Event Details

Hervé Corvellec (Lund University) and Alison Stowell (University of Lancaster) will discuss with us their recent paper (co-authored with Nils Johansson), "Critiques of the circular economy". This seminar will take place via Zoom. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89626909911 (Meeting ID: 896 2690 9911). For any queries, please contact Mo Cheded at m.cheded@lancaster.ac.uk.

This paper, recently appeared in Journal of Industrial Ecology, presents a reasoned account of the critiques addressed to the circular economy and circular business models. These critiques claim that the circular economy has diffused limits, unclear theoretical grounds, and that its implementation faces structural obstacles. Circular economy is based on an ideological agenda dominated by technical and economic accounts, which brings uncertain contributions to sustainability and depoliticizes sustainable growth. Bringing together these critiques demonstrates that the circular economy is far from being as promising as its advocates claim it to be. Circularity emerges instead as a theoretically, practically, and ideologically questionable notion. The paper concludes by proposing critical issues that need to be addressed if the circular economy and its business models are to open routes for more sustainable economic development.

Hervé Corvellec is a professor of management at the Department of Service Studies, Lund University. He has more than 20 years of experience in interdisciplinary organizational research about infrastructures, in particular waste. He has published in journals within management (e.g., Accounting Organization and Society, Business and Society, Culture and Organizations, Marketing Theory, Organization, Research Policy), social-anthropology (Journal of Material culture), geography (Environment and Planning A), environmental studies (Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Sustainable Development), and engineering (Waste Management, Waste Management & Research).

Alison Stowell is a senior lecturer at the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University. Her research focuses on societal, organisational and management responses to waste. She has collaborated and led on numerous interdisciplinary projects, and during this time has been attentive to electronic waste, but more recently her interest has broadened to other complex forms of waste handling. Her research has been published in management and organisation (Organization Studies, New Technology, Work and Employment; Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization; Society and Business; Culture and Organization), environmental studies (Industrial Ecology, Global Challenges), material science (Journal of Chemical Education) and ethnography (Etnografia e Ricera Qualitativa) journals.