Researchers' Breakfast at UUniCORN: Can Technology Advance if the Economy Doesn’t? The Case for Retro-Innovation

Post-growth research questions “green growth” and a reliance on traditional technological innovation for achieving sustainable development. It is argued that societies need to learn how to function and develop without economic growth altogether. Yet the post-growth research assumes that alternative forms of technology will nonetheless characterise sustainable societies. This raises the question of what technological development should be like without economic growth.

Retro-innovation includes the purposeful revival of historic technologies to meet contemporary needs, but has mainly been studied as a vehicle for economic growth.

This morning's presentation maps retro-innovation’s potential to fulfil criteria for post-growth, detecting its strengths and weaknesses. It also reveals a previously understudied criterion within scholarship on innovation and post-growth: the aesthetic aspect of appropriate technological development.

Come share a coffee and your thoughts with us. Please register by Wednesday, 8 April, if you would like coffee/tea and a sandwich; otherwise, no pre-registration is required.

About the speakers

Jasmina Nedevska is a researcher in ethics at the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, Uppsala University. She holds a PhD in political science from Stockholm University and works at the intersection of moral, political, and legal theory.

Jasmina has previously held interdisciplinary postdoctoral positions at Princeton University and the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University. Within the SSGC program, she contributes to the thematic anchor project Techno-Philosophies of Transformation, examining the ideologies and philosophical assumptions that shape technological change and sustainability transitions.

Daniela Kreber is a research assistant at UUniCORN and a co-author of the paper presented in this talk. She contributes to the Sociotechnological Sustainability Goal Conflicts program by supporting the development of research funding proposals and other research-related processes. She has a background in environmental communication and has previously worked on interdisciplinary projects exploring sustainability transformation processes. She is interested in relational perspectives on sustainability—how narratives, emotions, ethics, and embodied knowledge shape how people relate to nature.

The talk is based on ongoing collaborative work within the Sociotechnological Sustainability Goal Conflicts (SSGC)research program at UUniCORN, developed in collaboration with the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering at Uppsala University.m den inte behövs.