Acceptability of the circular economy - Unacceptability of non-growth[Acceptabilité de l’économie circulaire – Inacceptabilité de la non-croissance]

After 50 years of maturing awareness of the impact of economic activity on nature, we are now facing a fork in the road: we need to change our economic model, which implies a profound societal shift. In the meantime, debates on economic growth and the circular economy are emerging from a steady-state economic perspective, then falling by the wayside, and evolving differently. The circular economy was reappropriated from a growth perspective, then widely promoted over the last decade, while debates on growth remained on the sidelines, but developed, contributing today to the construction of post-growth. The circular economy seems to owe its success to the decoupling of the circular economy from non-growth. Today, faced with the urgent need to forge ahead towards a sustainable society, post-growth and the circular economy are finally being discussed in a number of scientific works. This paper seeks to better understand whether, and how, the critique of growth inherent in the circular economy concept influences its acceptability. A literature review examines how growth and its critics interact with the circular economy, then the principles of the two concepts are compared. Finally, the question is taken to the field: the interactions of a circular economy project by a collective of citizen-actors and structures in a non-growth perspective, is studied through the framework of societal transition governance. Institutional pressures to prevent the experimentation of a bifurcation are the expected results.