Doctor Sarah Browne from TCD Business School explains why she moved away from a traditional, mainstream approach to teaching marketing, which included such subjects as micro-targeting and brand equity. Instead, Sarah and colleagues, both in the Business School and elsewhere, are now taking much a more critical stance which questions the prioritisation of demand generation, growth at all costs, and the targeting of vulnerable consumers. They are exploring ways to harness the power of communications expertise in order to help bring about greater awareness of the need to achieve a wellbeing economy, and ways in which economic transformation could take place.
Sarah gave her impressions of the Rethinking Growth conference in June 2024, in particular the sessions on the role of academics in rethinking growth, and the conversation session with Minister Paschal Donohoe. She spoke about the compelling and frightening narrative that assumes that zero or negative economic growth must always equal austerity and regression, and how this needs to be addressed with powerful, positive counter-narratives. Topics covered in the discussion also included the need to push back against corporate capture of academic research and find alternative funding sources, and the need to fill gaps in empirical research on post-growth and degrowth policy.