Post-Growth Solutions for Social Resilience

Due to the complex, novel and dynamic nature of contemporary crises and future extreme events, creative solutions, concepts and strategies need to be defined and implemented in order to strengthen the resilience of affected social systems, such as organisations, economies, states, regions or municipalities. To do so, it is worth questioning the current premises of growth-based organising, management and way of living that are even discussed as aspects of the problem then of the solution. Although the concept of post-growth is widely discussed among scholars and activists already for several years, there is still little research on the nexus of post-growth and social resilience. Both, for theory and practice, little is known on how and which post-growth solutions affect the resilience of a social system. Thus, this paper focus on the questions
a) how post-growth solutions influence social resilience (theoretical perspective) and
b) which post-growth solutions strengthen social resilience (practical perspective).
Applying a foresight method design, the research results show that the properties of autonomy, sufficiency and solidarity, as well as the capacity to self-organise have an enhancing effect on the resilience of social systems. The article concludes that post-growth is a valuable concept to deepen our understanding of resilience by adding knowledge to the underlying principles of resilience in terms of self-organisation and dynamic capacities (theoretical perspective). In addition, the concept of post-growth allows to deduct practical solutions to strengthen the capacity of a social system to prepare for, cope with and adapt to extreme crisis situations, i.e. to strengthen resilience (practical perspective).