Post-growth entrepreneurship: the case of a tool library in Australia
There is an urgent need to shift away from the Capitalocene and transition towards post-growth societies that respect social wellbeing and ecological sustainability. This presentation introduces a post-growth enterprise: the Brisbane Tool Library Inc. (BTL) - a ‘library of things’- founded in 2017 in Australia. This community-driven tool library encourages and enables people to borrow ‘things’, such as power tools, camping gear and party decorations. Its inventory consists of items rescued from landfills. By borrowing items, members can reduce their environmental impact, save money and space at home. This presentation stems from a scholar-practitioner perspective, drawing on insights learned from founding and co-managing BTL.
Through commoning, BTL contributes to deconstructing behavioural and societal facets of the growth-driven economic system. By fostering the circulation of objects, BTL helps constrain resource consumption while strengthening community networks. BTL prioritises access over ownership, providing a practical alternative to productivism and consumerism, while re-politicising sustainability discourses and socialising degrowth narratives. By doing so, this tool library advances prefiguration of future possibilities and exnovation – actions aimed at phasing out unsustainable and undesirable systems’ elements and dynamics.
From decommodifying the use of household objects to reducing inequality, these types of community-driven ownership models exemplify approaches towards conviviality and living in abundance. In addition to providing access to items, BTL offers the imagination infrastructure required to shift towards post-growth futures. The presentations will provide an overview of achievements, opportunities and systemic barriers that post-growth enterprises, including BTL, face.
Bio
Dr Sabrina Chakori is a Chancellor's Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney and Honorary Lecturer at the University of Sydney (Australia). Her current interdisciplinary research examines the governance of sustainability transitions, with a particular focus on exnovation. Her work spans degrowth, ecological economics, industrial policy, food systems’ sustainability and social entrepreneurship. As a researcher, educator, policy advisor and social entrepreneur, she has led numerous initiatives for more than 22 years. For example, she founded the post-growth enterprise Brisbane Tool Library and is the co-founding editor of the Degrowth Journal.
About the transformative talks
We live in a time of crises, but also of possibilities. It calls for bold and progressive societal transformations that go beyond incrementalism and reliance on technological innovation alone. While there is no shortage of theoretical principles for transformation within academia, concrete examples and experiences are scarce on how one can enact transformation in practice. In the transformative talks series, we invite scholars, change makers, and thought leaders to share insights on the how of societal transformations and examples of transformations happening around us already today.
The series is co-organized by the following groups and centres at the University of Copenhagen:
- The Degrowth Thematic Solution under the Green Solutions Centre
- The Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking
- UCPH Degrowth Network
- Rethink IFRO
- BLOXHUB