Degrowth beyond the metropole: theory and praxis for a revolutionary degrowth

This chapter brings the Global South to the centre stage of degrowth debates to envision what a truly global and anti-colonial movement towards degrowth could look like. To do so, we first bring the varying definitions of the term ‘Global South’ to the forefront and consider the Global South not as an undynamic and apolitical cate- gory, but as a site of resistance and independent critical thinking against capitalist expansion and the process of neoliberal globalisation. Second, we discuss the struc- tural and sociocultural constraints of the Global South that they inherited from their historical experience of colonialism and oppression which paved the way for their so- called ‘underdevelopment.’ By revisiting dependency and world-systems theory, we reprise the problematic experience of the Global South’s efforts for self-defined and self-generated development in the past. Lastly, we instrumentalise the critical peda- gogy framework of Paulo Freire, to illuminate what awaits the Global South in a de- growth transition. We conclude our discussion by arguing that as the ‘oppressed,’ the Global South is the true leader of a revolutionary transformation through and to- wards degrowth, as only they can liberate both themselves and their ‘oppressor,’ the Global North, from ossified patterns of (neo)colonialism and domination to achieve such transformation.