Giacomo D’Alisa, IPE’s 2017 Senior Research Fellow, is working on developing a paper investigating the conceptual relationship between degrowth and the state. He will give a lecture on this topic on December 12 at 20:00 at the Gallery Nova Showroom in Zagreb.
The State is usually singled out as a “thing”, reified as an entity separate from its governor (and, more and more often, blamed) in academic circles, political debates and daily discussions. “Where is the State?” or “The State should guarantee…” are sentences often repeated in the aftermath of a socio-ecological tragedy or when a certain right is not respected, while “Why should I give my money to the State?” is a refrain heard whenever a discussion about taxation starts in the public domain. On the other hand, the experience of the state as a social relation is encountered daily , when one stands at a check-point (as soldier or civilian), goes to school (as teacher or student), enters a hospital (as doctor or patient) or participates in municipal assembly (as governor or the one being governed).
How can degrowthers challenge these social relations that are embedded in power structures defined by capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, colonial and racist forces without reifying the state? Giacomo will address this and other issues in his lecture on December 12.
Join us!
The talk is organized within the Multimedia Institute’s “Political Technotope” programme, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Institute for Political Ecology is supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.