In the 1960s, Walt W. Rostow developed the model of infinite economic growth as a one-way future for the whole of humanity. Rostow argued that all countries exist somewhere on a linear spectrum of five stages of development (traditional society; preconditions to take-off; take-off; drive to maturity; and age of high mass consumption) and that they need to keep growing to aspire to a ‘modern’ state of capitalism and a liberal democracy. (2) Despite the model’s obvious political, anti-Communist undertone, it has become fully embedded in our financial, political and social infrastructures. So much so, that despite growing evidence of the ecological damage caused by overconsumption and natural exploitation, it is only since the early 2000s that the automatic association of growth with development has come under real scrutiny.

Serge Latouche is one of the pioneers of the degrowth movement which argues that permanent growth is factually impossible. Because the economy is a subsystem of a larger and finite system — the biosphere — it needs to be contained by these ecological and climatic boundaries. (3) Latouche notes that downscaling our economy and reducing material throughput will be crucial, but that we simultaneously need to engage in the even more complicated process of challenging the underlying social discourses and values systems of our economies. (4) That is, we need to decolonize people’s understandings of wealth and reshape our individual behaviors and lifestyles to be more sustainable.

The model of life of Western civilization has been portrayed as the desired destination for all of humanity, and has been disseminated through violent and non-violent ways. In this singular worldview, indigenous and non-Western peoples are designated as ‘Others’ who will ultimately need to give up their ways of living and “become just like us”. (6) But here is the problem: the capitalist system is not designed to be universally beneficial, and because of structural racism people from certain ethnicities will continue to be purposefully excluded. Feminist economists and post-development scholars have therefore argued that we need another level of decolonization, where we move away from singular conceptions of Modernity towards an appreciation and practice of many ways of living. Arturo Escobar calls this the Plurivese, a world of many worlds. He argues important lessons can be learnt from diverse indigenous people who for decades have lived in constant interaction and interrelation between traditional and ‘modern’ ways of living and engaging with the world. (7)