Breaking ‘the growth spell’: Sustainable marketing after growth realism

Drawing on Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism, this paper introduces and develops the notion of ‘growth realism’ as an ideological enclosure that suppresses alternative post-growth imaginaries. I argue that growth realism does not simply promote the belief that endless economic expansion is necessary, desirable, and inevitable – it actively constrains radical thought and action in sustainable marketing and consumer research by foreclosing alternatives before they can be articulated. In response, I position degrowth discourse not just as an alternative, but as a rupture with this hegemonic ideology – one that exposes the contradictions of growth realism, unsettles its grip on economic imaginaries, and reconfigures the boundaries of what is politically and culturally possible.