Being in the World Locally: Degrowth Business, Critical Realism, and Humanistic Geography

Abstract

It has been argued that to achieve a genuinely sustainable society, our mode of being in the world needs to change. Understanding macro visions such as the desirable size of our economies remains essential, but concrete ways of being in the world which unite such aspects of our existence as the self, being with others (humans and non-humans) and being in and with nature deserve a much closer attention. Hence, I propose focusing our attention on being once again. But rather than contemplating being as an abstract philosophical category, this paper looks at being in the world in this dual sense: we are part of the cosmos, of the web of existence and at the same time we are in the world locally, in concrete places and locations characterized by particular cultural attributes, political-economic systems, climate and landscape. This nature of being applies to individual humans and human organizations. This paper focuses specifically on business as one type of organizations. I employ the concept of degrowth business, the philosophy of critical realism and humanistic geography as lenses to enhance and deepen our understanding of what it could mean and look like for a business to be in the world locally and more sustainably. To understand what it could mean and look like in reality, I offer a case of a firm from Northern Sweden specializing in vertical hydroponic agriculture.

Implementation of an Ethical Circular Hub: Framework Proposal

“…According to Gower and Schroeder (2016) in a business context, the implementation of a CE approach could contribute in a positive way to cost savings, job creation, innovation, productivity, and resource efficiency. Transforming the linear business model of production-consumption-disposal into a sustainable process of makeuse-reuse-remake-recycle (Mhatre et al, 2021) represents an important driver for the achievement of SDGs (Schroeder et al, 2019;Nesterova, 2022). Researchers can contribute to community-driven research by engaging more with the perceptions of actual information users, as well as engaging and joining forces with community members and politicians to encompass a varied assessment of actual knowledge users before starting community engagement.…”

Sufficiency in Business

“…Sufficiency can also be manifested in considerations of the local nature and its resources, i.e., seeing the location as sufficient and developing responsibility towards the place which houses the business. Sufficiency of location (Nesterova/ Jungell-Michelsson 2023) relates closely to the call for localization within the sustainability discourse (Trainer 2012) and the call for an increased sensitivity towards local nature and places (Nesterova 2022a(Nesterova , 2022b(Nesterova , 2023. In this context, it is important to acknowledge that in many (if not all) instances, localization still entails long supply chains.…”

The Mana Kai Framework: a degrowth lens

“…Individual businesses could not hope to isolate from, or overcome, this momentum in order to drive change the way they individually see it, or to set a sustainability direction and standard. A degrowth business is not an entity, but rather a process within a larger system of processes (Nesterova, 2022).…”