KC Legacion is a Master of Environmental Studies candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His research presents a reimagined understanding of social media through the lens of degrowth—this project will culminate in a short film set to premiere in September of this year. Outside of their research, KC is a team member of the web collective degrowth.info and a member of a nascent housing cooperative in West Philadelphia.

KC LEGACION

Degrowth as an idea has intellectual roots in the environmental critiques of the sixties and seventies found in landmark works like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which was a seminal piece of economic theory that applied the laws of thermodynamics to the economy and was very influential for ecological economics, which is intertwined with degrowth. Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.

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What does degrowth mean for the Global South? There are some thoughts that degrowth in the Global North would facilitate self-determination in the Global South because the Global North would no longer have this extractive relationship. There's also a critique to that, saying that degrowth in the Global North can and will have repercussions on the Global South just given the interconnected nature of our globalized realities.

Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.

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“There's actually an entire subfield of degrowth scholarship that's called degrowth and technology, which looks at technology's role in these sociological transformations pursued by degrowthers. My master's research focuses on looking at social media through a degrowth lens. Specifically, I'm using concepts in the literature called "conviviality", which was first formulated by Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born priest, critic, and philosopher who wrote a number of texts in the 1970s that sharply analyzed industrial ways of life.”

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Yansong Li with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Yansong Li. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).