Alternative hedonisms and earth practices: Design and degrowth in the capitalocene

This design anthropology piece contributes to thinking on how to decouple design practices from neoliberal globalised capitalism, economic growth and consumerism. Drawing on the Marxist philosopher Kate Soper’s theorising around patterns of work and consumption in affluent countries (such as the UK) and her post-growth theory of the alternative hedonisms or pleasures of a less harried and acquisitive living, the paper argues that one way to achieve this decoupling could be to consider how more pleasure and greater well-being could be one of the ‘opportunities through reduction’, if you will. Illustration is provided by ethnography with natural builders working with earth as their main material. The paper proposes that earth-builders’ alternatively hedonistic practices and ecological experiences might give design, more widely, ideas for how to truly acknowledge our practice’s problematic and continued hitching to the extractive and exploitative systems of capitalism and, ultimately, for how to degrow.