Ethnobiology and Degrowth

Abstract

For centuries, global political economic relations have been informed by a model of growth premised on transforming plants, animals, knowledge, labor, water, and land into scarce commodities. Growing production, consumption, and profit remain unquestioned goods across many sectors of contemporary life. Through our evolving relationships with colonialism, capitalism, and Western science, ethnobiologists are increasingly interrogating the political and economic consequences of our interdisciplinary scholarship. Thus, we offer a valuable perspective on a diverse ecological and social science agenda: degrowth. In this review essay, I explore how ethnobiology might contribute to degrowth research through its empirical approach, alternative valuation, focus on relationships over commodification, emphasis on local context, and recognition that humans shape and are shaped through the environments in which we live. Ethnobiologists meticulously describe systems of social, ecological, and economic interaction. In doing so, we fill a need for studies that document life under degrowth conditions. Similarly, degrowth research offers a vocabulary for ethnobiologists to recognize how we make a unique, data-rich contribution to discussions of political economy and political ecology. Ethnobiologists and degrowth researchers have much to say to each other through our shared commitment to action-oriented, imaginative research that explores socioecological relationships of care and interconnection.