The potential of degrowth and buen vivir in addressing underdevelopment and conflict in the Global South

Summary, in English

What is the potential role of degrowth and buen vivir in addressing underdevelopment and conflict in the Global South? Underdevelopment and conflict are often portrayed as the most important challenges for countries in the Global South. Not only are they important, but they are also related; the level of development is seen to present an indication for the risk of violent conflict and civil war. Policies aiming at increasing development levels based on increase of economic growth are seen as strategies to break the vicious cycle of poverty and armed conflict in low-income countries. However, critical analyses of the process of development and economic growth would question this positive relationship between development and conflict, and would argue that the process of development through economic growth is a violent process in and of itself. In this sense, promoting alternative economic models like degrowth and alternative cosmovisions like buen vivir would allow for a restructuring of the society away from the growth imperative and towards more holistic relationships between people and nature.

• Author: Barbara Magalhaes Teixeira
• Department/s: Department of Political Science
• Publishing year: 2021-11-18
• Language: English
• Links: https://www.degrowth.info/en/blog/the-potential-of-degrowth-and-buen-vivir-in-addressing-underdevelopment-and-conflict-in-the-global-south
• Document type: Web publication
• Topic: Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
• Status: Published