Wanted? The Elusiveness of (Post-)Growth in Anthropocene Research

Abstract

Abstract There is now wide agreement that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch as a result of human activities, which is often encapsulated in the concept of the “Anthropocene.” Meanwhile, there remains considerable debate about the impact of economic growth on planetary ecosystems. In this article, we bring these two aspects together by exploring patterns and biases of knowledge production on the Anthropocene in International Relations (IR) as a discipline with a mandate to study “the global.” We grasp general publishing patterns through a bibliometric analysis of journal articles in IR during the 2000–25 period, which reveals that the increasing focus on the Anthropocene still leaves (post-)growth questions largely sidelined. A closer reading of the ten most-cited articles in the sample further indicates that growth is at best an afterthought in much IR scholarship on the Anthropocene. Only when considering additional contributions, including from the cognate field of International Political Economy (IPE), with an explicit interest in (post-)growth, do links between the Anthropocene and the pursuit of growth emerge. The ideational and material dynamics involved in this pursuit thus remain strangely absent from mainstream IR debate about the causes and consequences of the Anthropocene.