Convivial Modernity

In my module on »Sustainable Development« at Karlshochschule International University I also teach sociological theories dealing with the natural environment. The other day my class and I were discussing »Risk Society« by Ulrich Beck among others. The idea behind it is that the old industrial society – modernity 1.0 – has given way to a different kind of modernity, one in which the production and distribution of risks has taken the place of wealth production and distribution. The risks in the risk society are of a fundamental, all endangering nature: climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, nuclear catastrophes, global terrorism and so forth are all emanation from society’s own activities, they are self-inflicted risks with the potential of global harm. In the risk society everyone is at risk, not even wealth can save you from radioactive fallout or hijacked airplanes crashing into the Alps.

Beck also portrayed this risk society as a reflexive society. We know what we know and also what we don’t know. Knowledge in all its forms is diffused in society. We know that too much nicotine and meat intake are harmful and if we do it, we therefore take the risks. Unlike Anthony Giddens who focused more strongly on knowledge, Beck has been interested in the things we do not know: »Unwissen« or ignorance. We know about our ignorances and about the possible unintended consequences of our ignorance, thus providing us and the risk society with reflexivity about our actions. It was this »reflexive modernity« that Beck and others are viewing as the second modernity, rescuing the open and liberal society along with individual freedom and human rights.

However, if we look around in our post-9-11 world things look different. We are reflexive about our risks but instead of reaching a new level of awareness and societal humanity, we retreat to fear. I had to think about this, especially after 4U9525: the risk of letting terrorists crash an airplane into a skyscraper has been substituted with the risk of letting a suicidal pilot crash an airplane into a mountain. Risk production leads to risk avoidance leads to new risk production. There is no way out. Niklas Luhman, another great sociologist we discuss in my class, once said that fear resists everything: if all principles fail, the principle of fear prevails. So is this the true result of our risk society? Paranoid modernity? The fear of losing to what you are attached appears to breed nothing else than fear, distrust, surveillance and the diminishing of freedom.

Luckily, we were also reading Ivan Illich and his thoughts on »conviviality«. Conviviality means

…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. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members. (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, p. 11)

Illich proposed conviviality as opposed to industrial productivity and the relentless drive to economic growth. For Illich there is a threshold of productivity in a society beyond which counterproductivity sets in and destroys all productivity gains. This notion is similar to that of »uneconomic growth« by Herman Daly. Counterproductivity can be seen e.g. by the decline of travel speed of cars within cities in the last 40 years due to the clogging of our streets with an overproduction of cars. It can be argued that uneconomic growth and counterproductivity have similar origins. However, Illich’s concept is bigger than economics. For him the threshold beyond a convivial society is reached when the autonomy of the productive individual is overtaken by the heteronomy of productivism. Being deprived of one’s own productivity by large-scale systems of productivism, individual autonomy and freedom is destroyed – and your personal humanity along with that:

People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. (ibid.)

Christian Arnsperger developed a wonderful paper on the anthropology of conviviality in which he connected the concept to sustainability. Sustainability, Arnsperger argues, is connected to production remaining non-productivist such that the threshold beyond which conviviality is destroyed is not reached. A sustainable society is a convival society. What I learned from this paper is a bit more complex, though.

Within the degrowth and décroissance movement, Illich is an important source for inspiration. Conviviality has especially significance to the discussion on the role of technology in a society beyond growth. The reception of Illich within degrowth often falls in line with a rejection of globalized capitalism, globalized chains of production and global business – the signifiers of productivism, counterproductivity and the heteronomic order of economic growth fetishism. Conviviality, especially convivial technology, is then seen as something more small-scale, local, and centered on human individuals in interaction with each other. This image of such a degrowth society is appealing to some, appalling to others. Illich himself however noted that small is not always beautiful. Moreover, heteronomic order not only lies at the market/capitalist end of conviviality but also on its social relationship side. Autonomy can also be in danger when one is too strongly entangled, relying on and exploiting social relations:

The criterion for the stopping point in the accumulation of relationships—and this is what will prevent the advent of a new, relational form of “capitalism”—will be similar to the one which, in the logic of Gandhi, puts a halt to the accumulation of goods and services: When the extension of relationships becomes a factor of heteronomy in a person’s life, i.e., when he or she starts to become an instrument “in the service” of his or her relationships or that others become a substitute for his or her own inner strength, then abundance mutates into scarcity for that person—a scarcity of “self,” a scarcity of vital space, a scarcity of autonomy. (Arnsperger, p. 6-7)

Just as there is counterproductivity and productivism, there is »counterconformity« and »relationalism«. Beyond such a »connectionist travesty« as Arnsperger calls it, lies the true spirit of Ivan Illich and his thinking: the self-determined autonomy of the human individual. Not an autonomy beyond social relations, quite far from it. But an autonomy that is based on one’s inner strength stemming from being self-productive without over-reliance on either markets nor social relations – and therefore able to fully participate in society and social as well as economic exchange with others. At the heart of conviviality lies a very modern expression: individual freedom. Beyond fear and paranoia, growth and exploitation, retreat and conformity – there might be a convivial modernity as a new narrative for the postgrowth society. Time to re-read Illich!

4 Replies to “Convivial Modernity”

  1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Illich and for that link you made to the paper of Arnsperger. This idea of conviviality to be “self-productive without over-reliance on either markets nor social relations” remembered me of discussions we had among members of the Netzwerk Wachstumswende: which forms of pension system exists, that allow to overcome our current system of reliance on monetized capital (with it’s inherent tendency to spur growth)? We could only come up with solutions that would increase dependency on other humans: regional time-banking for example; something which we thought of as benefical only up to a certain point. Beyond this point, one could get too dependent on these kind of social relations, of relational capital.

    One could also draw historic lines here: enlightenment, scientific progress and the machinistic developement of the factory system released people from old village- and family-based systems of social security, and with it the (over-)dependency on traditional relationships. As pauperism set in, pressure rose to implement social security and pension schemes, thus introducing the dependency on monetary forms of capital. What once meant a relief, an increase in personal freedom, today has taken the shape of chains again, but on a different societal level.

    1. Thanks for your comments, Daniel!
      I do believe that the notion of a convivial modernity can be a very attractive one for the degrowth movement. It focuses on freedom and autonomy, it asks for the greatest possible absence of heteronomic control in a complex mass society. It is connectable (»anschlussfähig« in a Luhmannian sense) to other societal discourses, especially to mainstream discourses. And it is modern as it does not seek refuge in escapism like some aspects of the transition towns movement do, especially with eco-villages. I’d love to see this notion of a convivial modernity gather a bit of following within the degrowth community in order to move it away from perceived anti-capitalist obscurantism or pre-modern eco-romanticism.

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