On Growth, Degrowth, and Growing

Today, growth is one of the central frameworks shaping collective life and political action across the globe. Few other ideas are now as commonsensical in guiding the aspirations of people, societies, institutions, nation-states, and entire regions—for all of which the mantra applies: Growth is good. At the same time, the dominance of growth as a self-evident good has triggered strong challenges, one of the most prominent of which is the project of degrowth. The degrowth critique is both important and persuasive. Questioning the at-times binary nature of debates that are either pro- or antigrowth, however, this review seeks to expand thinking about growth. We call for reclaiming growing and growth as key anthropological terms and concerns.