SPECIAL SEMINAR: "Framing De-growth: Democracy, Participation, and Social Planning" by Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine

Title: "Framing De-growth: Democracy, Participation, and Social Planning"

Speakers: Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine

 

Date: Wednesday, October 24th

Time: 12.30h

Venue: Room Z/022  ICTA-UAB

Organized by EnvJustice

 



The talk will discuss how, in a future post-growth eco-socialist society, democratic participatory social planning could address the social, ecological, economic and political challenges facing the world. It will be structured around the claim that the socialist concept of common ownership of the means of production and the ecological concept of stewardship of the commons should converge on the need to transform private property into social property. It will argue that social ownership needs to be combined with participatory planning in order to coordinate interdependent decisions and consciously shape them in accordance with society’s values and priorities. Reliance on market forces for decisions pertaining to investment and disinvestment gives rise to what Marx called the 'anarchy of production' and cannot provide a framework for conscious social decision-making in relation to human flourishing and ecological sustainability. Participatory planning should not be confused with top-down, hierarchical technocratic planning, nor with computer-based iterative models seeking to aggregate the existing preferences of individuals, or workplaces and communities. It is based on procedural rationality and conceived as a deliberative democratic process in the course of which people and preferences change.

 

Fikret Adaman (BA and MA in economics at Bo¿aziçi University and PhD in economics at University of Manchester) is professor of economics at Bo¿aziçi University, and currently teaches at Bologna University. His research interests include alternative economies, ecological economics, history of economy thought, and political economy/ecology. His publications appeared in, among others, Antipode, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Conservation Letters, Development and Change, Ecological Economics, Energy Policy, Environment and Planning C, Environmental Politics, European Journal of History of Economic Thought, Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Peasants’ Studies, New Left Review, Voluntas. His co-edited book (with Bengi Akbulut and Murat Arsel) Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment Under Erdo¿an has recently been published (IB Taurus). He has been acting as expert to the European Commission for Turkey on social exclusion since 2009 and as director of the Turkey office of UN-Sustainable Development Network Solutions since 2016. With Bengi Akbulut he runs a fortnightly radio programme, “The End of Economy and Economics as you Happen to Know It”, criticising the modernisation move that disregards social and ecological costs. He served as chair to the Economics Department and as advisor to the rector of Bo¿aziçi University.