Care as pluriversal strategy? Caring in counter-hegemonic struggles in the degrowth and environmental justice movements

Abstract

Overcoming the destructive power of the capitalist world system requires bringing relevant alternatives together in a way that respects their diversity. In this article, we investigate the significance of care–in its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions–in the task of uniting the pluriverse alternatives at moments and sites of counter-hegemonic struggle. Our analysis focuses on the degrowth movement and environmental justice movements. Adopting a post-Marxist discourse theory lens, we argue that care can mobilize and coalesce these pluriverse alternatives into temporarily united counter-hegemonic coalitions. For effectively disrupting the hegemony of the capitalist world system, we suggest that the pluriverse should meet the following three conditions: (1) the symbolic construction of the world system as an enemy to mobilize against, (2) a vision recognizing the foundational nature of care-based relations for pluriversal futures, and (3) practices of care fitting together with the parallel understandings and visions of the pluriverse.