Max Koch
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3580830 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Max Koch |
| PRENOMES | Max |
| SOBRENOME | Koch |
| ASSINATURA | KOCH M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0932-3570 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 46 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 277 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1911 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Autonomy within limits
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 fundamen…
Perspectives on Social and Justice Issues in Climate Policy – Comparing the Just Transitions, Sustainable Welfare and Eco‐Social Policy Literatures
Given that the climate emergency is accelerating, transformative climate action becomes increasingly urgent. Considering social and fairness implications of climate action is critical to avoid widening inequalities and public opposition. The just transitions (JT) and sustainable welfare/eco‐social policy (SW/ESP) literatures both address social and fairness issues related to climate action. However, they have developed largely separately from eac…
Football in the climate emergency
Globalization and commodification trends in football negatively impact the climate in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from leagues and international tournaments. A significant share of these emissions stem from the flying of teams, staff and fans. Using Norway as a case study, we ask what a national football federation is doing and could be doing to reduce its ecological footprint from air travel while maintaining the wellbeing of players and s…
What have future generations ever done for us?” Future expectations and present dispositions for social-ecological transformations
The concept of ‘sustainable welfare’ conceptualizes welfare and wellbeing within planetary limits. Yet there is a lack of knowledge about possible social and political carriers of corresponding social-ecological transformations. For the promotion of the changes of societal core institutions that climate scientists deem necessary in the nearer future knowledge of which parts of the population are most likely to support these and which would resist…
Europe in the Postgrowth Era
Europe is confronted with a multiple crisis while coming to grips with its colonial legacy. Given the lack of empirical evidence for sufficient absolute decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) growth from environmental resource use to stay within planetary limits and meet the Paris climate goals, this article argues that it is unavoidable for the European Union (EU) to enter the postgrowth era and outlines the contours of a ‘sustainable welfar…
Postgrowth welfare systems
As production and supply chains rely on exploitative extraction of nature and labour, consumption levels (resource use) remain one of the main indicators of inequality, across and within national contexts. In times of ongoing climate crisis and rising levels of inequalities, welfare systems face the dual challenge of transforming economies to reduce their reliance on unsustainable industries as well as maintain and expand equitable distribution o…
Flight-intensive practices and wellbeing
This article draws on social practice theory and wellbeing perspectives to outline a research framework for the study of flight-intensive practices. The framework is then used to discuss, through a non-systematic review, the social science air travel literature and to propose avenues for future research. We study both the work and leisure domains, with sub-cases for travel in academia and visiting family and friends. We find insights of a complex…
Structural barriers to sufficiency
‘Sufficiency’ has become a key term within sustainability science. The satisfaction of basic human needs for all and for multiple generations is only possible if coupled to the implementation of ecological ceilings that prevent wealthy groups from disproportionate production and consumption patterns and energy use. While much sufficiency research has focused on the poor and how to provide corresponding social floors (i.e. an adequate level of suf…
Diminishing returns of growth? Economic performance, needs satisfaction and ecological impacts of OECD welfare states
The environmental crisis, increased inequality and an aging population are likely to increase the demand for welfare services in the OECD countries. Economic growth has long been seen as a solution to these problems. However, this is no longer the case. Very few countries have managed to decouple economic performance from ecological footprints and greenhouse gas emissions. Even where this has been achieved, the rates of emission-decline are too s…
Welfare within planetary limits
In January 2023, Anders Rhiger Hansen visited Lund University to talk to Max Koch about sustainable welfare, human needs, social inequality and a little bit about Bourdieu. The message from Max was clear: politicians need to drop the idea of green growth and instead define a safe and just operating space to determine what can be done within this space. His sociological approach combines Marxian and Bourdieusean traditions, and he recommends that …
The role of work and social protection systems in social-ecological transformations
To avoid catastrophic consequences of impending ecological crises our socio-economic systems need to be transformed in rapid and radical manners. Focusing on working life and Sweden as an example for countries of the Global North with a social-democratic welfare tradition, we ask how social protection systems may be reorganised according to the concept of ‘sustainable welfare’, the satisfaction of basic human needs across space and over time. We …
Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context
Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context
Social policy developed as a research field and academic discipline to ensure protection from social risks in the era of emerging capitalism and industrialization. While welfare states have successfully increased their citizens' wellbeing, they have also contributed to the ecological crisis, while the shared scientific understanding of exceeded planetary boundaries and worsening climate change scenarios has not (yet) reshaped mainstream social po…
Ecological ceiling and social floor
In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social polic…
Social Policy Without Growth
Growth-dependent welfare states contribute to climate emergency. The ecological economics, degrowth, and sustainable welfare literatures demonstrate that to re-embed Western production and consumption patterns in environmental limits, an encompassing social-ecological transformation would need to be initiated very soon. This article focuses on the potential roles of the welfare state and social policy in this transformation, applying the concepts…
Operationalizing sustainable welfare and co-developing eco-social policies by prioritizing human needs
Contribution to a forum on "Global Eco-Social Policy: Contestation within an Emerging Policy Era
State-civil society relations in Gramsci, Poulantzas and Bourdieu
Degrowth thought and strategies suffer from a tension between viewing the state as incapable of initiating transformational change and making a political appeal to it to do precisely this via targeted eco-social policies. While a small number of academic papers has theoretically addressed this tension, there is a lack in research on the strategic implications arising from conceptualizations of the state and state-civil society relations within de…
Habitus and climate change
We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social-ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of que…
Sustainable Welfare beyond Growth
The history of welfare states is tightly linked to industrial capitalism and a mode of regulation where production and consumption patterns increased in parallel [...]
In search of a political economy of the postgrowth era
Against the backdrop of the ecological and climate emergencies and several other deep crises, advocates of degrowth call for democratic transitions towards societies that can thrive beyond economic growth within ecological boundaries while being socially equitable. In recent years, scholarship has emerged that brings together the emerging degrowth paradigm with insights from political economy. Yet much contemporary political economy continues to …
The state in the transformation to a sustainable postgrowth economy
The limits of the environmental state in the context of the provision of economic growth are addressed by applying materialist state theory, state-rescaling approaches and the degrowth/postgrowth literature. I compare state roles in a capitalist growth economy and in a postgrowth economy geared towards bio-physical parameters such as matter and energy throughput and the provision of ‘sustainable welfare’. In both cases state roles are analysed in…
Public Support for Sustainable Welfare Compared
The emerging concept of sustainable welfare attempts to integrate environmental sustainability and social welfare research. Oriented at a mid-term re-embedding of Western production and consumption norms into planetary limits, it suggests the development of “eco-social” policies in the rich countries. In this theoretical context, this article empirically investigates the relationships between attitudes towards welfare and climate policy in 23 cou…
Degrowth through income and wealth caps
Challenges for the degrowth transition
Degrowth scholars and activists have convincingly argued that degrowth in developed nations will need to be part of a global effort to tackle climate change, and to preserve the conditions for future generations’ basic needs satisfaction. However, the barriers to building a broader degrowth movement appear to be very entrenched at present. To improve the political feasibility of degrowth it is important to better understand these structural obsta…
The Naturalisation of Growth
This paper analyses the hegemony of the growth paradigm through the example of its naturalisation in capitalist production and consumption relations. Applying a combination of theoretical elements from the Marxian tradition, the Regulation approach and Bourdieusian sociology, emphasis is placed on how the growth imperative is reflected in people's minds and bodies. It becomes hegemonic because it appears to be the natural way of steering economy …
Challenges for the degrowth transition
Degrowth scholars and activists have convincingly argued that degrowth in developed nations will need to be part of a global effort to tackle climate change, and to preserve the conditions for future generations’ basic needs satisfaction. However, the barriers to building a broader degrowth movement appear to be very entrenched at present. To improve the political feasibility of degrowth it is important to better understand these structural obsta…
Degrowth through income and wealth caps
Habitus and climate change
We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social-ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of que…
Building the Eco-social State
Authors such as Dryzek, Gough and Meadowcroft have indicated that social-democratic welfare states could be in a better position to deal with development of the 'green' or 'eco' state, and the intersection of social and environmental policies, than conservative or liberal welfare regimes (synergy hypothesis). However, this hypothesis has as yet not been examined in comparative empirical research. Based on comparative empirical data from EUROSTAT,…
Social Policy Without Growth
Growth-dependent welfare states contribute to climate emergency. The ecological economics, degrowth, and sustainable welfare literatures demonstrate that to re-embed Western production and consumption patterns in environmental limits, an encompassing social-ecological transformation would need to be initiated very soon. This article focuses on the potential roles of the welfare state and social policy in this transformation, applying the concepts…
Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context
Social policy developed as a research field and academic discipline to ensure protection from social risks in the era of emerging capitalism and industrialization. While welfare states have successfully increased their citizens' wellbeing, they have also contributed to the ecological crisis, while the shared scientific understanding of exceeded planetary boundaries and worsening climate change scenarios has not (yet) reshaped mainstream social po…
The state in the transformation to a sustainable postgrowth economy
The limits of the environmental state in the context of the provision of economic growth are addressed by applying materialist state theory, state-rescaling approaches and the degrowth/postgrowth literature. I compare state roles in a capitalist growth economy and in a postgrowth economy geared towards bio-physical parameters such as matter and energy throughput and the provision of ‘sustainable welfare’. In both cases state roles are analysed in…
Economic development and prosperity patterns around the world
Operationalizing sustainable welfare and co-developing eco-social policies by prioritizing human needs
Contribution to a forum on "Global Eco-Social Policy: Contestation within an Emerging Policy Era
State-civil society relations in Gramsci, Poulantzas and Bourdieu
Degrowth thought and strategies suffer from a tension between viewing the state as incapable of initiating transformational change and making a political appeal to it to do precisely this via targeted eco-social policies. While a small number of academic papers has theoretically addressed this tension, there is a lack in research on the strategic implications arising from conceptualizations of the state and state-civil society relations within de…
Welfare after Growth
The article discusses approaches to welfare under no-growth conditions and against the background of the growing significance of climate change as a socio-ecological issue. While most governments and scholars favor "green deal" solutions for tackling the climate crisis, a growing number of discussants are casting doubt on economic growth as the answer to it and have provided empirical evidence that the prospects for globally decoupling economic g…
In search of a political economy of the postgrowth era
Against the backdrop of the ecological and climate emergencies and several other deep crises, advocates of degrowth call for democratic transitions towards societies that can thrive beyond economic growth within ecological boundaries while being socially equitable. In recent years, scholarship has emerged that brings together the emerging degrowth paradigm with insights from political economy. Yet much contemporary political economy continues to …
Ecological ceiling and social floor
In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social polic…
Sustainable welfare in the EU
The commentary addresses the scope for synergy between climate change policy and social policy in the European Union (EU) from a ‘sustainable welfare’ perspective. The emerging sustainable welfare approach is oriented to the satisfaction of human needs within ecological limits, in an intergenerational and global perspective. While the overall goals of EU climate policy and EU welfare policies largely reflect this orientation, there are significan…
Patterns of institutional change in minimum income protection in Sweden and Germany
Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that…
Europe in the Postgrowth Era
Europe is confronted with a multiple crisis while coming to grips with its colonial legacy. Given the lack of empirical evidence for sufficient absolute decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) growth from environmental resource use to stay within planetary limits and meet the Paris climate goals, this article argues that it is unavoidable for the European Union (EU) to enter the postgrowth era and outlines the contours of a ‘sustainable welfar…
Climate Change, Capitalism and Degrowth Trajectories to a Global Steady-State Economy
Climate change (CC) is one of the major and most encompassing threats in the world today. While the facts and high-consensus predictions among natural scientists are increasingly well-known, the understanding of CC as a socio-ecological issue is much less clear and uncontroversial. This paper summarizes the available climate science expertise and then discusses the genesis of CC as a socio-ecological issue highlighting its parallel development wi…
Diminishing returns of growth? Economic performance, needs satisfaction and ecological impacts of OECD welfare states
The environmental crisis, increased inequality and an aging population are likely to increase the demand for welfare services in the OECD countries. Economic growth has long been seen as a solution to these problems. However, this is no longer the case. Very few countries have managed to decouple economic performance from ecological footprints and greenhouse gas emissions. Even where this has been achieved, the rates of emission-decline are too s…
The role of work and social protection systems in social-ecological transformations
To avoid catastrophic consequences of impending ecological crises our socio-economic systems need to be transformed in rapid and radical manners. Focusing on working life and Sweden as an example for countries of the Global North with a social-democratic welfare tradition, we ask how social protection systems may be reorganised according to the concept of ‘sustainable welfare’, the satisfaction of basic human needs across space and over time. We …
What have future generations ever done for us?” Future expectations and present dispositions for social-ecological transformations
The concept of ‘sustainable welfare’ conceptualizes welfare and wellbeing within planetary limits. Yet there is a lack of knowledge about possible social and political carriers of corresponding social-ecological transformations. For the promotion of the changes of societal core institutions that climate scientists deem necessary in the nearer future knowledge of which parts of the population are most likely to support these and which would resist…
The Role of the State in Employment and Welfare Regulation
This article examines the changing role of the Swedish state in employment and welfare regulation in an environment that has become more market driven, commodified, and Europeanized. It begins with a theoretical reflection on the role of the state in capitalist development and a review of the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation: the state as employer, redistributor, and arbiter, and as a shaper of employment relations and welfare.…
Postgrowth welfare systems
As production and supply chains rely on exploitative extraction of nature and labour, consumption levels (resource use) remain one of the main indicators of inequality, across and within national contexts. In times of ongoing climate crisis and rising levels of inequalities, welfare systems face the dual challenge of transforming economies to reduce their reliance on unsustainable industries as well as maintain and expand equitable distribution o…
Structural barriers to sufficiency
‘Sufficiency’ has become a key term within sustainability science. The satisfaction of basic human needs for all and for multiple generations is only possible if coupled to the implementation of ecological ceilings that prevent wealthy groups from disproportionate production and consumption patterns and energy use. While much sufficiency research has focused on the poor and how to provide corresponding social floors (i.e. an adequate level of suf…
The State in European Employment Regulation
The aim of the paper is to examine the changing role of the state in employment regulation in an environment that has become more market‐driven and Europeanized since the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the European Employment Strategy (EES). The point of departure is a general discussion of the role of the state in capitalist development and a review about the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation. It further …
Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Hohengrenzen der Vegetation im Mittelmeergebiete
The Altitudinal Limits of Vegetation in the Mediterranean Area
that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a
Arbeitsmärkte und Sozialstrukturen in Europa
Arbeitsmärkte und Sozialstrukturen in Europa.
Wage Determination, Socio-Economic Regulation and the State
This article examines changes in socio-economic regulation and the role of the state in the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Sweden and Germany, against the background of the theoretical debate on transition from Fordist to post-Fordist growth strategies. The first focus is on reforms in the labour market and the welfare state, and their effect on the political and social processes through which wage norms are generalized in a national economy. The se…
The State in European Employment Regulation
The aim of the paper is to examine the changing role of the state in employment regulation in an environment that has become more market‐driven and Europeanized since the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the European Employment Strategy (EES). The point of departure is a general discussion of the role of the state in capitalist development and a review about the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation. It further …
Capitalism and Climate Change
This book discusses climate change as a social issue, examining the incompatibility of capitalist development and Earth's physical limits and how these have been regulated in different ways. It addres
Arbeitsmärkte und Sozialstrukturen in Europa
Non-Standard Employment in Europe
Postwar employment standards are being undermined and 'non-standard' employment is becoming more common. While scholars have pointed to negative consequences of this development, this volume also disc
Welfare after Growth
The article discusses approaches to welfare under no-growth conditions and against the background of the growing significance of climate change as a socio-ecological issue. While most governments and scholars favor "green deal" solutions for tackling the climate crisis, a growing number of discussants are casting doubt on economic growth as the answer to it and have provided empirical evidence that the prospects for globally decoupling economic g…
Potentials for prosperity without growth
Patterns of institutional change in minimum income protection in Sweden and Germany
Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that…
Building the Eco-social State
Authors such as Dryzek, Gough and Meadowcroft have indicated that social-democratic welfare states could be in a better position to deal with development of the 'green' or 'eco' state, and the intersection of social and environmental policies, than conservative or liberal welfare regimes (synergy hypothesis). However, this hypothesis has as yet not been examined in comparative empirical research. Based on comparative empirical data from EUROSTAT,…
Climate Change, Capitalism and Degrowth Trajectories to a Global Steady-State Economy
Climate change (CC) is one of the major and most encompassing threats in the world today. While the facts and high-consensus predictions among natural scientists are increasingly well-known, the understanding of CC as a socio-ecological issue is much less clear and uncontroversial. This paper summarizes the available climate science expertise and then discusses the genesis of CC as a socio-ecological issue highlighting its parallel development wi…
Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare
Economic development and prosperity patterns around the world
Sustainable welfare in the EU
The commentary addresses the scope for synergy between climate change policy and social policy in the European Union (EU) from a ‘sustainable welfare’ perspective. The emerging sustainable welfare approach is oriented to the satisfaction of human needs within ecological limits, in an intergenerational and global perspective. While the overall goals of EU climate policy and EU welfare policies largely reflect this orientation, there are significan…
The Role of the State in Employment and Welfare Regulation
This article examines the changing role of the Swedish state in employment and welfare regulation in an environment that has become more market driven, commodified, and Europeanized. It begins with a theoretical reflection on the role of the state in capitalist development and a review of the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation: the state as employer, redistributor, and arbiter, and as a shaper of employment relations and welfare.…
Roads to Post-Fordism
Postgrowth and Wellbeing
Shifting Priorities in Degrowth Research
The Naturalisation of Growth
This paper analyses the hegemony of the growth paradigm through the example of its naturalisation in capitalist production and consumption relations. Applying a combination of theoretical elements from the Marxian tradition, the Regulation approach and Bourdieusian sociology, emphasis is placed on how the growth imperative is reflected in people's minds and bodies. It becomes hegemonic because it appears to be the natural way of steering economy …
Public Support for Sustainable Welfare Compared
The emerging concept of sustainable welfare attempts to integrate environmental sustainability and social welfare research. Oriented at a mid-term re-embedding of Western production and consumption norms into planetary limits, it suggests the development of “eco-social” policies in the rich countries. In this theoretical context, this article empirically investigates the relationships between attitudes towards welfare and climate policy in 23 cou…
Degrowth through income and wealth caps
Challenges for the degrowth transition
Degrowth scholars and activists have convincingly argued that degrowth in developed nations will need to be part of a global effort to tackle climate change, and to preserve the conditions for future generations’ basic needs satisfaction. However, the barriers to building a broader degrowth movement appear to be very entrenched at present. To improve the political feasibility of degrowth it is important to better understand these structural obsta…
Economics (31 obras) · Political science (31 obras) · Sustainability (16 obras) · Ecology (15 obras) · Politics (15 obras) · Welfare (15 obras) · Economic system (14 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (14 obras) · Sociology (14 obras)