Society today faces a difficult contradiction: we know exactly how the physical limits of our planet are being reached and exactly why we cannot go on as we have before - and yet, collectively, we seem unable to reach crucial decisions for our future in a timely way. This book argues that our definition of prosperity, which we have long assimilated with the idea of material wealth, may be preventing us from imagining a future that meets essential human aspirations without straining our planet to the breaking point. In other words, redefining prosperity is a necessary and urgent task.

Isabelle Cassiers is Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and Research Associate at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research.

1. Can Prosperity be Disentangled from Growth? 2. A High-Stakes Shift: Turning the Tide From GDP to New Prosperity Indicators Isabelle 3. Towards a Transcultural Definition of Prosperity. Insights from the Capability Approach 4. Consumerism and Positive Liberty 5. Prosperity in Work 6. Out of the laboratory into the field: the stakes riding on a paradigm change 7. Environment, Growth, and Prosperity: Possible Models of Integration 8. Prosperity and the Crisis of Politics 9. Collective Action and the Redefinition of Prosperity: On the Democratic Governance of the Transition 10. Conclusion: Who will redefine prosperity?