Dear colleagues, This is a reminder that the call for abstracts for special sessions of the STS Conference Graz 2018 closes 19 January 2018. You can still submit abstracts to our session on Degrowth and Digitalisation at www.sts-conference-graz.aau.at. Please help us spreading the call and distribute it via your networks. Thank you. All the best Petra Wächter Special Session: Degrowth and Digitalisation 17th Annual STS Conference Graz, 7-8 May 2018 Petra Wächter, University of Vienna, Austria Melf-Hinrich Ehlers, Kassel University, Germany Linda Nierling, ITAS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Christian Kerschner, Masaryk University, Czech Republic The Degrowth movement gained much popularity in recent years. Degrowth can be described as a scientific, political, and activist movement which aims to transform the society towards more equality, autonomy, democracy etc., but within ecological limits. The role of technology for a sustainable society without continuous economic growth is important for those who pursue Degrowth. Generally, within the Degrowth community, more enthusiastic attitudes towards technology and more sceptic views can be found. Those in favour of technology such as fab-labs or 3-D-printing clash with techno-sceptics. Some Degrowth-related communities and projects literally define themselves around particular technologies. Examples linked to digitisation are digital commons, the Fairphone community (Haucke forthcoming), the open source and hacking community (Hankammer, Kostakis, March, Likavcan & Scholz-Wäckerle, Vetter forthcoming), digital makerspaces and fab labs (March, Kostakis forthcoming). A central theme among more techno-enthusiastic authors is the democratization of technology, including liberation of access to technology in terms of know-how (open source), necessary skills for production (prosumers), of use and repair, of income (affordability) and gender. Despite a widespread suggestion that ICTs could play an important role in the democratisation of technology, there is not yet a unified answer on which, how and to what extent ICTs should be supported by Degrowth advocates. The conditions in which a technology supports Degrowth principles still require deeper investigation (Haucke forthcoming). A reflective approach (Samerski forthcoming) is required, also because the socio-psychological effects of the increasing prevalence of ICTs in our lives, which Ivan Illich for example warned about, are still poorly understood. Strand et al. (forthcoming) identify a general trend in the dominant socio-technical imaginaries to place great hopes in ICT-based sustainability solutions (see also Pollex & Lenschow forthcoming) and expectations of conclusive accounts of material and energy needs and rebound effects of the "ICT revolution". For Lange (2017) digitisation will be part of future technology. But he warns of excessive economic growth, increased inequality and material throughput and of data storage used to influence consumption. An important limitation of the suggested ICT revolution is that unlike "epoch-making inventions" many of the latest ICT applications "eat" human time rather than saving it for other purposes (e.g. smartphones and social media) (Bonaiuti forthcoming). This contradicts the accelerationists (Snircek and Wilson 2015), who argue that capitalism's future technology can release time that can be used for democratic activities to overcome capitalism. This special session will draw together empirical and theoretical work that addresses the question of whether certain digital technologies or ICT in general could support a Degrowth Society. Descriptions of practical attempts to match digital technology with Degrowth are also welcome. Contributions can be from any disciplinary background and on any digital technology and Degrowth concern. The aim is to convene a special session based on the format of the knowledge café, within which diverse perspectives can be elaborated and evaluated jointly by the contributors and an actively engaged audience. The call for abstracts is open until 19 January 2018 at www.sts-conference-graz.aau.at. -- __ Mag.a Dr.in Petra Wächter University of Vienna Department of Environmental Geosciences T +43-1-4277-50303 petra.waechter@univie.ac.at