Acceptability of the circular economy - Unacceptability of non-growth

Acceptabilité de l’économie circulaire – Inacceptabilité de la non-croissance

Anne-Claire Savy ()
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Anne-Claire Savy: ADEME - Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Énergie, LGTO - Laboratoire de Gestion et des Transitions Organisationnelles - EPE UT - Université de Toulouse - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse, EPE UT - Université de Toulouse - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse

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Abstract: After 50 years of maturing awareness of the impact of economic activity on nature, we are now facing a fork in the road: we need to change our economic model, which implies a profound societal shift. In the meantime, debates on economic growth and the circular economy are emerging from a steady-state economic perspective, then falling by the wayside, and evolving differently. The circular economy was reappropriated from a growth perspective, then widely promoted over the last decade, while debates on growth remained on the sidelines, but developed, contributing today to the construction of post-growth. The circular economy seems to owe its success to the decoupling of the circular economy from non-growth. Today, faced with the urgent need to forge ahead towards a sustainable society, post-growth and the circular economy are finally being discussed in a number of scientific works. This paper seeks to better understand whether, and how, the critique of growth inherent in the circular economy concept influences its acceptability. A literature review examines how growth and its critics interact with the circular economy, then the principles of the two concepts are compared. Finally, the question is taken to the field: the interactions of a circular economy project by a collective of citizen-actors and structures in a non-growth perspective, is studied through the framework of societal transition governance. Institutional pressures to prevent the experimentation of a bifurcation are the expected results.

Keywords: K. E. Boulding; acceptability; Societal transition governance; post-growth; Circular Society; Société circulaire; acceptabilité; gouvernance de transition sociétale; post-croissance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10-08
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Published in Congrès RIODD 2025 : Entre conflits et convergences, comprendre et explorer les dynamiques de l'acceptabilité sociale dans les transitions socio-environnementales, Université Toulouse Capitole, Université de Toulouse, TIRIS, Oct 2025, Toulouse, France

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05454006

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