Conviviality and Conscience: How Degrowth and Abolition Theory Critique and Re-envision Welfare States

Abstract: Abolition theory and degrowth theory address important issues in the social-political world. An emergent discipline (in academia), abolition theory carefully dissects the ideological and historical underpinnings of the current system of police and prisons in the United States. It offers a systematic critique of their impact. Abolitionist scholars and activists also offer a creative framework for envisioning a world without police and prisons, one not dominated by carceral logic, police violence, and community isolation. Degrowth theory is an academic challenge of economic growth in the ‘Global North.’ It offers a plethora of critiques on the logic of growth-based economies and their impacts, with a particular concern for the ecological unviability of the unlimited growth paradigm that currently exists. This paper seeks to discuss these two theories through a qualitative comparative framework analysis of how they critique the welfare state and envision new realities. The results are analyzed through the lenses of sociological imagination and a socio-ecological model. The results suggest further research is needed to integrate the two theories fully but that this sampling of literature does lay a foundation for the two to be compared.