CfP: A Forum on Degrowth in CEE

Call for papers: A special section on Degrowth in and beyond Central and Eastern Europe

The Czech Journal of International Relations (CJIR) invites contributions to a special section titled Degrowth in and beyond Central and Eastern Europe that will be part of the second issue of CJIR's volume 59 (August 2024). 

In recent years, degrowth has attracted significant attention in and beyond academic circles. It is based on a belief that the ongoing climate catastrophe is not being caused by human beings as such, but by a global capitalist system that is predicated on perpetual expansion, disproportionately to the benefit of a small minority of people and regions in the global economy (Moore 2015, Hickel 2021: 1105-6). The vast majority of economic literature believes that we need to continue pursuing economic growth in order to overcome ecological breakdown, and stress the necessity to decouple GDP growth from its ecological impacts. Degrowth problematizes this claim and argues that the decoupling is either impossible (Hickel and Kallis 2020), or not achievable within a reasonable timeframe (Schroder and Storm 2020). Instead, it proposes to fundamentally alter our ideas about, and practice of, societal and economic relations across all scales of global political economy. The shift to “post-growth” or “degrowth” would actively slow down the speed of material production and consumption, in order to both address climate change and remove pressure on other planetary boundaries (Hickel 2021). This shift also exposes transnational economic inequalities between the global North and South, as bringing world economy back into planetary limits would necessitate degrowth of North's unjust economic privilege.

But what is the place of Europe's Eastern periphery and de facto global semi-periphery in such changing discourses and practices linked to the degrowth movement? The unique postcolonial/postsocialist condition of this region on the economic, societal, and political periphery of the global North has been so far missing in the explicitly degrowth literature, even though the degrowth perspective resonates in the region's public debates. Can bringing Central and Eastern Europe into this literature further widen its still limited analysis of degrowth´s intellectual role and practical influence in countries outside of the Northern economic cores? In the special section of CJIR, we aim to ask questions such as: 

• How is degrowth represented in the discourses and policymaking within Central and Eastern European countries? 
• Have the socialist pasts and/or postsocialist neoliberal hegemony influenced the elite and popular views of economic growth and social progress in CEE and what effect it had on their take on degrowth? 
• Is there a distinction between the core and (semi)periphery thinking about degrowth? 
• Are there specific geo-historical varieties of degrowth that are based in specific cultural, political and economic contexts?

We ask potential contributors to submit an abstract (no longer than 250 words) and a short biography until October 15, 2023. Abstracts will then be evaluated in the editorial team and upon acceptance, full manuscripts of up to 6.000 words should be submitted until January 31, 2024. The special section will be published in August 2024, however the articles will appear as ‘online first’ as soon as they are accepted and produced by the journal. 

All abstracts should be submitted to the CJIR editor-in-chief Michal Kolmaš at michal.kolmas@mup.cz. 

 

The Czech Journal of International Relations (CJIR) is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes scholarly work in International Relations (IR), and other related disciplines. The journal’s scope is not theoretically or geographically limited, yet it aspires to promote research that is pertinent to Central Europe (broadly conceived). In 2023, CJIR was attributed an Impact Factor of 0.4 by the Clarivate's Web of Science, and was placed within 3rd Quartile according to the Journal Citation Indicator (JCI).