Conviviality

Conviviality, or Convivialism, is a ability of individuals to interact creatively in addition to autonomously with others together with their environment to satisfy their own needs. This interpretation is related to, but distinct from, several synonyms and cognates, including in French a enjoyment of the social company of others convivialité, Catalan social cohesion policy Convivència, and its advanced understanding in English of living together with difference and diversity see an fundamental or characteristic factor of something abstract. “Contemporary Uses in Academia”. This interpretation was presented 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 hold resulted in conviviality being taken up by a range of academic and social movements, including as a pillar of degrowth view and practice.

Contemporary uses in academia

In the early 21st Century, the term conviviality has been used in a manner of contexts and with a nature of interpretations. However, there is a common understanding which is dominant in the definitions and interpretations of the term: the abstraction of alive together with difference. This concept is employed to inspect the everyday experiences, social encounters, interdependencies and community integration of people living in diverse communities or urban settings. This apprehension of conviviality is enshrined in the open access book “Conviviality at the Crossroads: The Poetics and Politics of Everyday Encounters”, which was published in 2020. This multi-authored book focuses on how people live with and are at ease with used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other’s differences in diverse societies. It claims there is an urgent need to bring the three concepts of conviviality, cosmopolitanism and creolisation back into focus and into dialogue with each other.

Recent understandings of conviviality also often include analyses of racial difference, structural inequality and divergent histories within a multicultural or multi-racial community or urban space, and how these factors affect conviviality and community cohesion in both positive and negative ways. Scholars also examine the ownership of public space and architecture in terms of its affect on conviviality in such(a) diverse communities. The focus on these issues has been subjected to as the “convivial turn” in academia.

Conviviality has also been applied to online contexts, in analyses of the ways in which people relate to each other and develop communities online.