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 31, 1 (2023), Article 9, 1–37.
2. Haberl, H. et al. A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: Synthesizing the insights. Environmental Research Letters 15, 6 (2020), 065003.
3. Hickel, J. Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Penguin Random House, 2020.
4. Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P.R., and Dirzo, R. Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proc. of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 30 (2017), E6089–E6096.
5. Wolf, C.T., Asad, M., and Dombrowski, L.S. Designing within capitalism. Proc. of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, 2022, 439–453.
6. Nardi, B. Design in the age of climate change. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 5, 1 (2019), 5–14.
Authors
Vishal Sharma is a human-centered computing Ph.D. candidate in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the responsible—ethical, sustainable, and human-centered—design of computing technologies to nurture socioecologically just futures for all. [email protected]
Bonnie Nardi is a professor emeritus in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research investigates digital technology's role in transitioning to sustainable environmental and socioeconomic practices. [email protected]
Neha Kumar is an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research lies at the intersection of human-centered computing and sustainable development, focusing on values of care, solidarity, and postdevelopment, among others. [email protected]
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