Conviviality
The English word "conviviality" means "the enjoyment of festive society, festivity", or, as applied to people, "convivial spirit or disposition".
French root () One root of conviviality originated in 19th‐century France. is very common in contemporary French and has also established itself in English as a loanword, as well as more recently as a term in discussions about cohabitation in immigrant societies. Its coinage can be traced back to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and his book Physiologie du goût from 1825. The gastrophilosopher understood conviviality as the situation, common at the table, when different people come together over a good long meal, and time passes swiftly in excited conversations.
Spanish root () In Spanish, has long been interpreted literally as “living in the company of others” but in 1948 Américo Castro introduced to mean the peaceful coexistence between different religious groups in Spain between the eighth and fifteenth centuries.
See also
"Conviviality" in degrowth-oriented political philosophy
Conviviality, or Convivialism, is the ability of individuals to interact creatively and autonomously with others and their environment to satisfy their own needs. This interpretation is related to, but distinct from, several synonyms and cognates, including in French the enjoyment of the social company of others (), Catalan social cohesion policy (), and its contemporary understanding in English of living together with difference and diversity.
This interpretation was introduced by Ivan Illich as a direct contrast to industrial productivity that produces consumers that are alienated from the way that things are produced. Its focus on joyful simple living, the localisation of production systems, links to Marxist economics, and Illich’s simultaneous criticism of overconsumption have resulted in conviviality being taken up by a range of academic and social movements, including as a pillar of degrowth theory and practice.
Ivan Illich
As described here, the term conviviality was introduced by Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, Tools for Conviviality. Illich recognised that the term in English was more likely to be associated with “tipsy jolliness” but derived his definition from the French and Spanish cognates, resulting in an interpretation that he felt was closer to a modern version of . Illich introduced the term as the opposite of industrial productivity, with conviviality indicating a society where individual autonomy and creativity dominated. He contrasted this with industrialised societies where individuals are reduced to “mere consumers”, unable to choose what is produced or how things are made in a world governed by a “radical monopoly” that divided the population into experts that could use the tools and laypeople that could not.
As the title of the book suggests, the initial focus for Illich was how industrial tools and the expertise required to operate them constrained individuals’ autonomy. He also argued that these tools alienated individuals from the production processes of goods and services that shape our daily lives and led to the distortion of use values into exchange values.
Illich broadly interpreted tools as rationally designed devices. These include hardware used to produce goods and services that ranged from small scale items like drills to “large machines like cars and power stations”, but also productive institutions (like factories) and also productive systems that created what he called “intangible commodities… [like] education, health, knowledge or decisions”. Examples of non-convivial tools that Illich was railing against included open-pit mines, road networks and schools, this last example linking to his previous work critiquing mass education systems, Deschooling Society. By contrast, convivial tools were those that promoted and extended autonomy, including most hand tools, bicycles, and telephones. Convivial tools share many similarities with the intermediate technology or ‘technology with a human face’ described in Small is Beautiful by Illich’s contemporary E.F. Schumacher. In his 2012 book La sociedad de la abundancia frugal Serge Latouche also highlights the “human scale” of convivial tools.