Concept Of Conviviality Research Articles

On wounds, incompleteness, and conviviality: Notes on counter-actualising the conditions of the contemporary

For Bernard Stiegler ‘the question of philosophy is first of all that of action’ (p.7). By extending this statement to philosophy of education, I consider the possibilities of action in education in responding to the conditions of the contemporary. These conditions, which have come to be discussed and dissected with reference to such terms as Anthropocene (Stoermer, Crutzen), Capitalocene (Moore), Plantationocene (Haraway), hold unprecedented and mostly devastating consequences for all life. To consider possibilities for action within the field of education to the conditions of the contemporary, I read Walter Mignolo’s concept of the colonial wound together with Gilles Deleuze’s conceptualisation of the wound. Based on this reading, I argue for the conditions of the contemporary to be understood as a wound in both Mignolo’s and Deleuze’s sense. Conceptualising it as such in turn allows me to ask how we might counter-actualise the wounds of the contemporary. In other words, how might we be worthy of the wound-event and respond in an affirmative yet critical manner to it within the field of education, and in so doing generate new possibilities of (educational) life. To consider what one such possibility of counter-actualisation might entail, I propose that education be informed by the notion of incompleteness, as expressed in the concept of conviviality. I conclude by reflecting on implications of counter-actualising the wound of the contemporary in relation to education if we were to activate the concepts of incompleteness and conviviality and pursue a different aesthetics of (educational) life.

Playing against the rules: a new perspective on the potential of games and play as convivial and critical tools for imagining futures

AbstractIn recent years, we have observed an increased interest within the field of design research in both the concept of conviviality and playful approaches as a pathway to co-design and participation. While play is often associated with freedom of expression and creativity, the implication of rules and mechanics in games poses questions regarding the tension between player agency and designed gameplay. This paper aims to provide reflection on these topics through a lens of ‘critical play’ and presents a model to explore games’ potential as convivial tools for imagining collective futures.

Challenging the Cultural Hegemony of Industrial Society: Reinterpreting Illich’s Definition of Conviviality

In his previous work, the author has concentrated on threats to the environment1,2 and the effects of vernacular in African design.3 In this essay, the emphasis is on a one-to-one comparison of industrially manufactured goods to African craft-produced equivalents. Citing both William Morris and Ivan Illich, the author argues for a reinterpretation of the latter’s concept of conviviality in a systemic effort to change the way we make things. Industrial production has resulted in a disaster of unrecycled and unrecyclable manufactured waste. It is thought that return to a more modest, individual approach to making might lessen the destructive tide.

Community, Immunity, and Vulnerability: Paradoxes and Possibilities in Postpandemic Diaconal Practice

This article discusses an inherent paradox in contemporary conceptualisations of community as a challenge to diaconia. Logics of protection separate insiders from outsiders, producing a fundamental antagonism between those who belong to the community and those who threaten it. During pandemics, this logic is exacerbated. When contagion threatens all, even the community needs to be protected from itself. Immunitarian defences are required for the safety of all community members. However, measures implemented to ensure immunity can also harm people’s mental and somatic health. This paradox presents ethical and practical challenges for inclusive justice, including diaconia. Concerning this dilemma, the article draws on Roberto Esposito’s reframing of community and immunitarian defence. Esposito argues that immunitarian mechanisms must promote tolerance of otherness through openness to its presence within. I suggest that this openness can be seen as a fundamental ontological vulnerability shared by all living creatures. Learning from recent contributions within vulnerability studies and feminist and trauma theologies, I employ Tony Addy’s concept of conviviality as a model for diaconal community building, seeking to elucidate the relevance of Esposito’s thinking to postpandemic diaconal practice.

The convivial concealment of religion: Navigating religious diversity during meals in early childhood education – A Norwegian case

ABSTRACT How are religiously based eating regulations navigated in kindergarten, and how does the pedagogical context influence the children’s understandings of religion and nationality? This article builds on a qualitative case study involving observations and group interviews with children in a Norwegian kindergarten. At mealtimes, some children ate different food than their peers due to religiously based eating regulations. Notably, no children connected these differences to religion. Utilising Paul Gilroy's concept of conviviality, I argue that the staff contribute to a convivial concealment of religion. Their approach avoids reducing children to their religious background, and facilitates connections based on shared experiences and interests. However, it fails to give children a deeper understanding of religious diversity and does not address problematic aspects of some children’s working theories. Thus, convivial concealment may contribute to subtle, but significant, processes of exclusion. The study contributes to discussions of everyday religious diversity in educational settings, coining the term ‘convivial concealment of religion’ and analysing consequences of this pedagogical practice.

Conviviality in the city: experience-based spatial design against the segregation of places

ABSTRACT The article discusses design against segregation in an urban context characterized by diversity. It sets out to understand how individual experiences of urban space can lead to segregation of places between diverse inhabitants. We argue that the introduction of experience-based spatial design that takes note of perceptions and social interactions and their entanglement with the material aspects of space, is needed to tackle the processes where urban amenities and places become segregated. In our search for social and material fabrics that promote meaningful encounters in an urban environment, we combine an experience-based dataset collected among older people and young migrant adults with design-based observations. In our analysis, we utilize the concept of conviviality as a tool to translate experience-based knowledge into tangible information inputs for spatial design. The analysis culminates in the creation of visions that exemplify how experience-based knowledge can be operationalised for designing against segregation.

Towards Sustainable Construction Practices: How to Reinvigorate Vernacular Buildings in the Digital Era?

The starting point of this article is the critique on socioeconomic and environmental implications of conventional construction practices around sustainability. The focus is on exploring the sustainability dynamics of the emerging “Design Global, Manufacture Local” (DGML) configuration with emphasis on building construction. Combined with the concept of conviviality which we identify in aspects of vernacular architecture we explore how it can foster meaningful sustainability practices in the construction sector. We introduce a framework of “open construction systems”, an expression of DGML in building construction, as a way to foster the conjunctive use of the digital commons and local manufacturing technologies for the construction of buildings through three interlocked elements—modularity, sharing and adaptability. We suggest that the “open construction systems” framework may point towards more sustainability in building construction.

Radio and media history as a methodology for conviviality

This article illustrates how research into the history of radio and media can become a methodological ‘tool for conviviality’ by discussing my research into the very low-powered Tokyo station, Radio Home Run. In 1986, Ivan Illich visited Radio Home Run to participate in a programme that not only exhibited characteristics of his concept of conviviality, but that was also partially inspired by this concept as well as his critiques of industrial society and institutional life. During this programme, Illich sat on the floor of a small Tokyo apartment – the station’s make-shift studio – to share food, drink and a microphone with members of the station as he discussed his ideas with those in attendance. About five years prior to his visit, early members of Radio Home Run and its predecessor Radio Polybucket had been inspired by the writings of Illich and other progressive thinkers to develop their own theory and practice of radio-making, which they described as narrowcasting. They implemented this theoretically inspired practice throughout the station’s tenure (roughly 1983–96) both discussing and demonstrating conviviality with Illich during his 1986 visit. In 2016, 30 years after Illich’s visit, I met with former Radio Home Run members to collect oral histories, facilitate group interviews and conduct archival research about the station and its practices. I implemented a methodology that combines traditional practices of media and radio history with practices of art history focused on the perspectives and accounts of creators, such as those advocated by Lucy Lippard and Kristine Stiles. As I travelled throughout Japan to sit, share food and drink and discuss the past with groups and individuals, I experienced what it was like to participate in Radio Home Run’s convivial practices of narrowcasting. I also participated in the collective reconstruction of Radio Home Run’s collective history by documenting conversations as members pieced their memories together and revisited material from their personal archives, which shed new light on the station and its convivial practices. This article discusses and reflects upon the convivial nature of my research experiences in order to propose a methodology of radio and media arts history research that can serve as a methodological tool for conviviality in the present and the future.

Conviviality and Design: Interaction, Learning and Autonomy

The article addresses the concept of conviviality created by Ivan Illich in the 1970s. That concept is still very interesting for rethinking production, consumption and education parameters in our society, as it defends that communities must be more autonomous from institutions. Authors such as Manzini and Thackara have recently brought these ideas back. Conviviality has been associated to sustainability, since it reduces the demand for material goods. It is possible to develop decentralised systems for learning and teaching, with internet and social media. And it is possible to create objects in a more autonomous way, sothat people can have an active part. This paper investigates conviviality in education and design and presents the examples of convivial learning and creationthat happened at a University Design course, and at bamboo design workshops and a clothes refashioning event.

異なる価値観を持つ人々が共に生きる「開かれた共生社会」の原理:アイルランドで子どもを育てる親たちの「複言語育児」を事例に

異なる価値観を持つ人々が共に生きる「開かれた共生社会」の原理:アイルランドで子どもを育てる親たちの「複言語育児」を事例に

THE NEGLECTED NEXUS BETWEEN CONVIVIALITY AND INEQUALITY

ABSTRACT Starting from a detailed review of recent publications oriented by the concept of conviviality and etymologically related expressions (convivialisme, Konvivenz, Konvivialitat), the article explores a common analytical deficit in these different contributions: the disregard of the reciprocal constitution of conviviality and inequality. To overcome this deficiency, the essay develops an analytical framework, according to which inequalities defined along four complementary and interdependent axes (material, power, environmental and epistemological asymmetries) are always signified, reproduced, and negotiated within convivial interactions.

The Summer of Welcome

Before the so-called refugee influx into Germany peaked in 2015, the term Willkommens- und Anerkennungskultur [welcome culture] emerged as a political response to the negative attitude towards immigrants within the German society. During the summer and autumn of 2015, a new set of welcoming practices emerged as large groups of local Berliners engaged in the refugee situation – some by housing refugees in their own home. At this stage, the concept of welcome culture was no longer nourished by the input of political actors alone, it had become a part of a public discourse. The present article is based on ethnographical fieldwork, and is a part of a comprehensive master thesis that is focused on Willkommens- und Anerkennungskultur – more specifically, how different forms of welcome culture in light of the refugee influx into Europe in 2015 emerged in the everyday life, of civic initiators in Berlin, Germany. With inspiration from John Law’s Modes of Ordering I examine the informants’ different practices and rationales for engaging in the refugee crisis. Taking inspiration from the concept of conviviality I analyze how the home and certain notions of solidarity, inclusion and ‘homeliness’ become part of the practices and rationales for housing refugees, and perform different versions of engagement. I conclude that the informants’ welcoming practices and rationales are in and out of sync, with each other and the political concept of welcome culture.

Conviviality behavior in entrepreneurial communities and business networks

This article takes a step toward building of conviviality behavior in entrepreneurial communities and business networks. The actual experience of entrepreneurs suggests the importance of convivial events in entrepreneurial communities, especially to foster social and business networks in industrial markets. Yet little research effort has been devoted to elucidating the factors at play in achieving such effects. With the aim of contributing to closing this gap in the business literature, this study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigating and elaborating on the concept of conviviality as this behavior influences business networks. Two cases of entrepreneurial communities in the Italian fashion industry are examined with the aim of gaining insight on the role played by conviviality in the development of the producers' ability to conduct business in their respective industrial markets. The main results of the paper include three research propositions for a research agenda regarding the role of conviviality in entrepreneurial communities.

Deschooling Virtuality

This article explores contemporary potentials for Illich's 1971 proposal to replace institutional schooling with non-institutional large-scale educational infrastructure, and shows that his visions of deschooling through technology could be embodied on the internet in the form of deschooling virtuality. This conclusion is methodologically restricted in three ways. First, the concept of deschooling heavily depends on one's views to human nature. Second, deschooling society is dialectically intertwined with the concept of conviviality, while deschooling virtuality is based on non-convivial technologies which lead directly to radical monopoly. Third, even the most developed deschooling virtuality might never transform into deschooling society. Despite those restrictions, the article concludes that Illich's deschooling has graduated from mere vision to the real opportunity. Realization of this opportunity will depend on future scientific and social developments and, ultimately, on collective human decision.

Conviviality in Global Cultural Development: Diversity, freedom and agency

James Shorthose suggests that the concept of conviviality could be useful for a strategic clarification of this multiplicity, for developing more inclusive and diverse research designs and strategies, and to develop a research discourse focused upon diversity, freedom and agency. He suggests that the concept of conviviality allows the thinking behind cultural research in global development thinking to become more focused on issues of governance and practical security, to be more sensitive to local cultural variation, to allow the greatest number of stakeholders to participate in the process, and thus to be ethical, inclusive and egalitarian. He suggests that conviviality might play an important role in culture and development thinking in the globalized context.