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Economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss and does not necessarily contribute to wellbeing. Thus, when developing biodiversity scenarios, we should explore societal futures where economic growth is not a pre-condition. However, it is not clear how and by whom a degrowth scenario for biodiversity could be developed. This is so because there are different approaches to develop scenarios (some of them nascent) and because degrowth is only loosely connected to biodiversity questions. In this perspective paper we explain how the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) could be used to generate a degrowth scenario for biodiversity, Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) and Good Quality of Life (GQL) based on multiple societal values. We present key methodological avenues of such an endeavour, including: (i) generating degrowth visions for biodiversity, NCP and GQL; (ii) identifying the leverage points and characterizing the transition; (iii) identifying relevant social-ecological feedbacks and selecting indicators; and (iv) modelling biodiversity, NCP and GQL along a degrowth transition. We frame our proposal in current efforts to improve scenario development across the biodiversity and climate communities. We end with a call for collaboration between natural and social sciences, quantitative and qualitative approaches, and northern and southern perspectives. This collaboration could lead to a community of practice that tests and improves the scenario in national and international science-policy interfaces.

Transmissible cancers are malignant cell clones that spread among individuals through transfer of living cancer cells. Several such cancers, collectively known as bivalve transmissible neoplasia (BTN), are known to infect and cause leukaemia in marine bivalve molluscs. This is the case of BTN clones affecting the common cockle,Cerastoderma edule, which inhabits the Atlantic coasts of Europe and north-west Africa. To investigate the origin and evolution of contagious cancers in common cockles, we collected 6,854C. edulespecimens and diagnosed 390 cases of BTN. We then generated a reference genome for the species and assessed genomic variation in the genomes of 61 BTN tumours. Analysis of tumour-specific variants confirmed the existence of two cockle BTN lineages with independent clonal origins, and gene expression patterns supported their status as haemocyte-derived marine leukaemias. Examination of mitochondrial DNA sequences revealed several mitochondrial capture events in BTN, as well as co-infection of cockles by different tumour lineages. Mutational analyses identified two lineage-specific mutational signatures, one of which resembles a signature associated with DNA alkylation. Karyotypic and copy number analyses uncovered genomes marked by pervasive instability and polyploidy. Whole-genome duplication, amplification of oncogenesCCND3andMDM2, and deletion of the DNA alkylation repair geneMGMT, are likely drivers of BTN evolution. Characterization of satellite DNA identified elements with vast expansions in the cockle germ line, yet absent from BTN tumours, suggesting ancient clonal origins. Our study illuminates the evolution of contagious cancers under the sea, and reveals long-term tolerance of extreme instability in neoplastic genomes.

Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Climate change is expected to increase the number of days with meteorological conditions conducive to uncontrollable wildfires. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen the capacity of wildfire-prone regions to minimize the adverse impacts of these wildfires by creating resilient landscapes. In this paper we develop a participatory multi-criteria evaluation to identify and map landscape values and prioritize areas according to these values in the Montseny Biophere Reserve (Catalonia, NE Spain). Then, we draft a wildfire management strategy to protect the areas that have been prioritized through selected fuel reduction sectors that would reduce wildfire intensity. Finally, we emphasize the added value of a participatory multi-criteria evaluation in the adaptation to and management of expected megafires. We find that the integration of landscape values through participatory multi-criteria evaluation has the potential to alter wildfire management strategies by adding fuel reduction sectors and changing their implementation order. However, the implementation of the planned fuel reduction treatments faces socioeconomic and institutional barriers that call for a deeper engagement with transdisciplinary project design and transformative science.

We are of the opinion that old environmental policies that are based on scientific knowledge at the time they are established need to be revisited in terms of the current knowledge and the effectiveness of these policies in protecting or promoting a particular ecosystem service. Here we use the first Swiss Federal Forest Law (1876) as a case example, which was established to protect mountain forests as a natural means of protection against natural hazards, particularly floods. We briefly summarize the current relevant scientific knowledge on i) reasons for reforestation in mountains and how the law may have contributed, ii) forest effects on hydrological regimes and their protection service against floods, and iii) other watershed changes affecting both reforestation and the forest-runoff interaction. We then present insights from a case study on the Upper Rhone catchments, which lead us to develop a methodological approach based on interdisciplinary collaboration among natural and social sciences to gain the needed data to answer the question of whether a forest protection law can serve as a means of flood protection. Specifically, we found that a means of data interpolation is key to answering this question given data are at different scales and resolutions, and suggest modeling methods to fill gaps. Such methods and collaborations are key for basing environmental laws and policies in current scientific knowledge and effectively manage ecosystems and their services.

The risk of devastating wildfires – exacerbated by climate change – poses a threat to urban areas worldwide. There is a pressing need to strengthen societal efforts to coexist with this perturbation by creating resilient social-ecological systems. To enable this, a significant social-ecological transformation of wildfire-prone regions seems to be required. Here, I reflect on my experience in three projects of participatory wildfire governance conducted in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (Spain) during the last 18 years. The goal is to learn from the experience and to sketch new transformative options to coexist with wildfire. After a literature review on the links between resilience to wildfire, adaptation and transformation, I analyse these projects with regard to their achievements, challenges and potential new transformative avenues. The analysis shows the crucial role that a locally rooted civil society can have when it is able to network with key agencies and actors over the long term. It also shows the importance of developing integrative wildfire planning networks where different ecosystem services and values are considered in successive phases of public deliberation between actors, citizens and wildfire managers. It is concluded that deepening the transdisciplinary content of participatory wildfire governance can increase its transformative potential.

Most cancers are characterized by the somatic acquisition of genomic rearrangements during tumour evolution that eventually drive the oncogenesis. Here, using multiplatform sequencing technologies, we identify and characterize a remarkable mutational mechanism in human hepatocellular carcinoma caused by Hepatitis B virus, by which DNA molecules from the virus are inserted into the tumour genome causing dramatic changes in its configuration, including non-homologous chromosomal fusions, dicentric chromosomes and megabase-size telomeric deletions. This aberrant mutational mechanism, present in at least 8% of all HCC tumours, can provide the driver rearrangements that a cancer clone requires to survive and grow, including loss of relevant tumour suppressor genes. Most of these events are clonal and occur early during liver cancer evolution. Real-time timing estimation reveals some HBV-mediated rearrangements occur as early as two decades before cancer diagnosis. Overall, these data underscore the importance of characterising liver cancer genomes for patterns of HBV integration., Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and DNA integration is a frequent cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the consequences of this process are not fully understood. Here the authors use whole-genome and long-read sequencing data from HCC patient samples to study the timing and alterations induced by HBV insertions.

Environmental policies have the purpose to protect ecosystems in their structure and function to maintain the ecosystem services they provide. They are based on scientific knowledge at the time they are established, and rarely are those assumptions revisited or is the effectiveness of these policies in protecting or promoting a particular ecosystem service tested. In this study, we revisit the first Swiss Federal Forest Law which protects mountain forests as a means of protection from natural hazards. It was established in 1876 following catastrophic flood events to preserve and restore the protective service of mountain forests by prohibiting clear-cutting and an excessive use of forests. Here, we provide a conceptual and methodological framework to explore the effects of the Forest Law on flood occurrence based on insights from preliminary results of a feasibility study. For the conceptual framework, we summarize the current scientific knowledge on i) forest effects on hydrological regimes and their protection service against floods, ii) reasons for reforestation in mountains and how the law may have contributed, and iii) other watershed changes affecting both reforestation and the forest-runoff interaction. We then develop the methodological framework based on insights from a case study on the Upper Rhone catchments, which serves as a prototype of an interdisciplinary methodological approach to answer the question of whether a forest protection law can serve as a means of flood protection. We explore the feasibility of answering this question given data are at different scales and resolutions. We suggest modeling to fill data gaps and discuss collaboration among natural and social sciences. Specifically, we propose that both natural and social scientists need to collaborate, with frequent exchange, to collect the data necessary to evaluate the relationship between legal forest protection and flood occurrence. We found an environmental historian is needed to evaluate if changes in forest cover can be attributed to mandates by the law, or rather cultural and societal developments. Further, a forest scientist or engineer in collaboration with a hydrologist will need to adapt and improve hydrological models that specifically include forest cover and structure. All scientists need to collaborate to find the information on historical and current forest cover (e.g., maps, postcards, orthophotos) and floods (e.g., archival documents, journal, newspapers, hydrological stations). Our case study indicates that data to answer the overarching question may be available and emphasizes the necessity of a true interdisciplinary approach allowing for consideration and combination of a variety of data sources and different temporal and spatial scales. The interdisciplinary framework we developed can serve as example for other ecosystem services, where similar questions on the effects of environmental practices and policies arise.

Mountain regions face important environmental and socioeconomic challenges. They are strongly affected by global warming, and their main economic sectors (agriculture, energy production, and tourism) strive to adapt to this and other global changes. Moreover, in a context of economic globalization, the constraints inherent to mountain regions (slope, isolation, and marginalization) make them uncompetitive in comparison with lowland or coastal regions. To address these issues in an inter- and transdisciplinary manner, and from a perspective of transformation research, the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, has created the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mountain Research, which this article presents.

Drug-decorated nanoparticles (DDNPs) have important medical applications. The current work combined Perturbation Theory with Machine Learning and Information Fusion (PTMLIF). Thus, PTMLIF models were proposed to predict the probability of nanoparticle&ndash, compound/drug complexes having antimalarial activity (against Plasmodium). The aim is to save experimental resources and time by using a virtual screening for DDNPs. The raw data was obtained by the fusion of experimental data for nanoparticles with compound chemical assays from the ChEMBL database. The inputs for the eight Machine Learning classifiers were transformed features of drugs/compounds and nanoparticles as perturbations of molecular descriptors in specific experimental conditions (experiment-centered features). The resulting dataset contains 107 input features and 249,992 examples. The best classification model was provided by Random Forest, with 27 selected features of drugs/compounds and nanoparticles in all experimental conditions considered. The high performance of the model was demonstrated by the mean Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics (AUC) in a test subset with a value of 0.9921 &plusmn, 0.000244 (10-fold cross-validation). The results demonstrated the power of information fusion of the experimental-centered features of drugs/compounds and nanoparticles for the prediction of nanoparticle&ndash, compound antimalarial activity. The scripts and dataset for this project are available in the open GitHub repository.

The challenge of sustainability is not about producing more or better managerial knowledge. It is in fact a transformation of the systems and structures that perpetuate environmental problems that is emerging as the key sustainability goal. In this paper we show the relevance of this argument, by using wildfires as symptoms of the challenges posed by global change to western societies, where wildfires are becoming increasingly problematic. Climate change, land abandonment, exurban expansion and fire suppression schemes are some of the main reasons behind this. Tackling the increasing intensity and complexity of wildfires is consequently emerging as an important research and policy topic. A central question in the literature is how to achieve a more sustainable coexistence with wildfire. Fuel reduction treatments, fire restoration, the reform of current suppression policies and adaptive institutional arrangements have all been debated. However, the social-ecological transformations needed to effectively implement these management options are not sufficiently understood. This paper looks at the efforts of the Catalan wildfire management system to cope with wildfire risk over the last decades. In particular, the emergence of GRAF, a group of wildfire fighting specialists in the Fire Department, is described. Emphasizing the need to understand wildfires as an inherent part of Mediterranean ecosystems, the expansion of GRAF highlights how learning to coexist with wildfire in Catalonia has triggered a set of transformative processes in institutional arrangements and power relationships of the wildfire management system. Our data also illustrate how coexisting with wildfire entails a dramatic social-ecological transformation in terms of land-uses, settlement patterns, energy supply systems and social values about wildfires. Moreover, we warn that in the absence of such systemic changes, management improvements might paradoxically reinforce risk. We conclude that wildfire researchers and practitioners should link the proposed management options to a deeper debate on how to produce alternative, less flammable landscapes, as agents of a broader social-ecological transformation to sustainability.

[Abstract] The methodology presented in this paper aims to detect pathological regions affected by one or more of the three clinically defined types of Diabetic Macular Edema (DME). Using representative samples extracted from Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images, three representative classifiers are trained to analyze new input images and create an intuitive visualization of the detection results. The trained models provided a satisfactory performance for all three defined types of DME, and the visual feedback can effectively assists clinical experts in the diagnosis of this representative and extended disease. Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/01 Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-047 Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional; 18CO1/006199. This research was funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III grant number DTS18/00136, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades grant numbers DPI 2015-69948-R and RTI2018-095894-B-I00, Xunta de Galicia through the accreditation of Centro Singular de Investigación 2016–2019, Ref. ED431G/01, Xunta de Galicia through Grupos de Referencia Competitiva, Ref. ED431C 2016-047 and Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional grant number 18CO1/006199.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Participatory planning networks made of government agencies, stakeholders, citizens and scientists are receiving attention as a potential pathway to build resilient landscapes in the face of increased wildfire impacts due to suppression policies and land-use and climate changes. A key challenge for these networks lies in incorporating local knowledge and social values about landscape into operational wildfire management strategies. As large wildfires overcome the suppression capacity of the fire departments, such strategies entail difficult decisions about intervention priorities among different regions, values and socioeconomic interests. Therefore there is increasing interest in developing tools that facilitate decision-making during emergencies. In this paper we present a method to democratize wildfire strategies by incorporating social values about landscape in both suppression and prevention planning. We do so by reporting and critically reflecting on the experience from a pilot participatory process conducted in a region of Catalonia (Spain). There, we built a network of researchers, practitioners and citizens across spatial and governance scales. We combined knowledge on expected wildfires, landscape co-valuation by relevant actors, and citizen participation sessions to design a wildfire strategy that minimized the loss of social values. Drawing on insights from political ecology and transformation science, we discuss what the attempt to democratize wildfire strategies entails in terms of power relationships and potential for social-ecological transformation. Based on our experience, we suggest a trade-off between current wildfire risk levels and democratic management in the fire-prone regions of many western countries. In turn, the political negotiation about the landscape effects of wildfire expert knowledge is shown as a potential transformation pathway towards lower risk landscapes that can re-define agency over landscape and foster community re-learning on fire. We conclude that democratizing wildfire strategies ultimately entails co-shaping the landscapes and societies of the future.

Climate change being a product of industrialization can easily fuel the idea that adaptation to climate impacts is something new. Scholars of the past, however, show that societies have dynamically and heterogeneously coped with climate variability and with recurrent and abrupt weather extremes. This research aims to explore adaptation in preindustrial societies taking into account different levels of social organization. We argue that this multilevel perspective can enrich our understanding of the critical levels contributing to cope with climate impacts in past societies. Archival research was carried out in the early modern villages of Terrassa and Sant Pere (Barcelona, Spain) to reconstruct the set of strategies to cope with recurrent droughts both at the community and the household levels. We found that peasant families developed a wider range of strategies than communities, but that many strategies used by households and communities overlapped, potentially generating a redundancy effect and fostering complex strategies operating through cross-level interactions. By studying past adaptation strategies with common taxonomies and detailed methodologies, our paper aims to improve interdisciplinary communication with research about the human dimensions of anthropogenic climate change. Forthcoming in Environment and History.

A growing number of studies argue that forest transition should be enhanced by policymakers given its potential benefits, for instance in slowing climate change through carbon sequestration. Yet the effects of forest transition in landscape heterogeneity and biodiversity remain poorly understood. In this paper we explore the relationships between the forest transition and the landscape changes occurred in a Mediterranean mountain area. Historical land-use maps were built from cadastral cartography (1854; 1956; 2012). Metrics on land-cover change, landscape structure, and landscape functioning were calculated. Multiyear data on butterfly assemblages from two transects (1994–2012) was used as indicator of land-use change effects on biodiversity. Results show a forest expansion process in former cereal fields, vineyards and pasturelands along with rural out-migration and land abandonment. Such forest transition involved large changes in landscape structure and functioning. As peasant management of integrated agrosilvopastoral systems disappeared, landscape became less diverse. Even if forest area is now larger than in mid-nineteenth century, ecological connectivity among woodland did not substantially improve. Instead, ecological connectivity across open habitats has greatly decreased as cereal fields, vineyards, meadows and pasturelands have almost disappeared. Butterfly assemblages under changing land-uses highlights the importance of agro-forest mosaics not only for these species but for biodiversity at large in the last decades. Our work emphasizes that conservation of landscapes with a long history of human use needs to take into account the role of humans in shaping ecological features and biodiversity. Hence the suitability of forest transitions should be critically examined in relation to context and policy objectives.

In the late 1980s, the sustainable development paradigm emerged to provide a framework through which economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection could be harmonized. However, more than 30 years later, we can assert that such harmonization has proved elusive. Steffen et al. (2015) have shown that four out of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed: climate change, impacts in biosphere integrity, land-system change and altered biochemical flows are a manifestation that human activities are driving the Earth into a new state of imbalance. Meanwhile, wealth concentration and inequality have increased, particularly during the last 50 years (Piketty 2014). In 2008, the collapse of large financial institutions was prevented by the public bailout of private banks and, nowadays, low growth rates are likely to become the norm in the economic development of mature economies (Summers 2013; IMF 2015; Teulings and Baldwin 2015). The three pillars of sustainability (environment, society and economy) are thus simultaneously threatened by an intertwined crisis. In an attempt to problematize the sustainable development paradigm, and its recent reincarnation in the concept of a ‘‘green economy’’, degrowth emerged as a paradigm that emphasizes that there is a contradiction between sustainability and economic growth (Kothari et al. 2015; Dale et al. 2015). It argues that the pathway towards a sustainable future is to be found in a democratic and redistributive downscaling of the biophysical size of the global economy (Schneider et al. 2010; D’Alisa et al. 2014). In the context of this desired transformation, it becomes imperative to explore ways in which sustainability science can explicitly and effectively address one of the root causes of social and environmental degradation worldwide, namely, the ideology and practice of economic growth. This special feature aims to do so by stressing the deeply contested and political nature of the debates around the prospects, pathways and challenges of a global transformation towards sustainability. The ‘growth’ paradigm (Dale 2012; Purdey 2010) is indeed largely accepted in advanced and developing countries alike as an unquestioned imperative and naturalized need. It escapes ‘the political’, i.e. the contested public terrain where different imaginaries of possible socio-ecological orders compete over the symbolic and material institutionalization of these visions. In this sense, the contemporary context of neoliberal capitalism appears as a post-political space, i.e. a political formation that forecloses the political, the legitimacy of dissenting voices and positions (Swyngedouw 2007). As Swyngedouw (2014:91) argues: ‘‘the public management of things and people is hegemonically articulated around a naturalization of the need of economic growth and capitalism as the only reasonable and possible form of organization of socionatural metabolism. This foreclosure of the political in terms of at least recognizing the legitimacy of dissenting & Viviana Asara viviana.asara@gmail.com

Fires shed light. We revisit a tragic fire which occurred in southern Catalonia in 2009 to uncover tensions and frictions in the ways in which modern societies appreciate and reorganise their relations to nature, by looking at forests and fires in particular. Using a broadly defined political ecology approach, we identify four major contemporary collective discourses and associated visions that underpin humanity’s material relations to nature. Our case study shows how these coexist, antagonize, interact, and play out in practices concerning forest-fire prevention and response. The focus is on the emerging discourse of ‘resilience’. In it, nature is seen as socially produced. Resilience embraces and aspires to tinker with the turbulent and unpredictable character of nature. Embodied in GRAF, Catalonia’s internationally renowned special fire-fighting unit, this vision faced its hour of judgment in the Horta de Sant Joan fire, when five GRAF firefighters tragically lost their lives. Although the tragedy opened an opportunity for learning, the political processes dealing with the tragedy failed to engage with the fundamental frictions underlying forests and fires. We raise doubts about the possibility for resilience in an increasingly depoliticised public sphere. Keywords: forests, wildfires, resilience, learning, depolitization, discourses

Both biological and cultural diversities seem to be diminishing together along with the progressive interconnection of peoples and ecosystems of the earth under the rules and dynamics of global markets. This has led some conservationists and social scientists to highlight the need for enhanced knowledge on the complex interrelationships between cultural and biological diversities if successful conservation strategies are to be achieved. In this work we show how the long-term coevolution between peasants and their environment sustained habitats and species that are now declining along with rural exodus in a mountainous area of the Mediterranean, a region where the maintenance of diverse landscapes is very much related to the presence of traditional rural activities. We provide an account of agrosilvopastoral practices once performed by the local peasant community and show their embeddedness in a particular set of institutions and worldview within an adaptive social–ecological system. We argue that such practices constitute an essential social–ecological heritage entailing valuable insights for the conservation of Mediterranean landscapes under conditions of global change.

New challenges posed by global environmental change have motivated scholars to pay growing attention to historical long-term strategies to deal with climate extremes. We aim to understand long-term trends in community responses to cope with droughts, to explain how many preindustrial societies coevolved with local hydro-climatic dynamics and coped with climate extremes over time. The specific goals of this work are: (1) to analyze how local communities experienced droughts over long periods of time and (2) to document the spectrum of recorded community responses to drought. Our research covers over one century (1605-1710) of responses to drought in the community of Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain. Data were collected through archival research. We reviewed and coded 2076 village council minutes. Our results show that the local community adopted a mixture of symbolic, institutional, and infrastructural responses to drought and that drought-related decisions varied through time. We discuss adaptation strategies on the basis of the distinct physical signals of drought propagation and the role of nonclimatic historical factors, such as warfare and public debt, in shaping responses. We conclude that long-term perspectives on premodern history and comparable empirical studies are fundamental to advance our understanding of past social responses to hydro-climatic extremes. adaptation; drought; early modern period; environmental history

This article investigates the history of land and water transformations in Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona. Analysis is informed by theories of political ecology and methods of environmental history; although very relevant, these have received relatively little attention within ecological economics. Empirical material includes communications from the City Archives of Matadepera (1919–1979), 17 interviews with locals born between 1913 and 1958, and an exhaustive review of grey historical literature. Existing water histories of Barcelona and its outskirts portray a battle against natural water scarcity, hard won by heroic engineers and politicians acting for the good of the community. Our research in Matadepera tells a very different story. We reveal the production of a highly uneven landscape and waterscape through fierce political and power struggles. The evolution of Matadepera from a small rural village to an elite suburb was anything but spontaneous or peaceful. It was a socio-environmental project well intended by landowning elites and heavily fought by others. The struggle for the control of water went hand in hand with the land and political struggles that culminated – and were violently resolved – in the Spanish Civil War. The displacement of the economic and environmental costs of water use from few to many continues to this day and is constitutive of Matadepera's uneven and unsustainable landscape. By unravelling the relations of power that are inscribed in the urbanization of nature (Swyngedouw, 2004), we question the perceived wisdoms of contemporary water policy debates, particularly the notion of a natural scarcity that merits a technical or economic response. We argue that the water question is fundamentally a political question of environmental justice; it is about negotiating alternative visions of the future and deciding whose visions will be produced.

Mediterranean countries are experiencing the fastest rates of urban sprawl in Europe, and concern about potential negative environmental effects is increasing. This expansion is occurring in a context of declining rural activities, where highly diverse cultural landscapes are giving way to homogenous low-density housing developments and entirely new forms of human-nature relations. In the present study we offer an analysis of the socio-ecological transformation of Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona that evolved out of a rural village inhabited by poor peasants who farmed rain-fed cropland and managed the forest. By cross-checking data from land-cover maps, documentary sources and semi-structured interviews with elderly local peasants, we managed to gain a detailed understanding of the driving forces behind land cover transformation and give voice to perceptions of landscape change among a quite neglected social group. Our results indicate dramatic urban sprawl onto former fields and woods over the last decades, driven by a combination of different factors. They also show that oral sources can yield information on landscape changes not available from any other kind of source. Moreover, by recovering valuable and so far neglected personal memories we hope to provide further stimulus to policy actions aimed at charting a more balanced development path for the area.

la notion de dépense désigne une part d’énergie qui ne peut être utilisée par des organismes vivants en raison de leurs limites physiologiques. Cette portion d’énergie circule sans but dans l’environnement, jusqu’à ce elle finissent par s’éteindre. Dans une perspective anthropologique, l’énergie pourrait être redéfinie comme le carburant de l’action, ce qui nous pousse à agir. Bataille appelle « servile » la portion d’énergie qu’un être humain utilise pour sa subsistance ou pour sa croissance biologique. Le coeur du problème réside dans l’énergie excédentaire, une fois consommée la part dévolue à cet usage servile. L’excédent d’énergie exige un usage « souverain » : il faut décider de l’usage de ce carburant de l’action, en considérant le contenu philosophique du projet politique qui le définira. La notion de dépense est primordiale pour théoriser une sortie de la société de croissance.

Anti-utilitarianism is a school of thought that critiques the hegemony of the epistemological postulates of economics in the humanities and social sciences. Anti-utilitarians assert the crucial importance of the social bond when compared to self-interest. They outline a gift exchange paradigm that aims to overstep two major frameworks of the social sciences: holism and methodological individualism. In 1981, the French sociologist, Alain Caillé, and the Swiss anthropologist, Gérald Berthoud, gave birth to MAUSS – Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales (Anti-utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences). This brilliant acronym reproduces the surname of the author of The Gift (1924), Marcel Mauss. Most anti-utilitarians reproach Latouche for the choice of the term “degrowth”: it implicitly embeds the alternative into the economic imaginary. They call, instead, for a “political” critique of boundlessness and excess, uprooting the discourse from an ethical level.

In a wider sense, which includes nature, dépense indicates that share of energy which cannot be employed by living organisms, owing to their physiological limits. This portion continues to circulate aimlessly in the environment up until the point where it extinguishes itself. From an anthropological framework, energy could be redefined as the fuel of action, that is, the fuel that calls us to act. The portion of energy that a living being employs for either sustenance or biological growth, Bataille terms “servile.” In fact, mere biological sustenance can be achieved spending only a miniscule portion of the total amount of available energy. The basic problem relates to the residual energy that exceeds the share devoted to such servile use. Excess energy requires a “sovereign” use: it is necessary to choose a destination for the fuel of action on the basis of the philosophical intent of a political prospect. It is the sovereign employment of excess energy that qualifies us as “humans.” Dépense is a key concept, then, for theorizing a way out of the growth society.

In a wider sense, which includes nature, dépense indicates that share of energy which cannot be employed by living organisms, owing to their physiological limits. This portion continues to circulate aimlessly in the environment up until the point where it extinguishes itself. From an anthropological framework, energy could be redefined as the fuel of action, that is, the fuel that calls us to act. The portion of energy that a living being employs for either sustenance or biological growth, Bataille terms “servile.” In fact, mere biological sustenance can be achieved spending only a miniscule portion of the total amount of available energy. The basic problem relates to the residual energy that exceeds the share devoted to such servile use. Excess energy requires a “sovereign” use: it is necessary to choose a destination for the fuel of action on the basis of the philosophical intent of a political prospect. It is the sovereign employment of excess energy that qualifies us as “humans.” Dépense is a key concept, then, for theorizing a way out of the growth society.

In a wider sense, which includes nature, dépense indicates that share of energy which cannot be employed by living organisms, owing to their physiological limits. This portion continues to circulate aimlessly in the environment up until the point where it extinguishes itself. From an anthropological framework, energy could be redefined as the fuel of action, that is, the fuel that calls us to act. The portion of energy that a living being employs for either sustenance or biological growth, Bataille terms “servile.” In fact, mere biological sustenance can be achieved spending only a miniscule portion of the total amount of available energy. The basic problem relates to the residual energy that exceeds the share devoted to such servile use. Excess energy requires a “sovereign” use: it is necessary to choose a destination for the fuel of action on the basis of the philosophical intent of a political prospect. It is the sovereign employment of excess energy that qualifies us as “humans.” Dépense is a key concept, then, for theorizing a way out of the growth society.

Anti-utilitarianism is a school of thought that critiques the hegemony of the epistemological postulates of economics in the humanities and social sciences. Anti-utilitarians assert the crucial importance of the social bond when compared to self-interest. They outline a gift exchange paradigm that aims to overstep two major frameworks of the social sciences: holism and methodological individualism. In 1981, the French sociologist, Alain Caillé, and the Swiss anthropologist, Gérald Berthoud, gave birth to MAUSS – Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales (Anti-utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences). This brilliant acronym reproduces the surname of the author of The Gift (1924), Marcel Mauss. Most anti-utilitarians reproach Latouche for the choice of the term “degrowth”: it implicitly embeds the alternative into the economic imaginary. They call, instead, for a “political” critique of boundlessness and excess, uprooting the discourse from an ethical level.

In a wider sense, which includes nature, dépense indicates that share of energy which cannot be employed by living organisms, owing to their physiological limits. This portion continues to circulate aimlessly in the environment up until the point where it extinguishes itself. From an anthropological framework, energy could be redefined as the fuel of action, that is, the fuel that calls us to act. The portion of energy that a living being employs for either sustenance or biological growth, Bataille terms “servile.” In fact, mere biological sustenance can be achieved spending only a miniscule portion of the total amount of available energy. The basic problem relates to the residual energy that exceeds the share devoted to such servile use. Excess energy requires a “sovereign” use: it is necessary to choose a destination for the fuel of action on the basis of the philosophical intent of a political prospect. It is the sovereign employment of excess energy that qualifies us as “humans.” Dépense is a key concept, then, for theorizing a way out of the growth society.

Anti-utilitarianism is a school of thought that critiques the hegemony of the epistemological postulates of economics in the humanities and social sciences. Anti-utilitarians assert the crucial importance of the social bond when compared to self-interest. They outline a gift exchange paradigm that aims to overstep two major frameworks of the social sciences: holism and methodological individualism. In 1981, the French sociologist, Alain Caillé, and the Swiss anthropologist, Gérald Berthoud, gave birth to MAUSS – Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales (Anti-utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences). This brilliant acronym reproduces the surname of the author of The Gift (1924), Marcel Mauss. Most anti-utilitarians reproach Latouche for the choice of the term “degrowth”: it implicitly embeds the alternative into the economic imaginary. They call, instead, for a “political” critique of boundlessness and excess, uprooting the discourse from an ethical level.