Analysing the circular economy as a myth

Sofia Rafaella Greaves, Sofia Rafaella Greaves and Sofia Rafaella Greaves

Chapter Chapter 6 in Dialogues for Degrowth, 2025, pp 73-84 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Degrowth scholarship debates the efficacy of the circular economy (CE) and questions why the paradigm is successful in capturing the imagination despite its contradictions. My chapter considers this question from a new perspective by looking at the CE through the lens of myth. Myths are prevalent across human cultures, and mythology - the study of myth - has adopted different theoretical angles since the nineteenth century. Barthes’s semiotic model treats myth as a mode of communication which exerts a powerful force in normalising and sustaining ideologies. In this paper, I treat the CE as a myth, and deconstruct how it speaks, focusing on images, associated assumptions, and motivations in historic cultural context. My paper shows how degrowth can use “myth” as an analytical tool to de-normalise and deconstruct Capitalist agendas. Further, I consider how and why degrowth should construct its own myths, and what is at stake in this process.

Keywords: Myth; Semiotics; Circular economy; Urban history; Greco-Roman traditions; Modernity; Barthes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035320769
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035320776.00016 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22754_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().