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TOOLS FOR CONVIVIALITY
First Encounter
Yes, Convivial Design is named after Tools for Conviviality (1973). I first heard about Ivan Illich as my undergraduate developmental psychology studies expanded to include incidental informal education situations such as museums, exhibits, field trips, cross-cultural learning, community work, mentoring, apprenticeships, internships and lifelong learning as alternatives to exculsively formally schooling folks. The first Illich text I encountered was Deschooling Society (1973). Deschooling chapters explore the phenomenology of schooling; the ritualization of progress; institutional spectrums; irrational consistencies; learning webs and the rebirth of epimethean man.
Illich, Ivan (1973) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin. (First published by Harper and Row 1971; now republished by Marion Boyars).
Tools for Conviviality
Moving on from Deschooling to Tools for Conviviality (1973), I discovered Illich's argument for the creation of convivial, rather than manipulative institutions. Building of societies in which modern technologies serve politically interrelated individuals rather than managers is Illich's plea.
Such societies are 'convivial' when they entail the use of responsibly limited tools. Tools for Conviviality is one of Illich's most important works, including his views about technology. This book helped found the radical technology movement of the 1970s.
 I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies. (Illich, Tools for Conviviality 1973: 57)
Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Now in 2003 I wonder what Illich would say about the proliferation of online learning and interactive media environmnets and instant messaging as informal mass communication. Are these environments and methods more convivial for learning?
IVAN ILLICH
Ivan Illich [1926-2002] - educator, sociologist, former priest, and philosopher, died Monday, December 2, 2002, at the age of 76.
Biography
IIvan Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. He studied theology and philosophy at the Greorgian University in Rome and obtained a PhD in history at the University of Salzburg. He came to the United States in 1951, where he served as assistant pastor in an Irish-Puerto Rican parish in New York City. From 1956 to 1960 he was assigned as vice-rector to the Catholic university of Puerto Rico, where he organized an intensive training center for American priests in Latin American culture. Illich was co-founder of the widely known and controversial Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and since 1964 he has directed research seminars on `Institutional Alternatives in a Technological Society', with special focus on Latin America.
[from: Ivan Illich: Energy and Equity. London: Calder & Boyars, 1974.]
RELATED ILLICH LINKS
"ON DECEMBER 2 in Bremen, Germany, priest and historian Monsignor Ivan Illich died in peace. He was taking a brief nap on a couch in the home of his friend Barbara Duden. Three months earlier, Ivan and I and two of his closest friends shared the pleasures of walking through the streets of Florence, Italy. We enjoyed a leisurely meal in a small, typically Tuscan restaurant. Laughter and Chianti flowed freely. As I got up to pay the bill, Ivan had already taken care of it."
Jerry Brown
At first, Illich offered trenchant social criticism, particularly in Tools for Conviviality (1973) and Medical Nemesis (1976). In later years, he turned his attention inward. In an essay entitled, The Cultivation of Conspiracy, Illich wrote: "Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship."
Jerry Brown
The centerpiece of the archive is a small collection of full texts. The other three sections contain (1) a Biographical Overview: This section contains a short biography of Ivan Illich; (2) a Bibliography: a maintained a list of publications related to Ivan Illich with hyperlinks where possible and (3) Facts and Figures: a collection of recent statistics which seem to support Illich's theories.
The home of informal education [infed.org] presents comprehensive online contents including: an introduction to Illich, his early life, ivan illich and cidoc, his later work and life, ivan illich on institutionalization and commodification, illich's convivial alternative, concluding remarks, further reading and references and of course more links.
Known for his critique of modernization and the corrupting impact of institutions, Ivan Illich's concern with deschooling, learning webs and the disabling effect of professions has struck a chord among many informal educators. We explore key aspects of his theory and his continuing relevance for informal education and lifelong learning.
PreserveNet - The Natural Environment : The social Environment provides a well preserved weath of information and texts by Ivan Illich.
Ivan Illich became well known in 1970, when he published Deschooling Society which argued that the top-down management of schools makes students powerless - and that the same top-down management is typical of the modern, technological economy that prevents people from learning. Tools for Conviviality made the same criticism of technology generally. Along with Energy and Equity, this book made Ivan Illich one of the most important theorists of the radical ecology movement of the 1970s.
ILLICH/ Part Moon Part Travelling Salesman: Conversations with Illich (1989)
Broadcasted on Candad's CBC Radio One Tapestry Program.
Ivan Illich is both a pilgrim and an intellectual pioneer. Through nearly 40 years as a churchman, social critic and historian, he has exposed to radical criticism such contemporary institutions as education, transportation, medicine and technology. In recent years he has written on economics, gender and the history of literacy. Ideas writer/broadcaster David Cayley prepared this series from extensive interviews with Illich.
We the People, KPFA - March 22, 1996
Brown: This hour we have a very special privilege and opportunity. We have here in the studio in Los Angeles Ivan Illich and Carl Mitchum, two friends of mine who I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Listen in.
This site contains a collection of Illich's writing in Spanish. (1926 + 2002)
La escuela parece estar eminentemente dotada para ser la Iglesia Universal de nuestra cultura en decadencia...
Brought to you by The Minesoata Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance with great black and white vintage bicycle photos!
"Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking."
- Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity
This Don Ferris article covers Tools for Conviviality and Energy and Equity in relation to modern times such as our with globalization and sustainability as daily concerns. Fifteen years before globalization became a buzzword, Illich wrote about it.
"Traveling about with an extra ton of car everywhere one goes does suggest an illogical set of values contrary to common sense. The twentieth century has given ample evidence that this practice is indeed unsustainable in the long run. The road Illich proposes to get to a convivial society is indeed a rocky, tenuous, and difficult one, and in the interests of people overall, a road best taken by bicycle, not a four-wheel drive. After all, along a precipice, a person can walk his/her bicycle and not plunge into an abyss."
- Ivan Illich Energy and Equity
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