Holistic care economies: Degrowth ways of provisioning and the Global East

This chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Degrowth (2025) introduces a degrowth understanding of holistic care economies as multi-dimensional economic systems. Such systems centre on the interconnected practices of care that sustain both human and non-human life. As an essential building block, collective provisioning systems make basic services and infrastructure available to meet all people's basic needs. Various proposals for such systems have been put forward recently, including for a Foundational Economy, Universal Basic Services and Unconditional Autonomy Allowance. This chapter briefly discusses these three approaches, then draws on literature and experience from the former state-socialist Global East and their respective provisioning systems. It argues that, with a critical mindset, a deeper engagement with the legacy of the Global East, for example in terms of basic infrastructure design and planning, (experiential) knowledge and prefigurative practices, can inform and inspire degrowth approaches. While it can be a messy endeavour, learning from the contradictions and dysfunctions of collective provisioning infrastructures in the Global East is needed to enhance decolonial degrowth scholarship and help design future resilient, sustainable and holistically caring economies - for all.