GPSS Doctoral Students Publish Perspective on Liminality and Degrowth Transitions

Four GPSS doctoral students have contributed to an open-access article in the open-access, transdisciplinary Degrowth Journal titled "Aida: Towards a degrowth liminality in-between imperial and regenerative modes of living." Nithyashree Asokan, Yuichi Tsuchibuchi, Maya Agana and Chris Martin wrote the perspective in collaboration with GPSS alumni Eric Hanada and Zihan Huang from The Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute.

The authors highlight that despite numerous proposals to address the twin crises of ecological overshoot and rising inequality, the structural transformations that degrowth scholars call for remain sparse, typically happening on a small scale and depending on the extractive structures of the present. Drawing on a two-year project to establish a collectively organised experimental field within Kashiwa campus, the authors argue that degrowth and sustainability transitions literature would benefit from greater attention to liminality as a mode of existence in itself, rather than a state between states.

The project, called Kashiwa-no-Hatake, was initially inspired by boundary spaces, such as Satoyama, that flourish because of the interdependence between humans and nature. It sought to create an organically evolving space that supported both human and ecological health, and was deliberately shielded from the impacts of productivist logic. The paper details the journey from initial intentions to understanding how the act of organising itself can challenge epistemological and ontological assumptions about social reality. It concludes by exploring how liminal times and places might begin to embody a relational mode of living in which degrowth futures can exist in the present.

The full open-access article is available here: https://www.degrowthjournal.org/publications/2026-10-13-aida-towards-a-degrowth-liminality-in-between-imperial-and-regenerative-modes-of-living/