Limits without Scarcity

Room 00-13, Ground Floor Chambers Building, OU, Milton Keynes

International Development Leverhulme seminar presented by Professor Giorgos Kallis (SOAS), who will revisit the notions of limits in modern environmentalism.

Lunch (provided) from 12.00, presentation & discussion 12.30 - 14.00. To reserve your free place, please email Claire Emburey.

Abstract
Professor Kallis will revisit the notion of limits, a central, if somewhat tarnished, idea of modern environmentalism. He will draw a distinction between limits and scarcity, and between collective self-limitation and external limits, arguing that from Malthus onwards limits and scarcity are used dialectically as the justification of what has been framed as their opposite: growth and progress. The most recent reincarnations of this are the visions of green-growth or eco-modernism. De-growth environmentalism instead calls for a collective self-limitation as the only way towards an egalitarian abundance.

Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA professor at ICTA (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and currently a Leverhulme visiting professor at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS. He is co-editor of Degrowth: A vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2015).