Autonomy within limits: Post-growth and social imaginaries of work,education and democracy

Abstract

Autonomy is central to thinking about democracy and human needs, but the question of how autonomy relates to growth is ambivalent. Is growth necessary to achieve a basic level of autonomy, or is autonomy, in fact, a pre-requisite for post-growth? In this study, we examine this question by focusing on how critical autonomy relates to growth within the domains of democracy, education, and work. Critical autonomy is complex, but in its most fundamental form, it is about making informed choices, which, in turn, are transformed by our social imaginaries. By using the concepts of critical autonomy and social imaginaries, our analysis suggests that (i) greater elements of direct democracy and participation, (ii) a more holistic education that integrates play with life-long learning and (iii) changes in the perception of work, along with increased workplace influence, would provide conditions for autonomy without requiring growth or contributing to it. We conclude our analysis by highlighting how social imaginaries and policy changes in the three domains – democracy, education and work – could be developed to realize critical autonomy in a post-growth society.

Introduction

Autonomy is the holy grail in discussions about democracy and welfare. It is both the means and ends of democracy, as democracy requires citizens capable of making informed and independent decisions about how society should be organized, and this, in turn, relates to questions about how to ensure autonomy through democratic means (e.g. Wilson, 2021). Welfare is significant to this as some basic human needs must be satisfied for autonomy to be realized (Shields, 2016). However, during much of the past century, both democracy and welfare have been hardwired on economic growth, even dependent on it (Büchs, 2021). If economic growth is declining or if growth must be abandoned for the sake of saving the climate, how does this affect autonomy? Or, in other words, what are the implications of degrowth ¹ transformations for the provision of autonomy?

Drawing upon the literature at the intersection of autonomy and human need satisfaction, we discuss how autonomy is organized under conditions of economic growth, more specifically in the domains of democracy, education and work. We, moreover, discuss how social imaginaries of democracy, education and work are connected to autonomy under conditions of post-growth. Our research builds on recent scholarship on post-growth welfare systems, particularly if – and how – welfare systems may be decoupled from economic growth. Paulsson et al. (2025) recently compared the extent of needs satisfaction between OECD countries, considering ecological impacts and level of GDP per capita. While the study found a general improvement of living conditions and needs satisfaction with rising GDP at the cost of nature, it demonstrated ‘diminishing returns’ of income and wealth in relation to a range of needs satisfaction indicators including infant and child mortality, work safety and physical security. Following the terminology of human needs by Doyal and Gough (1991) these fall under the criteria of ‘health’-related intermediate needs. However, in relation to the satisfaction of intermediate needs of the domain ‘critical autonomy’ the results are somewhat different, displaying increasing needs satisfaction with growing GDP/capita. Hence, while health-related needs are under current conditions satiable at comparatively low levels of GDP, the satisfaction of autonomy-related needs has so far benefited from expanding GDPs.

Though there have been plenty of calls for degrowth strategies to enact or realize a post-growth society (Barlow et al., 2022; Schmelzer et al., 2022), autonomy is, we suggest, a precondition and an overaching aim for such changes. Applying Buch-Hansen and Nesterova's (2023) framework for understanding degrowth transformations, it is a necessary pre-requisite for the generation of new types of relations with nature, interactions between persons, as well as changing larger social structures and our inner selves. Autonomy should also be in focus when developing transformational strategies beyond mainstream reforms such as the European Green Deal. We therefore agree with Kallis et al. (2015) who suggest that autonomy is a significant keyword in degrowth. In fact, they argue that ‘[f]or many degrowthers, degrowth is not an adaptation to inevitable limits, but a desirable project to be pursued for its own sake in the search for autonomy’ (Kallis et al., 2015: 8). This is also echoed in the recent Degrowth and Strategy book, where the editors state in the introduction that ‘degrowth is based on the principles of autonomy, solidarity and direct democracy’ (Schulken et al., 2022: 11). So, the aim is not limits, but autonomy while respecting planetary limits (Asara et al., 2013).

Even though autonomy is a project worth striving for, it is notoriously difficult to conceptualize and define (Buss and Westlund, 2018; Christman, 2020; Stoljar, 2024). Many previously engaged with this task have by now seen their work collecting dust on the shelves in libraries across the world. However and somewhat despite this diversity in efforts, most authors seem to agree on rather simple definitions of ‘autonomy’ like this one: ‘to be autonomous is to govern oneself, to be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one's authentic self’ (Christman, 2020, no page number). As autonomy straddles personal, intersectional hierarchies and institutional un/freedoms, it must be conceptualized relationally or perhaps even entangled in a trilectical relationship between these freedoms. To account for these entanglements, Savini (2023: 1234) notes that a ‘relational, dialectical and political understanding of autonomy cuts against this individualist approach. It grasps autonomy as a condition of social relations’. While a key rationale to pursue degrowth has been the ‘pursuit of autonomy’ (in terms of breaking away from growth-obsessed logics, material use and infrastructures), Savini (2023) argues that autonomy remains under-theorised when studying ‘existing socio-economic institutions’ and during visions of post-growth futures (p. 1232). Therefore, we locate this article within this emerging discussion on autonomy and degrowth.

In an attempt to operationalize autonomy in a degrowth context, Paulsson et al. (2025) developed a dataset on autonomy-related intermediate needs. Using standard indicators such as ‘freedom of the press’ and ‘social support in old age’, the study found that both presuppose the existence of specific institutions and norms, which are so far correlated to economic growth, rather than technology and knowledge. The progress in satisfying autonomy-related needs is of a more complicated and complex nature than, for example, funding universal welfare systems, which would benefit the satisfaction of a range of health-related intermediate needs. Thus, more conceptual and empirical research is needed on the understanding and provision of autonomy in post-growth circumstances. Such research includes tackling questions related to how autonomy may be accounted for, why is ‘adequate education’ linked to the level of GDP and ecological footprints under current conditions, and furthermore how this could be reshaped through public policies in post-growth contexts.

Following our interest at the intersection of needs satisfaction and the provision of autonomy, in the second section, we revisit the main features of Doyal and Gough's classic theory of human need and in particular their understanding of ‘critical autonomy’ to identify some blind spots. To delineate provisioning channels for autonomy in post-growth scenarios, the third section deepens and expands this notion of ‘critical autonomy’ by drawing on Castoriadis and other relevant scholars. A dialogue between Doyle and Gough and Castoriadis is a valuable point of departure to envision the intersection of human need satisfaction and the provision of autonomy in post-growth. While Castoriadis provides the groundwork for degrowth-inspired deliberations on autonomy, Doyal and Gough's approach tackles the scholarly notion of autonomy as well as devise policy proposals to achieve this as satisfaction of a basic human need. Combining Doyle and Gough's approach with Castoriadis’ conceptualization of autonomy remains marginal within current state of knowledge. We apply this framework by addressing three societal domains: democracy, education and work.

While there are numerous relevant areas for the provision of autonomy, there are three key arguments to focus on these specific domains. Firstly, work, in its most abstract definition, is a central domain where necessary metabolism between human beings and nature takes place to produce use values indispensable for the satisfaction of basic needs. Secondly, education comprises of the processes of acquiring the necessary skills to fully participate in society, and thirdly, democratic practices in decision making are fundamental for addressing societal issues of collective concern. At the same time, in the current historical context, these three domains also harbour and reproduce multidimensional inequalities, which often undermine or obstruct autonomy. Examining the interlinkages between inequality and unsustainable welfare provision then becomes vital to explore within Doyal and Gough's approach to reconstruct critical autonomy as well as towards any process of degrowth transformations. We examine the provision of autonomy in these domains for the economic-growth centred presence and to envision imaginaries of post-growth futures. The discussion in the fourth section summarizes the main results and indicates potential pathways and policy proposals to facilitate the provision of autonomy in post-growth in the three respective domains.

Critical autonomy: Clarifying concepts and identifying blind spots

In the most general definition, critical autonomy is defined as the ‘ability to make informed choices’ (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 53). A minimum of democratic participation is understood as the key to providing ‘relatively high levels of critical reflection’ and autonomy (Doyal and Gough 1991: 68). This, in turn, presupposes a minimum of learning and cognitive skills, language, literacy and basic mathematics and is further linked to ‘some system of authority’ (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 181 ff). While education and learning underpins autonomy, an individual's autonomy is ultimately related to ‘discovering her aims and beliefs – her goals and the strategies which she has chosen to try to implement them’ (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 53) Indeed, being blameworthy for making bad choices is equally about the capacity to evaluate those choices and their implications as making them.

‘To be autonomous in this minimal sense is to have the ability to make informed choices about what should be done and how to go about doing it. This entails being able to formulate aims, and beliefs about how to achieve them, along with the ability to evaluate the success of these beliefs in the light of empirical evidence. Aims and beliefs – “our own” reasons – are what connect us logically with “our own” actions. The capacity to make “our own” mistakes performs the same role as regards the successes and failures of our actions. In these minimal terms, autonomy is tantamount to “agency”’. (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 53)

This presents the idea that autonomy is not about self-ownership, but about agency and the ability to engage in democracy, with at least some basic level of knowledge of how societies work. Situating their argument in a dialectical analysis, Doyal and Gough (1991) juggle between stating what autonomy is and what it is not, between individualized and collective accounts of agency. Yet, they stick to an individualized agency as moral evaluations are grounded on autonomy and the capacity to make choices as persons. Doyal and Gough summarize their theory of autonomy as based on three ‘key variables’ which ‘affect levels of individual autonomy’ (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 60). First, they refer to understanding. Some level of understanding of oneself and the culture in society is key to knowing what is expected. Second, some form of psychological capacity is needed to articulate options and make choices. Third, objective opportunities that enable an individual to act upon those choices are also central (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 60).

Thus, teachers and education play a pivotal role in shaping knowledge and fostering intellectual curiosity. However, cognitive skills are equally crucial, as they underpin the ability to process, analyze and apply information. Together, education systems and cognitive capacities form a synergistic foundation for learning. Learning and cognitive skills are also related to psychological capacity, as mental health is a precondition for making informed choices. What informed choices mean is not easily defined, but Doyal and Gough (1991: 63) suggest that individuals, at least, must be able to assess what is good or bad, pleasant or harmful for themselves.

To fend off potential criticism that they build their notion of autonomy on an atomistic, fully independent individual who makes informed choices, they do suggest that individuals are dependent beings and ‘choices’ might not make the best category for approaching autonomy. After all, many choices are done on the basis of the unconscious and its workings on us. Neither are any of us ‘dupes’, whose actions are fully governed by structures, operating behind our backs. Also, many ‘choices’ are curtailed by circumstances not of our choosing, which is prevalent in many workplaces, where collective self-determination and autonomy are limited. So, instead of focusing on ‘choices’, probably it is better to acknowledge that human life is an open-ended chain of possibilities whose meaning is continuously negotiated through relations and symbols. This is also why ‘opportunities’ is a significant category in Doyal and Gough's framework, just as is the notion of ‘critical’. ‘Opportunities’ are related to what the actor ‘deems of significance for the rational improvement of her participation in her form of life’ (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 66). But the concept of ‘critical’ is also significant for Doyal and Gough, as this points to the politics of collective will-formation.

Beyond the liberal understanding of autonomy lies the notion of ‘critical autonomy’, which incorporates political freedom into how Doyal and Gough (1991: 76) understand autonomy. Indeed, critical autonomy is not simply autonomy in the negative sense, as it includes the freedom to actively participate in shaping society. Critical autonomy includes the capacity to compare different ways of organizing society and adopt a reflexive approach to their limits and possibilities. It therefore underwrites collective agency, self-organizing, and democracy. Yet it also resembles judgment, that is, an individual's ability to assess and act based on their own reasoning. This raises the question: what are, then, the limits to autonomy? Are they cognitive, social or political? Should every individual be granted autonomy, as sketched above, even if doing so would require the unending use of resources? In short, what are the limitations of autonomy? Here, Doyal and Gough remain largely silent, though they briefly touch on the issue when introducing the notion of critical autonomy as a form of political freedom, as discussed above.

Castoriadis has discussed autonomy in relation to democracy and equality. He suggests that autonomy is both an individual and collective phenomenon, situated in social-historical practices. Castoriadis, like Doyal and Gough, starts by discussing autonomy at the level of individuals. His point of departure, however, is more psychological than cognitive. Similar to Doyal and Gough he discusses how individuals pass judgements, make choices and so on, but he then asserts that individual autonomy is ultimately the ‘consciousness's rule over the unconscious’ (Castoriadis, 1975/1987: 102). Since the unconscious incorporates social norms, rules and operates in idiosyncratic ways, following the unconscious means following the social norms and rules already existing in society.

This suggests that autonomy is engulfed by a certain kind of relation to the unconscious, which is always situated in a specific historical and social context. The individual, he argues, is ostensibly following someone else, ‘the Other’, that is located in herself. For autonomy to emerge or even be possible, the individual must start by breaking free from her unconscious mind to de-alienate the social norms and rules prevailing in society. According to Castoriadis, ‘[a]utonomy then appears as: my discourse must take the place of the discourse of the Other, of a foreign discourse that is in me, ruling over me: speaking through myself’ (Castoriadis, 1975/1987: 102). Autonomy is subsequently also about entering into a self-reflection about one's unconsciousness.

As individuals are always social and relational, their ability to develop their own discourse hinges on the multitude of norms already circulating in society. And this is, we suggest, where limits begin to enter the picture. Doyal and Gouch do not refer to norms in this way, instead they argue that autonomy is related to the individual's ability to compare different societies and diverse ways of organizing political and economic life. This assumes some basic level of heterogeneity, making comparisons possible. Subsequently, as autonomy is always situated it cannot easily be decoupled from the norms or the setting in which particular social imaginaries emerge. This poses a challenge to anyone theorizing the possibility of autonomy.

One way of grappling with this is to distinguish between individual and collective autonomy. Doyal and Gough (1991) mention that autonomy is a collective project, indeed, but they mostly discuss this in relation to the individual and her ability to make informed choices. Castoriadis (1975/1987), on the other hand, connects the sociality of the individual through the unconscious, which itself reflects the contemporary social imaginary. This duality emerges in Castoriadis’ work (1975/1987) as a point of departure for any social analysis of autonomy. Indeed, he suggest that

‘…autonomy is not the pure and simple elimination of the discourse of the other but the elaboration of this discourse, in which the other is not an indifferent material but counts for the content of what is said, that an intersubjective action is actually possible and that it is not condemned to remain useless or to violate by its very existence what it posits as its principle. (Castoriadis, 1975/1987: 107)

Autonomy is relational and thereby continuously negotiated. While Castoriadis (1975/1987) does not use the concept of critical autonomy, he does discuss the political implications of his view of autonomy. By being part of society and engaging in collective agency, it is possible to both establish a conscious relation to the unconscious and through this take part in transforming the social imaginary. Castoriadis has been used widely in the degrowth literature, but here we complement his view by the one of Doyal and Gough. Together these form our understanding of autonomy.

What remains to be explored, however, is the question whether autonomy must rely on external resources, or if it is possible to achieve autonomy also under conditions without growth. Neither Castoriadis nor Doyal and Gough discussed this in their early works, although Gough have more recently stated that a needs-approach comes with limits. Needs are satiable and measurable, unlike economic growth, which is limitless. Consequently, we now explore how the conditions for providing critical autonomy may be improved in three areas that Doyal and Gough identified as central imaginaries for ‘critical autonomy’, namely education, democratic participation and work with its inherent structures of inequality.

Democracy, education and work: Three domains of needs satisfaction in critical autonomy

Building on Gough and Doyle and Castoriadis, we approach critical autonomy as based on participation in society and political life, on the capacity of personal reflection, the development of knowledge and competences as well as freedom from oppression. We synthesize these under three partly overlapping domains: democracy, education and work. While these domains are not only crucial for enabling and sustaining critical autonomy, they are also the domains in which autonomy is regularly articulated as both means and ends. This raise the question, then: are these domains dependent on economic growth, or is critical autonomy possible also without growth?

Drawing on this and the earlier discussion above on autonomy and human needs, we now turn to explore the domains needed for achieving ‘critical autonomy’. We specifically focus in this section on the three domains identified by Doyal and Gough and explore how they tie in with post-growth or at least to minimize resource use and resource extraction. First, we discuss how democracy is positioned as a key for autonomy, but we also adress the question to what extent democracy relies on growth and external resources. Second, we explore education. While autonomy is usually regarded as the objective of education, there are many instances where education is more akin to meeting the current needs of the labour market than to ensure ‘critical autonomy’. Third, we address the domain of work and discuss the extent to which economic growth and capitalist market steering is replaceable when provisioning autonomy.

Democracy, assemblies and agency

There is frustration with a representative democratic system that allows people to vote every so often but largely excludes them from participation and decision making in the meantime. According to leading political scientists, even this formally democratic system is being undermined by a political crisis, which threatens to transform representative democracy into ‘post-democracy’ (Crouch, 2016), culminating in events such as Brexit, massive electoral gains of right-wing populist parties in all parts of the Western world including the European Parliament and the USA. The degree of democratic participation and reflexive agency in the political space have always been limited due to structural factors such as economic inequality that is manifested in wealth concentration, media ownership and corporate influence on political system through lobbyism as well as campaign finance (Robeyns, 2024). Key state institutions such as central banks are also protected from democratic pressures (Buch-Hansen et al., 2024). This constraint not only objectively undermines citizens’ critical autonomy to ‘make informed choices’ in central societal domains but is also subjectively perceived as unnecessarily limiting democracy. Data from citizen forums in Sweden indicate a widespread dissatisfaction with the state of representative democracy and support its complementation by deliberative and direct moments such as forums or assemblies (as practiced in France or Ireland in relation to climate change), or, in case of public households, forms of participatory budgeting (Lee et al., 2023; Lee and Koch, 2023). This aligns with the debate on democracy in degrowth circles that search for areas of improvement when it comes to representation. Degrowth often envision transitions and societies as democratic and autonomous (Schmelzer et al., 2022).

Critical autonomy's relation to democracy emerges from the premise that autonomy requires a reflexive agency and the ability to engage in a democracy, with at least some basic level of knowledge of how societies work. There are a few seminal works that has been exploring the democracy-autonomy relation further. For instance, Asara et al. (2013) investigates and clarifies Castoriadis’ theoretical arguments on the democracy–autonomy relation in the context of degrowth. According to them, there are several entry points. The first entry point is around the definition of democracy. According to Castoriadis, on whom they build their argument, democracy is the social regime where collective power is sovereign, and where citizens are aware that it is themselves who set the limits to their own power. Castoriadis continuously defines democracy as the ‘self-limitation regime’ (Castoriadis, 1991: 150), in a way it is the autonomous society itself. The unique characteristics of a truly democratic society come ‘from the capacity of the individual in it to question her/his own institutions and to participate in the creative force that brings the latter to life’ (Asara et al., 2013: 228). This also means it is important to rethink the institutional culture of one's society and decolonize the social imaginary that defines democracy. Castoriadis argues that democracy is substantive, not procedural, and can therefore not be disentangled from autonomy. Building an autonomous society does not only imply self-management, self-government, self-institution but also implies another culture, another way of life, other needs, as well as a wholly other orientation for human life (Castoriadis, 1997: 250).

From the vantage point of degrowth, the capitalist organization of society and the capitalist growth imperative constitute direct or indirect causes for co-optation of democracy. While a profit driven economy leads to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few corporate elites, this could undermine democracy, understood as collective decision-making (Fournier, 2008; Lee et al., 2023). According to Fournier (2008: 534), escaping from the economy requires reimagining a different kind of system altogether. In the context of degrowth debates, this involves two key conceptual shifts that challenge traditional economic rationality: first, replacing the language of economic necessity with that of democratic choice; and second, redefining individuals not as consumers, but as active citizens.

This brings us to the second entry point for discussing democracy–autonomy relations which is the way in which autonomous societies can organize. Fotopoulos (2005) proposes an inclusive democracy with the goal to abolish unequal distribution of political and economic power. The term ‘inclusive’ refers to the inclusion of different spheres: political, economic, social and ecological. For the political dimension, Fotopoulos (2005) proposes a future society of a confederation of local communities (demo) run on the basis of direct political democracy, which, geographically include a town and the surrounding villages (p. 205).

The proposal for a direct democracy is challenged by other thinkers, such as Latouche, because it has a very limited influence on addressing power structures and economic inequalities. Fotopoulos argues that representative democracy tends to institutionalize these inequalities and power structures as it grows away from the people when it enters the parliament. This is also why direct democracy can be considered as the ‘lesser evil’. Current developments such as collaborations between municipal movements and the degrowth community confirms part of this localist and pragmatic thinking. A post-growth municipality idea is put forward in the town Girona with eco-social policy making is in place in collaboration with the degrowth researchers (Research and Degrowth, 2024). According to Romano (2012: 583), local frame is the institutional container of post-growth thinking as it provides two conditions without which a democracy cannot be managed: the personalization of citizens’ relations (it is the idea of ‘grassroots democracy’ developed by Fotopoulos and the embedding of locally based institutions within a specific cultural context.

Despite its importance for local democracy, municipalist approach may have limited scalability for broader transformation. However, its value lies in prefiguring alternative modes of economic organization such as the ones grounded in democratic participation and social solidarity. Local experiments in democratic control over resources, budgeting, or cooperative enterprises (e.g. participatory budgeting or community-owned utilities) do not exist in isolation. Rather, they function as counter-hegemonic practices that challenge dominant economic norms and potentially shift the boundaries of what is democratically, politically and economically thinkable. These initiatives often work through networks of municipal alliances, cooperative federations or translocal solidarity economies – that begin to scale horizontally rather than vertically.

To connect this scalar discussion back to autonomy and post-growth transitions, we can emphasize Castoriadis’ definition of autonomy as culture of different orientation of human life. Autonomy is about creating the scale and spaces in which other forms of sociality and co-existence can flourish. ‘Rather than a technique of neoliberal governmentality, autonomy in this sense is also an aspect of liberation… And rather than the freedom of an atomistic self, the liberation that comes from autonomy as “ability to create new communities and ties of mutual dependence”’ (Graeber 2009: 266 cited in Millar, 2014: 47). The next section reflects on the role of education in creating these spaces and a reflective community necessary for flourishing an alternative democratic society.

Education, learning and pedagogy

Critical autonomy is related to education as education is often associated with fostering free-thinking and independent individuals. But how is education related to post-growth? Does education and subsequently autonomy rely on external resources and growth? ‘Degrowth pedagogy’ is a concept used to explore how degrowth could be related to education and Puentes (2024) offers a brief overview of this field. Like others in the degrowth community, she uses Gramsci's notion of ‘hegemony’ and Castoriadis’ notion of ‘social imaginary’, but she directs her attention not to the power structures shaping society, but rather to those shaping education. Recognizing that education and childhood socialization are key parameters in fostering a healthy relationship with one another and with nature, Puentes discusses both parenting philosophies and the role of educational institutions.

Pointing to insights on de-schooling from Illich (1971) and the critical pedagogy literature (Freire, 1970), where the teacher-student relationship is de-centered, Puentes concludes by suggesting that ‘[d]eciding on an educational system that supports degrowth values at the time that supports mental health and wellbeing is the task to solve in order to make a valuable proposal’ (Puentes, 2024: 18). Indeed, Illich (1971) and Freire (1970) offer promising points of departure, but many questions remain to be explored: to what extent does institutionalized education need or rely on economic growth? Is growth one of the social norms that schools teach children about without questioning its ecological and social implications? And what would an education compatible with degrowth look like?

Let's start with the overarching goal. The goal of education is considered by many to be linked to autonomy (Rödl, 2016; Winch, 2002). By learning to reflect on one's own situation and immerse oneself in various forms of knowledge, individuals can achieve personal freedom and contribute to emancipatory projects. Kerr (2002: 13) suggests that ‘a belief in the right of all to participate in democratic life, and to be able to choose for oneself – at least in some sense – how to live one's own life, that is, what constitutes a good life and to pursue it, is a prime justification of education’. While this echoes Doyal and Gough (1991) notion of ‘critical autonomy’, autonomy is nonetheless a contested concept in education as well (Hand, 2006), and, as we discussed above, involves inherent tensions. Education also balances between two different poles: on one hand, learning to conform to society's norms and institutions, and on the other hand, learning to contribute to the independence and relative freedom from these same social norms and institutions.

Critical autonomy relies on the ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize knowledge in a reflective manner to form a reasoned judgment and make informed choices. While abstract knowledge and critical thinking are needed for critical autonomy to evolve, it would be desirable to combine this with practical skills. Subsequently, education should move beyond theoretical knowledge to include practical, hands-on experiences that connect learners to nature and local ecosystems (Díez-Gutiérrez et al., 2024). Activities like community gardening, ecological restoration projects, and crafts can foster a deeper understanding of the conditions for sustainability. While such ‘ecological literacy’ and hands-on experiences may help students appreciate the interdependence between humans and the environment, it could also make ecological issues more tangible and relevant (McBride et al., 2013). Practical skills like growing food, repairing items, and sustainable building also foster autonomy and make individuals less dependent on unsustainable consumption patterns and more adaptable in responding to ecological challenges. Reflexivity, where students reflect on their own beliefs and practices in relation to ecological issues, probably helps them understand their role in promoting sustainability (Kahn, 2010).

Inspired by critical pedagogy, teaching and learning do not have to be based on a hierarchical relationship (Freire, 1970). Indeed, education should challenge or even break down the traditional and hierarchical silos of disciplines and instead offer a curriculum that merges subjects such as environmental science, ethics, economics and humanities. Such ‘transdisciplinarity’ (Max-Neef, 2005) carries the potential to foster a holistic understanding of how various fields intersect and contribute to socio-ecological transformations. Røpke (2020) similarly suggests that an entirely new type of integrated economic knowledge is needed to understand and tackle global environmental issues, and she further argues that such knowledge should take its departure from ‘practices of provisioning’ (Røpke, 2020: 5).

While many of us are used to seeing formal education as something that takes place within public institutions, learning also occurs in more informal and civic contexts. Community-based learning encourages the participation of local knowledge holders, such as farmers, artisans, and environmental activists, to teach skills related to sustainability, conservation and traditional ecological practices. Another source of inspiration for education that fosters critical autonomy could be ‘study circles’ (Uddman, 1989). Anyone may start a ‘study circle’, and anyone may participate in one for free or at a low cost. While the ‘study circle’ might have someone leading the work, the premise is that everyone is on equal footing in the circle, whereby learning becomes a collective and collaborative endeavour, which is also why these circles are called circles and not classes. In Sweden, the ‘study circles’ were and are still tied to the rise of the labour movement and its thirst for knowledge beginning in the 1920s (Lund, 1938; Belding, 1964). Unlike much formal education in public institutions, the study circles do not instrumentalize knowledge by focusing only on what is useful in the labour market. Instead, the emphasis is on ‘bildung’, that is, education that contributes to the development of the person as a whole, not least his or her character. We take this to be an ambition, an ambition that could provide the conditions for critical autonomy.

In light of this, education takes on a crucial role in fostering autonomy. By questioning and interrogating the norms and institutions that have been internalized from an early age Castoriadis (1975/1987), individuals can begin to break free from the grip of external influences and assert their own autonomy. Besides learning knowledge and skills, education should also cultivate the capacity for self-criticism. By instilling a culture of critical thinking and self-reflection, education empowers individuals to become active agents in shaping their own lives and society at large, and this does not rely on the extraction of resources, or the use of resources deriving from economic growth.

Work, labour and liberation

Work encapsulates the contradictory notions of autonomy in our current world. While certain articulations of democracy, freedoms and autonomy are celebrated within Western capitalist liberalism, autonomy in the workplace or workplace democracy remains marginal. Work encompasses both, a space where autonomy is restricted and consequently, a space where various types of inequalities are reproduced (Weeks, 2011). Heterodox critical economy perspectives, such as degrowth and post-growth discuss autonomy within wage labour in relation to processes and issues of alienation and dealienation of production relations (Vincent and Brandellero, 2023). The provision of autonomy in the production sphere is coupled to a questioning and overcoming of capitalism as a mode of production (Marx, 1990).

All societies (including degrowth societies) must organize their division of labour in particular ways to satisfy their needs (Koch, 2024). However, it is particular to capitalism that this ‘proportionalization’ is carried out indirectly, ‘behind the backs’ (Marx, 1990) of the producers via the ‘commodity’ character of their work. The fact that work, in capitalism, takes the form of exchange value (on top of use value) leads to a simultaneous generalization and diminishing of this concept in that everything that produces (surplus) value (or contributes towards it) counts as ‘productive’ and ‘valuable’ work, while many functions that are doubtless useful from a wider societal viewpoint do not count as having value. This disparity of how and what work is valued or valorized reproduces and reinforces socio-economic inequalities of different kinds (Gibson-Graham, 2008; Gregoratti and Raphael, 2019). For example, the location and nature of work can determine what is considered ‘productive’. Waged labour mediated through market relations or unwaged labour within the household also harbours and maintains gendered division of labour (Weeks, 2011). While domestic labour and care work is socially necessary, it is however unequally distributed along the lines of gender, race, class, region, etc. Thus, work not only becomes an aspect of people's everyday lives which restricts or hinders people's autonomy, but also where inequalities are reproduced (Barca, 2019; Weeks, 2011).

Hence, a Marxian perspective helps understand the structural background and the corresponding power relations within which these forms of work became under-appreciated (Schmid and Smith, 2021). The basic contradiction between use value and exchange value of the commodity and work and the domination of the former by the latter, which Marx develops in Capital, severely limits the amount of autonomy that workers can experience during the working day. In his partly historical discussion of relative surplus production up until the mid-nineteenth century, Marx (1990: chapters 12–15) shows how non-capitalist forms of cooperation became subjugated to capitalist deskilling initiatives, culminating in the ‘large-scale industry’ where individual workers found themselves largely separated from their subjective skills and as an appendage of the machine. Here, Weeks points out that within modern workplaces, the nature of work and labour is mandated through the work contract. This contract between the employer and the workers is shaped through ‘a relation of command and obedience, the right of the employer to direct his or her employees… is not so much a byproduct of exploitation as its very precondition’ (Weeks, 2011: 21).

Self-determined work within capitalist companies is only possible to the extent that it does not contradict the overall valorization and accumulation logic. This leeway may, however, include new forms of team work where, as in some of the twenty-first century transnational (often tech) corporations, ‘flat hierarchies’ are supported and applied to bring forth productivity and innovation gains for the ‘good’, that is profit, of the company. The extent to which autonomy within and identification with one's work can be perceived varies with economic sectors, and, especially, the position within the company's internal division of labour. To consider institutional and temporal changes and differences within the capitalist mode of production, political economy approaches such as Regulation Theory have identified ‘institutional forms’ such as the wage-labour nexus, the state, the role of money and nature–society relations and analysed their historically specific forms and hierarchies to understand varieties of capitalism in particular ‘growth strategies’ (Becker and Raza, 2000; Boyer and Saillard, 2002; Buch-Hansen et al., 2024). Building on this scholarship, institutional forms could be employed to understand provisionings and different amounts of autonomy within (more or less) capitalist work contexts across space and over time.

One of the features of modern work is its assumed neutrality or rather, its existence outside the political. By drawing on conceptualisations of work as integral to the politics of inequality, degrowth scholarship revisits how work can be politicized (Christiaens, 2023). Parrique (2019) and Chertkovskaya et al. (2019) urge to understand ‘work’ in wider terms than in the currently predominating neoclassical sense and, consequently, to reach out to alternative political economy approaches such as that of ‘diverse’ and/or ‘local’ economies by Gibson-Graham (2006 and 2008) and ecofeminism (e.g. Salleh, 2017; Wichterich, 2015). A ‘political economy of degrowth’ would then be oriented at all forms of economic activity that are currently not or only marginally tied to the production of monetary value and economic growth, and promote values like ‘care, cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity, conviviality, autonomy’ (Chertkovskaya et al., 2019: 4). In other words, ‘degrowth’ assumes any significant increase in the provision of autonomy in the work sphere to be inseparable from challenging and overcoming work practices in capitalist valorization contexts. As a corollary, the structural potential for achieving worker autonomy increases with the distance to the core of capitalist value production and is likely to be greatest at its margins (e.g. in crafts) (Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024).

Degrowth philosophy of work draws upon a range of approaches, including the Marxist autonomist tradition (Virno and Hardt, 1996; see also Savini, 2023), post-workerism (Weeks, 2011), and Marxist feminist scholarship (Barca, 2019). Degrowth discussions invoke two kinds of ‘liberations’ from capitalist alienation and domination: ‘from work’ and ‘of work’ (Barca, 2019). Tim Christiaens (2023) notes that degrowth offers the possibility to rethink ‘autonomy in work’ in addition to ‘autonomy from work’ (p. 6). Since wage labour is a major domain in our everyday lives where people experience various forms of alienation and inequalities, it poses significant challenges and possibilities to devise mechanisms to enhance everyday autonomy. Work time reduction and decoupling wage-relations from labour are some of the central theorisations and suggestions for the future of work in a post-growth society (Barca, 2019; Weeks, 2011). These would provide ways to inculcate ‘liberation from’ and ‘autonomy from’ wage labour as the central practice.

The notion of convivial tools and practices of play, craft and imagination offer ways to reconceptualise ‘liberation of’ and ‘autonomy in’ work (Christiaens, 2023; Ferguson, 2017 Rennstam and Paulsson, 2024). According to Ivan Illich, ‘convivial autonomy’ as a project promotes ‘(a) human independence, (2) collective self-determination, and (3) the cultivation of meaningful relationships to each and world’ (Christiaens, 2023: 13). Convivial autonomy and collective ways of being are inhibited through the ‘expertization’ of knowledge, skills and productive growth at and beyond work. For Illich, autonomy was not only to enhance collective freedom from capital but also to transform the ways in which we relate to the social and natural worlds. Christiaens (2023) notes that ‘convivial tools should… aid human beings in rendering the world more responsive to the human quest for meaning, as a craftsman learns to appreciate his material through sustained and respectful engagement with his tools’ (p. 130).

Concluding discussion

Autonomy is a significant key word in degrowth (Kallis et al., 2015: 8). It is an end in itself, while limits are means and boundaries to be respected while pursuing autonomy. Yet autonomy seems to be the most challenging human need to satisfy with low or moderate levels of growth. How come? How could this paradox be understood? Is there a possibility that autonomy could be ensured in post-growth societies after all? We have approached these questions by drawing on a combination of Doyal and Gough's approach to ‘critical autonomy’ as one basic human need and Castoriadis’ understanding of autonomy as entwined in the social imaginary.

As shown in prior empirical research, human needs related to mental and physical health can be satisfied at moderate levels of economic growth per capita within planetary limits, and without major changes in the dominant economic and social order, for instance, changes that would introduce and/or expand universal basic service systems (Paulsson et al., 2025). However, the environmentally sustainable satisfaction of basic human needs in the category ‘critical autonomy’ is of a more complex kind. Enabling actors to carry out corresponding ‘informed choices’ presupposes parallel and interrelated structural changes in a range of societal domains that are currently coupled with expanding economies. Having discussed the examples of democracy, education and work in the previous section, we finally sketch the potential for decoupling the links between economic growth and the provision of autonomy in these domains.

In the domain of democracy, very few European citizens would currently want to totally replace representative democracy with direct democracy. Yet given the widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of the political system, we nevertheless see potential for a complementation of existing representative systems with deliberative elements such as citizen forums or participatory designing of local and national public budgets. The significant absence of democracy in the sphere of production suggests a revival of democratic planning in post-growth circumstances as indicated by Durand et al. (2024) and Koch (2024).

This also shows the high degree of entanglement of the three domains. While the current environmental emergency suggests a prioritization of the production of goods necessary for basic needs satisfaction at the expense of, what Bärnthaler and Gough (2023) call, the ‘excess’ sector of production and fossil-fuel energy sources, the corresponding decrease in ‘consumer sovereignty’ could be compensated by a democratization of decision making both within economic units and the social division of labour. A renewed emphasis on planning would not only help re-embed Western production patterns in planetary limits and broaden democratic principles but could also facilitate the reduction of the unprecedented amounts of inequality neoliberal capitalism has produced (Chancel and Piketty, 2021). Limiting the power of economic elites through a democratization of production would indeed be an act of ‘predistribution’. The previously discussed decommodification of the work sphere as a central element of degrowth transformations could be accompanied by an upgrading of acts of play, creativity and imagination that are either stripped or appropriated within contemporary wage labour regimes. Indeed, the human capacity to transform the world through play, intention and imagination creates ‘a mode of being’ that is ‘unalienated self-objectification’, which further could lead to ‘self-actualization and freedom’ (Ferguson, 2017: 119). Thus, play and creative production of craft offer new perspectives on building infrastructures that foster autonomy in the area of work.

This brings us to the domain of education which would need to overcome its predominating short-term profit-orientation and corresponding instrumental ‘schooling’ approaches. Autonomy could be increased by replacing these with holistic education models designed to enable people to develop dispositions to think critically and participate in democratic decision making in economic life and civil society. Building on comprehensive primary education schemes, we envisage promising examples in school forms that are place- and community based, close to nature and favour exploration and play over ex-cathedra teaching methods as in some of the Nordic ‘Folk High Schools’ (Folkhögskolor). Ecological literacy combined with life-long learning ideals could be supported by providing more learning spaces as well as training and retraining schemes in adulthood, not least in promoting socio-ecological jobs and what is currently too often unpaid care work. Again, this would suggest parallel changes in the work sphere such as work time reductions and job guarantees (Parrique, 2019).

We could here only sketch some of the necessary transitions that would improve people's capabilities to experience a surplus in ‘critical autonomy’ in three societal domains that do not hinge on the provision of economic growth and would simultaneously help re-embed production and consumption patterns in planetary limits. While the further details of the necessary social-ecological transformation in democracy, education and work as well as in other domains should be object of further research, we conclude by pointing out that neither of these changes will be realized without major ‘bottom-up’ mobilization efforts in various societal sites and particularly in the domains of work, democracy and education.