Introduction: What is Dedev?
Dedev, as it’s currently known in the debate community, is an impact turn focused on the negative impacts of economic growth. The term originates from “de-development,” defined by Roy (1987) as “a process which undermines or weakens the ability of an economy to grow and expand by preventing it from accessing and utilizing critical inputs needed to promote internal growth.” Despite its negative implications in its origins in development literature, debate has spun the concept into a positive: if growth could somehow be permanently stunted, then its downsides could be avoided.
The strategic formula is simple: the aff runs an internal link to economic decline, you read defense + any number of “growth bad” impacts coupled with an “econ decline = transition away from economic growth” card to avoid uniqueness issues.
In practice, deploying dedev is harder than expected. The literature is deep, nuanced, and full of various controversies with several levels of responses. Even on individual moving pieces of the turn, there are multiple different warrants that have whole sections of research dedicated to them. Understanding these is key to winning more debates, something I’m sure anyone reading this blog would be interested in.
Literature Review Lite: Authors
Authors writing on growth can generally be categorized into two groups: optimists and pessimists. While those advocating middle-ground positions are certainly found in the literature, their writings are generally not useful in the context of debate.
In the optimist camp are various flavors of ecomodernists. Though originally conceptualized by Kloor (2012), the term was formally defined in the groundbreaking 2015 Ecomodernist Manifesto. In their own words, they have faith that “knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.”
Two of the most prevalent strands of thought within this group are techno-optimists and democratic optimists. The former place their hopes in addressing issues of climate change and planetary boundaries more generally in private technological developments, believing that innovation can succeed in decoupling economic growth from its environmental impacts (see Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015, McAfee 2020). The latter have faith in democratic institutions, envisioning that moves like state-led green innovation and carbon taxes will mitigate climate change (see Symons 2019, McBride 2018).
The most popular think tank associated with the ecomodernist movement is definitely the Breakthrough Institute, a juggernaut of a research center dedicated to releasing pro-growth papers. Popular authors (in debate) include Noah Smith, Branko Milanović, Ronald Bailey, Bjørn Lomborg, and Ted Nordhaus + Michael Shellenberger (Breakthrough Institute founders).
In the pessimist camp is an odd coalition, ranging from state-focused eco-socialists to green anarchists.
By far the most popular authors are degrowthers. This anti-growth faction has its origins in early 1970s France with the “décroissance” movement, inspired by the 1972 Club of Rome report on The Limits to Growth and early writings by Georgescu‐Roegen. Starting in the early 2000s, the movement expanded to the global stage and was formally defined at the first international Degrowth conference in 2008 (Demaria et al. 2013). Contrary to popular belief, these authors don’t advocate for any sort of anarcho-primitivism or de-development proper (See Hickel 2021,). Rather, they believe that with an equitable distribution of resources and environmental-focused innovation, growth is no longer necessary (D’Alisa 2014). Adjacent to these authors are advocates for post-growth economics, a broader movement that also criticizes growth (See Jackson 2009, Reichel 2016).
Contrary to popular belief–especially in debate–degrowth authors do not advocate for economic collapse (See Drews and Antal 2016 for a discussion of this misconception). Rather, they prefer a planned transition to a reduction in growth over an unintentional contraction (Kallis 2018, 112). This is why the vast majority of transition cards read in these debates come from green anarchists who see crises as an opportunity to overcome status quo mindsets and create a more distributed ecological society (Trainer 2020).
The last two major pessimist groups are the ecological economists and eco-socialists. The former is a movement that originated in the late 1980s as a response to the prevailing neoclassical approaches to the environment, considering limits to growth and other biophysical factors when studying the economy (Daly and Farley 2010). The name is somewhat misleading, as it is more of a trans-disciplinary project than a subdiscipline of economics (See Costanza 2010). The latter is a strand of Marxism specifically focused on environmental sustainability, disagreeing with degrowth’s absolute rejection of growth and instead advocating for its potential positive effects once removed from the context of capitalism (Vergara-Camus 2019, Schwartzman 2012).
As for authors, the most popular degrowthers are Jason Hickel, Giorgios Kallis, Timothée Parrique, and Samuel Alexander (who could also be considered an anarchist). Postgrowthers and anarchists include Max Koch, Tim Jackson, and Ted Trainer. Ecological economists include Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, and Robert Costanza. The most popular eco-socialists in debate are Michael Löwy, John Bellamy Foster, and Jason Moore.
The Structure of Dedev
Like any impact turn, dedev has two overarching parts: offense and defense. Similarly to how the turn is structured, these articles will be deep dives at the moving pieces of the turn.
For offense, we should start with uniqueness, or what I’ll call sustainability for the sake of this series. This is further broken down into biophysical and economic forms of sustainability, focusing on natural and social limits to growth respectively. Next we have the impact, which ranges from warming, to general planetary boundaries, to evil superintelligent AI, to cognitive collapse. Finally, we have the transition debate to provide uniqueness to your offense, comparable to the alt of a critique. If post-collapse growth just restarts, what’s the point?
For defense, the brunt of the debate is focused around answering economic collapse impacts. Additionally, sources of aff offense like spacecol, heg, CCS, and other miscellaneous points need to be addressed.
Conclusion/Why Dedev?
To conclude, why should you run dedev?
It’s a relatively low-risk high-reward impact turn, enabling you to consistently win defense while accessing an incredibly solid source of offense. The negative impacts of growth interact favorably with a variety of common aff impacts, giving you fantastic turns case claims. And, above all, it’s fun!
2 replies on “Dedev Deep Dive: Prolegmenon”
Cool article! Always love to see dedev getting some love
I’ve become pretty interested in degrowth myself and the more I read the more it’s clear it should be read as a K and not an impact turn. A “growthism” K would represent the lit a lot better and could be pretty cool IMO. Also, it’s been pretty surprising to me that many of the big degrowthers (especially Hickel) focus just as much/if not more on inequality/poverty than the environment, which you’d never guess based on its usage in debate.
Funnily enough, even Trainer doesn’t believe an economic collapse would be a good way to transition to a post growth society.
“The last thing we want is a sudden collapse of the economy”
(Trainer, 2017) http://thesimplerway.info/TRANSITION.htm
I definitely agree with the angle of reading it as a K, my next framework post will touch on something in that direction. Hickel and other degrowther’s writing on inequality are excellent, but not as relevant in debate due to the nebulous nature of that impact. I disagree with that characterization of Trainer, however. He clearly views some form of economic depression as inevitable, but sees it as an opportunity for individuals to realize self-sufficient ecologically minded lifestyles. From the sentence before the one you cited, “As … economic depression sets in … minds will be wonderfully concentrated on the need to build up local self sufficiency!” It becomes a question of whether or not that inevitable recession is too drastic to bounce back from.