On Conviviality

Conviviality is Illich’s proposal for an alternative to unending industrial progress.

I choose the term "conviviality" to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. (p.11)

I appreciate the way Illich’s concept of conviviality invests the solution to over-industrialization in relationships between people. I especially like the way he has tied individual freedom to “personal interdependence” with others and the environment, that we find a feeling of agency through productive, mutual interaction with each other. It suggests that design can find meaning in providing people opportunities to participate, make things, and converse with others.

Illich goes on to describe what a convivial society would look like:

A convivial society would be the result of social arrangements that guarantee for each member the most ample and free access to the tools of the community and limit this freedom only in favor of another member’s equal freedom. (p.12)

And he describes what it would means to have tools for conviviality:

Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. The use of such tools by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action. (p.22)

The idea of conviviality resonates well with my own beliefs in the value of design. It can be difficult to put this thinking in action when design work often operates well within the confines of institutionalized structures. But I think there can be ways to continually question whether the thing you are making allows someone to express their “meaning in action” or whether it imposes a meaning on them.

Illich for his part offers a softer stance on the nature of a convivial society that a designer might strive for:

What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services, but the balance between those tools which create the specific demands they are specialized to satisfy and those complementary, enabling tools which foster self-realization. (p.24)