CONVIVIALITY DOSSIER
THE NEGLECTED NEXUS BETWEEN
CONVIVIALITY AND INEQUALITY
h t t p : / /d x . d o i . o rg / 1 0 . 2 5 0 9 1 /
S01013300201900010003
Sérgio Costa*
AbstrAct
Starting from a detailed review of recent publications orient‑
ed by the concept of conviviality and etymologically related expressions (convivialisme, Konvivenz, Konvivialität), the article
explores a common analytical deficit in these different contributions: the disregard of the reciprocal constitution of conviv‑
iality and inequality. To overcome this deficiency, the essay develops an analytical framework, according to which inequali‑
ties defined along four complementary and interdependent axes (material, power, environmental and epistemological
asymmetries) are always signified, reproduced, and negotiated within convivial interactions.
Keywords: conviviality; inequality; critique to sociocentrism; critique to
anthropocentrism.
o nexo negligenciado entre
convivialidade e desigualdade
resumo
A partir de uma resenha minuciosa de publicações recentes
orientadas pelo conceito de conviviality e outras expressões etimologicamente afins (convivialisme, Konvivenz, Konvivialität),
o artigo explora um déficit analítico comum a essas diferentes contribuições: a desconsideração da relação de constituição
recíproca entre desigualdade e convivialidade. Para superar essa deficiência, o ensaio desenvolve um marco analítico, de acordo
com o qual desigualdades definidas a partir de quatro eixos complementares e interdependentes (desigualdades materiais,
de poder, ecológicas e epistemológicas) são sempre significadas, reproduzidas e negociadas no âmbito de relações conviviais.
Palavras‑cHave: convivialidade; desigualdade; crítica ao sociocentrismo;
crítica ao antropocentrismo.
[*] Freie Universität Berlin, Ber‑
lin, Berlin, Germany. E‑mail: sergio.
costa@fu‑berlin.de
Until the lions invent their own stories, the hunters
will always be the heroes of the hunting narratives.
(African proverb cited by Couto 2012, p.9)
IntroductIon
Since the incorporation of the term conviviality to the
humanities vocabulary by Ivan Illich (1973), a wide variety of hetero‑
geneous contributions have applied the categories and tools devel‑
oped by Illich to various fields of knowledge or have even expanded
and reformed his concepts to adapted them to the study of contem‑
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15
porary problems. This article has two objectives: the first is to system‑
atize this vast discussion, seeking to grasp in its various currents and
forms, useful ideas that could support a research program dedicated
to studying the nexus of the reciprocal constitution between convivi‑
ality and inequality; the second objective stems from the first. In dia‑
log with the literature reviewed, the article seeks to specify the nexus
between inequality and conviviality and offer some methodological
suggestions on how to study this nexus. The structure of this article is
determined by its objectives. While the first and longer section reviews
the debate about conviviality, the second discusses the nexus between
conviviality and inequality, and the third and final section focuses on
methodological aspects.1
convIvIAlIty: stAte of the Art
Based on three etymologically related concepts, Konvivenz, convivi‑
alisme and conviviality, a varied group of analytical and normative pro‑
grams has recently emerged. Despite their affinities and overlappings,
these programs have developed independently, motivated by theoreti‑
cal and political impulses that are not always congruent and compat‑
ible with each other. Nevertheless, their etymological kinship reveals
common concerns. This involves, in all the cases, the analysis and
search for ways to live together in society. In some approaches, “living
together” is understood not only as ordinary life among human be‑
ings, but also between humans and non‑humans such as plants and
animals, spirits and artefacts.
Convivialisme
Discussions on convivialisme began in the French journal
M.A.U.S.S. (Mouvement Anti‑Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales)
and sociologist Alain Caillé at the University Paris‑Nanterre. With
the publication of the Convivialist Manifesto in 2013 (Les Convivi‑
alistes, 2013) and its translation into various languages, the discus‑
sions about convivialisme began spreading far beyond France. From a
theoretical perspective, convivialisme relates to the work of French an‑
thropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss (1872‑1950), specifically
on his argument that the gift — and not utilitarian reason — is the pri‑
mordial and foundational element of social interactions. Another im‑
portant fundament of convivialisme is the critique of economic growth
developed by thinkers such as economist Serge Latouche and phi‑
losopher Patrick Viveret (2014). According to this critique, the living
standard attained by the richest countries in the 1970s should serve
as a worldwide standard of material wealth to be made universal. This
implies a global redistribution of wealth and the development of sus‑
16 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
[1] This essay benefited from dis‑
cussions, suggestions and criticisms
provided by Mecila’s researchers dur‑
ing different discussions conducted
in São Paulo and also via teleconfer‑
ence from August to November 2018.
I especially thank Marcos Nobre,
whose unpublished paper “Convivial
Constellations and Inequality” deliv‑
ered at a Mecila International Work‑
shop in São Paulo in 2017 inspired
the approach to the literature and the
choice of the categories used in this
article. Jeffrey Hoff translated this
article from Portuguese into English,
including all quotations from works
published in other languages than
English. Puo‑An Wu Fu revised the
translation. I am alone responsible
for all remaining deficiencies.
tainable production technologies dedicated to a new form of relating
to nature and with other living beings (Les Convivialistes, 2013, p. 32).
Politically speaking, convivialisme is a doctrine that, according to
Caillé (2011, p. 8), “simultaneously synthesizes and goes beyond the
four grand ideologies of modernity: liberalism, socialism, anarchism
and communism.”
According to the diagnosis of the convivialists (Les Convivialis‑
tes, 2013, p. 26), capitalism, especially in its current configuration of
financial capitalism, destroys the greatest human asset which is “the
richness of its social relations.” By disrupting conviviality among
human beings, capitalism also undermines their relationship with
nature. Accordingly, capitalism produces social inequalities among
people, countries and regions, which, ethically unacceptable, pre‑
vent establishing an equilibrium between working and living, thus
destroying solidarity and the ecological basis of our existence. Based
on this diagnosis, the convivialists defend a change of course that
would lead towards the creation of a convivial society, which should
be constructed under democratic conditions and through respect
for social, cultural and existential plurality (Caillé; Chanial, 2014).
Although the Convivialists themselves can be seen a transnational
social movement, convivialisme as a concept is used to articulate a
diverse range of other social movements, including movements crit‑
ical of economic growth and the acceleration of daily life (décrois‑
sance, degrowth, slow food etc.), as well as ecological movements
(Adloff, 2018).
Konvivenz
The neologism Konvivenz was coined in the realm of the Lebenswissen
(Life Knowledge) research program, led, in the past two decades, by the
literary scholar Ottmar Ette from the German university of Potsdam.
Today, the program has adepts in various universities in Germany,
Latin America and the Caribbean, at research centers with which Ette
and his group collaborate. According to the Life Knowledge program,
the concept of Konvivenz articulates the very idea of what it is to live
and its irreversible, indivisible and unforeseeable nature. To live to‑
gether in society thus represents the context of experience in which
knowledge about living is generated and exchanged. Literature, and
particularly literature “without a fixed abode”, which is understood as
the only legitimate “science of life” as the vehicle that transports the
“knowledge about living together”. At the same time, however, litera‑
ture is more than a vehicle. In contact with its contemporary and fu‑
ture readers, literature itself produces knowledge about and for living
together: “Literature makes available knowledge that is important to
coexistence and survival, and this is because it thinks in an integrated
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17
manner about the logics of the different forms of living, having them
become livable and ‘relivable’” (Ette, 2010, p. 62).
The ability of literature to generate and transform polylogical forms
of knowledge about living together becomes clear if living is no longer
conceived in terms of a binary distinction between fiction and reality,
but is rather understood as a complex and open concept, in which the
preexisting, that is, the repertoires inherited through history and “the
invented (therefore ‘fictional’) find themselves linked with the lived
(and which is to be lived )” (Ette, 2012, p. 76).
According to Ette, the pre‑existent, the invented and the lived have
a certain correspondence with the interaction between burden, cun‑
ning and pleasure (in German: der Last, die List, die Lust), as analyzed
by Roland Barthes in his book Le Plaisir du texte, of 1973. Ette’s recon‑
struction of Barthes’s work contributes decisively to the epistemic
and theoretical positioning adopted by the program that he created.
It involves a post‑deconstructivist approach to difference, that decon‑
structs the logocentric philosophy of the subject and its dichotomies
(man/woman, white/black, dominant/dominated, etc.), but without
arriving at the immeasurability of differences and différances, as Derrida
would have it ([1967] 1972). It involves a “paradoxal dissimulation”
that “does not deny or attack the signs of the discourse of the other, but
rather disfigures them” (Ette, 2010, pp. 288‑9; 2012, p. 94).2
The semantic subversion operated by the disfiguration of signs
inspires the political project inherent to the Life Knowledge pro‑
gram. The concept of culture related to this disfiguration of signs
denies the idea of cultures as closed containers that coexist, mul‑
ticulturally, alongside each other. It also does not involve an inter‑
cultural relationship, in which stable cultural units communicate
with each other. Instead, the establishment of polylogical struc‑
tures of thinking, understanding and translation should originate
a transcultural mixture, characterized largely by the mutual trans‑
formation of cultures that interpenetrate and merge with each
other (Ette, 2012, p. 89).
This semantic of cultural mixing that uses metaphors such as cul‑
tural archipelagos and kaleidoscopes connects the Life Knowledge pro‑
gram with the environments, theoretical lines and concepts developed
by intellectuals from the former French and Spanish colonies in the
Caribbean. This is particularly clear in the discussion undertaken by
Gesine Müller (2018) on concepts such as creolité and caribeanidad.
Conviviality
The term conviviality3 is currently associated with various ana‑
lytical and theoretical programs. Some are closer, others are farther
from the definition coined when the term was introduced into the
18 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
[2] Post‑descontructivism here
means—like other concepts com‑
posed in a similar manner, such as
post‑structuralism and post‑co‑
lonialism—not a renunciation of
deconstructive methods, but inter‑
nalizing and surpassing them. That
is, in keeping with post‑structural‑
ism, post‑deconstructivism decon‑
structs the national and multicultural
identities respectively celebrated by
assimilationism and multicultural‑
ism. At the same time, by seeking
opportunities for the coexistence of
these thus dereified differences, the
post‑deconstructivist approaches
transcend post‑structuralism.
[3] Writing in German, Adloff
(2018) uses the neologism Konvivialität (literally conviviality) for
the French term convivialisme. Even
if the word chosen by the author
translates literally as conviviality,
Adloff is not included here among
the lines that use the term conviviality because his work is theoretically
and programatically more directly
associated to convivialisme, in the
definition of the program led by
Allain Caillé.
humanities vocabulary in Tools for Conviviality published in 1973 by
the Catholic priest, Viennese theologist and philosopher Ivan Il‑
lich 1973. At that time, Illich was leading in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the
Centro Intercultural de Documentación (cidoc), a space where
intelectuals from Latin America and from various parts of the world
gathered to exchange ideas. The book is theoretically and politically
inspired by at least two important sources. The first is generically
called the third‑worldist movement of the 1960s, which incorpo‑
rated elements from the African decolonial movements as well as
the highly diverse voices in support of the oppressed that spread
through Latin America at the time — from the local reconstruc‑
tions of Marxism to the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutiérrez
and Hélder Câmara, and the pedagogy of the opressed developed by
Paulo Freire. Illich not only read them but was a regular interlocu‑
tor close to all of these intellectuals (Hartch, 2015). Illich’s second
inspiration comes from the radical humanism of thinkers such as
Eric Fromm, who was also a friend and interlocutor, with whom
Illich shared the interpretation that human talent and virtues are
systematically scorned by instrumentalist capitalist rationality and
by various totalitarianisms (political, religious, pedagogical, etc.).
Because of these inspirations, it is not surprising that Illich’s book
from 1973 contains a normative appeal to a self‑limitation (of con‑
sumption and material welfare) despite the increasing possibilities
raised by technical and industrial development. For Illich, only by
a renunciation of instrumental and unidimensional rationality,
which is intrinsic to industrial capitalism, can human beings reach
convivial life, which is synonymous with emancipation:
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. (Illich, 1973, p. 11)
It would not be an exaggeration to say that after being forgotten
for decades, since the first years of this century a true revival of Illich’s
work can be noted, given the recurrence and enthusiasm with which
his tools for conviviality have been reinvented and rediscovered in
various fields. Illich was the inspiration behind the first articulations
of convivialisme in 2010 (Adloff, 2018, p. 11), although, as shown above,
since its rise, the movement has aggregated various references, so that
Illich’s influence is no longer clearly visible in its contemporary discus‑
sions. Currently, it is the field of posthumanism that has most decidedly
revived and expanded Illich’s work, as detailed below.
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Posthuman conviviality
In the field of so‑called posthumanism or the posthuman,4 Illich
became a repeated reference because of his insistance on the inter‑
dependence among living beings. To exemplify this trend, various
works from two distinct disciplines can be mentioned that are il‑
lustrative of similar developments in various fields of knowledge.
The first example comes from urban geography and is materialized
in the work of Hinchliffe and Whatmore (2006) who conduct an
important expansion and refinement of the theses of Tools of Con‑
viviality, building on a variety of inspirations that range from the
Deleuzian theory of minoritarian politics, feminist philosophy and
the actor‑network theory of Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers.
From these influences arise the concept of living cities that, contrary
to the effort of planners to plan and construct modern ascetic and
sterile cities, are living spaces of interaction between humans and
non‑humans:
Indeed, we want to suggest that non‑humans don’t just exist in cities,
precariously clinging to the towers and edifices of modernity, but potentially
shape and are shaped by their urban relations. Nor do we see these inhabit‑
ants as a threat to modernity […]. Rather, we would like to suggest that the
demography of the city, its populace of human and the nonhuman inhabit‑
ants, unsettles the geography of modernity and its forebears. (Hinchliffe;
Whatmore, 2006, pp. 27‑8)
For urban planning, this understanding precisely implies treat‑
ing cities as multispecies entanglements (Houston et al., 2018), that is, as
spaces shared by human and non‑human living beings, which are not
in relationships based on competition or cooperation, but conduct
interdependent lives.
The second example is the study of the archeologist Given (2017)
about conviviality in soil. Starting from the finding that a gram of fer‑
tile soil can contain 200 million bacteria, Given argues that the soil
constitutes a paradigmatic case to reveal the interdependencies be‑
tween human beings that populate, nurture and release detritus onto
soil and the non‑human beings that contributed in the past and con‑
tinue to contribute daily to transform the sterile ground into fertile
and living soil. According to this interpretation, instead of being seen
as occupants, users, predators and, less frequently, those who recu‑
perate the soil, human beings come to be understood as part of the
network of “players” who, living in symbiosis, make the soil what it
is. Given affirms that the emphasis on symbiosis should not imply re‑
ducing conviviality to relations of cooperation, given that tension and
conflict are a constitutive and necessary part of the convivial relations
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[4] Posthumanism is used here to
characterize different trends and
currents that in recent years have
been insisting on the need to break
with anthropocentrism and the
nature‑society dualism at the foun‑
dation of modern social sciences
and humanities in favor of interpre‑
tations that emphasize and explore
the inter‑relations between human
and non‑human living beings and
other entities such as spirits and ar‑
tefacts. In the generic form that it is
used here, the term also encompasses
what has been called new materialism, which, guided by the change of
focus on observation and analysis,
moves away from non‑material social
relations for the materiality of inter‑
dependence among various beings,
which can be analyzed in metabolic
processes and in the transformations
of the physical state of matter (for an
introduction to the posthuman, see
Braidotti, 2013)
[5] The example that Given pres‑
ents to illustrate interdependent life
above moral human judgements is
suggestive: “When a goat eats a cycla‑
men flower, it is irrelevant that this is
‘good’ for the goat and ‘bad’ for the
flower: what matters is the continu‑
ance of the cycles of matter, nutrients
and life. A goat eating a flower and
returning its nutrients to the soil
by defecation and decay maintains
the conviviality; it works within the
limits of the symbiosis. Spreading
tarmac and concrete over once lively
soil does not.” (Given, 2017, p. 131).
between humans and non‑humans, and even among non‑humans, on
which depend the maintenance of the life cycle of the soil.5
From a theoretical perspective, Given focuses on the combination
of conviviality in the terms proposed by Illich, with the Deleuze and
Guattari’s assemblage theory and Latour’s actor‑network theory:
What conviviality brings to this [assemblage theory and actor‑network
theory], other than a certain expressive power driven by the popular connota‑
tions of the term, is a commitment to the central role of non‑human and non
human‑made players. In this sense it moves on from Illich’s own main inter‑
ests in the establishment of a just society based on individual human freedom,
autonomy and responsibility. In another way, however, it brings precisely this
practical, future‑oriented and ethical approach to our engagement with the
landscape. Conviviality is a physical practice, a deep and sensory engagement
with the landscape and the world. (Given, 2017, p. 131)
Through the incorporation of the idea of conviviality to the
paradigm of post‑humanism, important discussions have been un‑
dertaken about the role and form of knowledge and technique that
stem from the thesis of irremediable interdependence between hu‑
man and non‑human living beings and artefacts. Authors involved in
these debates insist that the modern division of disciplines between
the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences as well
as the distinction between lay knowledge and specialized knowledge
and the separation between scientific and sensorial apprehension
of the world, constitute gigantic impediments to understanding the
networks of interdependences that are involved here. After all, in the
case of the living cities, gardeners, amateur ornithologists and ento‑
mologists, and even people living in the streets, contribute as much
to the understanding of the interactions in question as professional
environmentalists and scientists do (Hinchliffe; Whatmore, 2006, p.
131). Concerning soils, Given (2017, p. 133) calls attention to the limits
of theoretical‑analytical understanding and for the need that this be
complemented by sensorial experience such as touching and feeling
the soil: “people’s material engagement with the conviviality of soil has
to target what is perceptible as they engage in their various soil tasks:
texture, colour, smell, stones, larger pieces of vegetable matter [...]”.
Current discussions on the consequences of post‑humanism for
the reflection on technology revives and in some way deepens Illich’s
concerns. Arguments in this verin warn that technological innovation
cannot be limited to reducing the impact of technology on nature, and
operate under the assumption that human beings and the artefacts
they create are part of a universe exterior to nature. Accordingly, it is
mandatory to accept the inseparability between humans and non‑hu‑
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21
man beings in order to create technologies capable of interacting with
nature: “the ideal of convivial technologies is clearly that of being use‑
ful in an ecological cycle” (Vetter, 2017, p. 6).
Fragile convivialities
In addition to its use in efforts to update and give continuity to
Illich’s reflections, the term conviviality has also been widely used in
contemporary debate, in other contexts and with other meanings,
without necessarily referring to the pioneering work of the Austrian
theologian. This is the case of British sociologist Paul Gilroy (2004,
2006), who turns to the concept of conviviality to respond to various
challenges that have a common origin: the reification of identity. This
involves, in the first place, a criticism of the mobilization of the vocab‑
ulary that celebrates individual or collective identities for the simple
purpose of aggregating market value to various products, as in “ethnic
tourism” or “identity goods”:
The term “identity” has recently acquired great resonance, both inside and
outside the academic world. It offers far more than an obvious, common‑sense
way of talking about individuality, community, and solidarity and has pro‑
vided a means to understand the interplay between subjective experiences of
the world and the cultural and historical settings in which those fragile, mean‑
ingful subjectivities are formed. Identity has even been taken into the viscera of
postmodern commerce, where the goal of planetary marketing promotes not
just the targeting of objects and services to the identities of particular consum‑
ers, but the idea that any product whatsoever can be suffused with identity.
Any commodity is open to being “branded” in ways that solicit identification
and try to orchestrate identity. (Gilroy, 2000, pp. 97‑8)
The other challenges confronted by Gilroy are associated with the
incorporation of the idea of identity into politics. This is the case of
the anti‑racist politics that reify the idea of race and of multicultural
policies of a liberal nature implemented in England during the 1980s
and 1990s that, according to Gilroy, by celebrating diversity, produced
a freezing of essentialized and compartmentalized identities (Gilroy,
2004, 2010).
According to Gilroy, the responses to the failure of policies of lib‑
eral multiculturalism should not lead to the rejection of multiculture,
that is, the existing social and cultural diversity. Also, the response
should not involve, according to Gilroy, an appeal to the supposed
virtues of Enlightenment universalism, while ignoring its own posi‑
tion in the context of local and global asymmetries of power. For this
reason, Gilroy resists the Neo‑Kantian cosmopolitanism of intel‑
lectuals that dissolve the differences in the abstract ideal of a global
22 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
society of altruist and virtuous citizens (Habermas, 2004). Instead
of a philosophical appeal to the anticipation of the cosmopolitan con‑
dition, a Gilroy seeks a “cosmopolitanism from below”, articulated
in the negotiations of daily coexistence with and in difference (Gil‑
roy, 2004, 2013). By exalting the virtues of this trivial and everyday
cosmopolitanism, Gilroy, does not deny the existence of racisms,
sexisms and other forms of violence against those considered to be
different, the author only seeks to acknowledge the emergence of ur‑
ban environments in which cultural or physical traits normally used
to discriminate against people and groups lose, at least in part, their
dehumanizing force:
Conviviality is a social pattern in which different metropolitan groups
dwell in close proximity, but where their racial, linguistic and religious partic‑
ularities do not — as the logic of ethnic absolutism suggests they must — add
up to discontinuities of experience or insuperable problems of communica‑
tion. (Gilroy, 2006, p. 40)
[6] Unlike the conceptualization
originally developed by Illich, which
offers a clear criticism of indus‑
trial capitalism, conviviality in Paul
Gilroy’s definition does not clearly
incorporate a normative‑political
program. Gilroy focuses only on
already existing interactions and
experiences, which are by definition
fragile and mutant. Nevertheless,
the vision of interactions no longer
structured by dichotomous cultural
frontiers has played an important
role in the articulations of Queer
movements and immigrants asso‑
ciations critical of current integra‑
tion policies, particularly in Europe.
Moreover, the idea has inspired ex‑
pressive cultural manifestations in
various European countries, articu‑
lated around denominations such as
postmigrant theatre or postmigrant
performance (e.g.: Stewart, 2017).
Gilroy draws on multiple theoretical sources to develop the con‑
cept of conviviality. Particularly visible is the post‑structuralist in‑
terpretation of differences (in terms of culture, gender, etc.), which
lacking any ontology, whether material or metaphysical, are conceived
as circumstantial and contingent articulations between traits (physi‑
cal, cultural, etc.), social positions and discourses. Contingent here
does not mean random or arbitrary. History and politics, as Gilroy
shows, particularly in keeping with the interpretation of so‑called
Black British Cultural Studies, demarcate the limits and contexts of
meaning in which differences are articulated.6
An important group of recent studies in the field of migration,
mainly in Europe, have implicitly or explicitly adopted the defini‑
tion coined by Paul Gilroy, according to which conviviality corre‑
sponds to articulation and negotiated coexistence of differences in
the realm of daily life (see Nowicka; Vertovec, 2014). In these stud‑
ies, conviviality also assumes the character of a social resource for
dealing with diversity in the context of situations marked by both
cooperation and conflict:
On analysing cooperative and conflictual situations in negotiation
and translation processes, convivialities emerge as fragile and changing
and only able to lead to minimal forms of sociality. Local policies as well
as emic discourses in neighbourhoods use various terms to address the
everyday living together, which under the conditions of diversification, is
pragmatically reformulated as living with differences. (Heil, 2015, pp.
317‑8, emphasis in original).
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A similar interpretation of the idea of conviviality in contemporary
migration studies about but that precedes the use coined by Gilroy
was developed in the collection The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The
Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia (Overing; Passes, 2000).
The starting point here is the critique of the Western sociological
grand narrative, according to which the idea of society is based on
“social‑structural imperatives (through roles, statuses and juridical
rules)” and on the separation between the public and private, between
the formal and informal, the domestic and the public sphere (Over‑
ing; Passes, 2000, p. 14). Accordingly, among the indigenous groups
studied, social conviviality is not guaranteed by rights or by any other
impersonal structure or institution that could, at the limit, prescind
or even substitute strong personal ties. To the contrary, it is personal
virtues and mutual trust that assure the sociability guided by the in‑
separability between the public and private spheres.
For the “anthropology of the everyday” that the authors develop,
the term conviviality fulfills a fundamental function to the degree
that it seeks to describe a type of sociability based on affect, on the
indistinctiveness of social spheres, and moreover, on the permanent
conversion of potentially disruptive non‑human forces such as spir‑
its, catastrophes and divinities, into sources of social life. For the
authors, these characteristics make indigenous sociability invisible
to sociology, because they are not compatible with the concept of
society that the discipline created for itself and that is based on the
separation between macrostructures and daily relations.7 For this
reason, instead of society, under its sociological definition, the con‑
cept chosen by the authors
to translate Amazonian sociality or collectivity is “conviviality”, a term that
can overlap in many respects with the earlier [previous to sociology] under‑
standing of “society” as amiable, intimate sets of relationships which carry,
as well, a notion of peace and equality. Conviviality seems best to fit the Ama‑
zonian stress upon the affective side of sociality. […] Amazonian sociality
could not be understood without paying attention to it, in that affect, and es‑
pecially the establishment of a state of convivial affect, is what it is all about.
The social, interactive, intersubjective side of Amazonian collectivity is there
from the start, so much so that if relationships are not convivial, then there
is no sociality. (Overing; Passes, 2000, p.14, emphasis in original)
Arguing in a line similar to that developed by Overing and Passes,
Rosengren (2006) also makes use of the concept of conviviality to
interpret his experiences and ethnographic observations of the ani‑
mism among the indigenous Matsigen people who live in the Peru‑
vian Amazon. Dialoging mainly with Philippe Descola and Eduardo
24 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
[7] It is not only in the case of in‑
digenous sociability that the limits
of the idea of society on which soci‑
ology is based have been questioned.
Researching contexts marked by a
significant presence of immigrants
in the English city of Birmingham,
Karner and Parker (2011) show that
classic distinctions such as Dur‑
kheim’s differentiation between
mechanical solidarity and organic
solidarity or Tönnies distinction be‑
tween Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
do not apply to the local forms of
sociability that they find there. It is
a complex sociability marked both by
cooperation that the authors give the
name of conviviality and by conflict
and that is manifest in various social
spheres. For Karner and Parker, it is
not the social sphere, the institutions
or the previous values that generate
convivial relations, but the interac‑
tion itself: “It is not shared values but
involvement in the material practices
of daily life and struggles for resourc‑
es that generate a stake in a locality”
(p. 370). According to this logic, the
local economy is one of the spheres
where the authors identify strong
convivial relations, that is, those of
cooperation.
Viveiros de Castro, he seeks to demonstrate that the relations between
spirits and humans he observed represent neither an instrumental‑
ization of the humans by the spirits nor an instrumentalization of
the spirits by the humans. According to Rosengren, these relations
are horizontally structured, thus the Matsigen cosmogony conceives
of a common origin for people, spirits and certain animals and plants.
The distinction between these beings appeared later, when humans
became tired of being immortal and asked the god Tasorinmas, the
common creator, to make them mortal. Tasorinmas then cut the vine
that connected the worlds of the spirits and the humans and made
the humans mortal and, therefore, subject to hunger and disease. The
separation does not represent, however, an hierarchy between spirits
and humans who can return to the condition of spirits if they are able
to live according to the convivial ideas that shape the Matsigen ethos:
To achieve this goal [becoming a spirit] requires not only the repression
of hierarchy but also the obliteration of structures of distinction in order to be
consonant with the ideal of good living where mutual trust and the sharing of
common assets are guiding principles. At this point, when individuals “fuse”
to become part of a community that straddles ontological borders, the pres‑
ent constitutive differences between humans and spirits are dissolved and
humans return to the pristine conditions that once were lost. (Rosengren,
2006, pp. 813‑4)
domestIcAtIng convIvIAlIty
In an article originally published in 1992 and later integrated to a
book that was born as a classic of post‑colonial studies, “On the Post‑
colony” (Mbembe, 2001), Cameroonian political scientist and histori‑
an Achille Mbembe developed a different interpretation of conviviality.
Mbembe’s central concern is to understand the structures of domina‑
tion that were established in Africa both during colonialism and after
national independences. He argues that Africa became integrated to
modernity through the trafficking in African slaves. Since then, the con‑
tinent and its inhabitants appear in the Western imaginary, Mbembe
affirms, either as an expression of the absence of progress or as an hy‑
perbolized representation of everything that is repulsive and abject.
The societies formed in the emancipated African nation states are
marked, according to Mbembe, by a radical plurality that is not gov‑
erned within the parameters of an ordered and legitimate political sys‑
tem. In this context, the authoritarian power (commandement) assumes
an obscene and grotesque form. In a critical reading of Bakhtin’s idea
that the obscene and the grotesque are specific to the sphere of “ordi‑
nary people”, Mbembe shows that in the Cameroonian post‑colonial
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25
type of regime of domination the excessive and the obscene are a
constitutive part of the rituals of domination established by the com‑
mandement. Power here is not something that is legitimated by rules
or procedures and that is crystalized in institutions. To the contrary,
power is exercised by the involvement of the masses in the public ritu‑
als and ceremonies that construct the commandement as fetish. The
participation of ordinary people in these ceremonies is not marked
by any aspiration to subvert or contestat, as can be gathered from an
interpretation guided by Bakhtin. To the contrary, these rituals estab‑
lish the bond, at least in terms of meanings, between those who are
subordinated and the actors who control power. It is to refer to this
dissimulated familiarity between the sovereign and the subordinates
that Mbembe (2001, p. 110) applies the term conviviality:
[…] in its desire for majesty, the popular world borrows the ideological
repertoire of officialdom, along with its idioms and forms; conversely, the
official world mimics popular vulgarity, inserting it at the core of the pro‑
cedures by which it takes on grandeur. It is unnecessary, then, to insist, as
does Bakhtin, on oppositions (dédoublement) or, as does conventional
analysis, on the purported logic of resistance, disengagement, or disjunc‑
tion. Instead, the emphasis should be on the logic of conviviality, on the
dynamics of domesticity and familiarity, inscribing the dominant and the
dominated within the same episteme.
In her work about domestic labor of non‑documented migrants,
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (2011), a sociologist at the Uni‑
versity of Gießen, in Germany, also develops a concept of conviviality
focussing on the tie between convivial relations and asymmetries of
power.8 For Gutiérrez Rodríguez (2011),9 a domestic worker provides
an unpaid affective labor to people and environments in which she
acts to the degree that her presence “contributes to the re‑creation of
the apartment as a space of potential conviviality”. Gutiérrez Rodrí‑
guez’s proposes the idea of “transversal conviviality” to articulate the
interdependencies condensed in domestic labor. To make these in‑
terdepencies visible, Gutiérrez Rodríguez (2011) claims for politics of
affects, understood as “a visionary political project emphasizing caring
for ourselves as communal beings, embracing solidarity, responsibil‑
ity, generosity and reciprocity.”
convIvIAlIty-IneQuAlIty
The brief overview conducted thus far reveals the exponential
growth of recent studies about conviviality, covering various fields of
knowledge. The existing studies are also quite heterogeneous in terms
26 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
[8] The affinity between the defi‑
nition of conviviality adopted by
Mbembe and Gutiérrez‑Rodríguez
may come from the effort in both cas‑
es to understand convivial relations
through the multiple discussions of
Hegel’s dialectic of the master‑slave.
While Mbembe directly discusses
Hegel’s formulation, Gutiérrez‑Ro‑
dríguez (2011) supports her work on
Fanon’s concept of “lived existence”:
“Reversing Hegel’s dialectic of mas‑
ter/slave, Fanon insists on the ‘lived
experience’ resulting from the rela‑
tionship between the presupposed
‘authentic Being’ (the master) and
the abjected Other, the ‘non‑Being’
(the enslaved subject).” It can be in‑
ferred from this reading that for the
author, in domestic labor, a non‑doc‑
umented migrant lives the experience
of “non‑beingness.” Mbembe (2001,
p. 182) refers to colonial violence as
“the violence of being reduced to
nothingness.”
[9] Page numbers are not available
in this online publication.
of their theoretical ambitions. While some programs seek to develop
new analytical frameworks in which there is no space for obsolete dis‑
tinctions between disciplines and spheres of life, the intention of oth‑
er contributions is more clearly political: to associate conviviality to
the project of constructing more vigorous and solidary societies. The
contributions share an emphasis on interdependence and interpen‑
etration between processes, spaces and interactions that take place in
distinct geographic and social contexts. Common to all the contribu‑
tions is also the centrality conferred to daily relations in detriment to
the macrostructural social relations.
From a normative perspective, there is a clear division between
the group of contributions examined. With a single exception, all
of the programs, whether, convivialisme, Konvivenz, posthuman con‑
vivialities and fragile convivialities, even if they emphasize, in some
cases, that conviviality also implies conflict and competition, tend
to emphasize the dimension of cooperation (at times symbiosis)
inherent to conviviality. The sole exception is found in the domes‑
ticating conviviality program that emphasizes the functionality of
conviviality and social relations guided by affect and proximity to
sustain asymmetries of power.
This normative bias in favor of “good conviviality” explains, at
least in part, an important theoretical and analytical deficit found
in the discussions about conviviality in the various fields of knowl‑
edge: the lack of attention to inequalities. It is not that inequalities
are not mentioned. They emerge in various studies. They appear,
however, as an empiric finding. Except for few exceptions, there is
no conceptual elaboration about inequalities and their meaning for
convivial relations.
The notion of conviviality that guides our own investigations is
based on this critical assessment of the available bibliography. Firstly,
conviviality refers to the relational dimension of social life, or sim‑
ply life, depending on the field in question. That is, unlike concepts
such as living together/cohabitation, Zusamenleben/Miteinander, vivre
ensemble/cohabitation, vida em comum/convivência, which generically re‑
fer to shared life in its complete scope, conviviality refers specifically
to the interactions observed in the realm of common life. They ob‑
viously include not only interactions based on cooperation but also
those marked by competition, conflicts and violence. To specify that
conviviality refers to interactions obviously does not imply affirming
that convivial interactions take place in a vacuum and that the sur‑
roundings are not important. To the contrary, convivial interactions
are inserted in the webs of interdependence that shape (social) life.
This statement has certain methodological implications that will be
discussed below.
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27
Another premisse is the inseparable nexus between conviviality
and inequality. Even if it is empirically evident, the fact that con‑
viviality always takes place in contexts marked by inequality is not
trivial in its analytical consequences, given that it requires study of
the specific nature of the relation between conviviality and inequal‑
ity, in each particular context.
Inequality here refers to distances between the positions occupied
by individuals or groups in the social hierarchies in relation to at least
four levels:
i) The material level: this involves distances in terms of income,
wealth or more generically, possession of objects or socially valued
symbols.
ii) Power: inequalities or asymmetries of power refer to the distinct
opportunities to shape one’s own life and collective life according to
one’s own plans and interests. It therefore involves distances in the qual‑
ity and effectiveness of current collective and individual rights and the
possibilities to influence the formation of political will. The reference
to distance between capacities and opportunities should not obfuscate
the fact that power is always relational and contingent. That is, power is
not an act of will of a person or group that possesses and mobilizes an
arsenal of instruments and resources to influence people. Guided by the
tradition inaugurated by Elias (1971, pp. 142‑3) who, disagreeing with
Weber, desubstantializes power, transforming it into a relational catego‑
ry (Beziehungsbegriff, Elias), power is not understood here as something
that is possessed, but rather exercised or acquired in concrete interac‑
tions whose results always involve some unpredictability.
iii) Environment: given the mutual and interdependent consti‑
tution of nature and society, socio‑ecological inequalities concern
the consequences of the dominant forms of representing, trans‑
forming and appropriating nature for different individuals and
groups (Dietz, 2017).
iv) Episteme: Foucault (1980, p. 197) defines episteme as “the
‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true
from the false, but of what may from what may not be character‑
ised as scientific.” Expanding this definition, we can define episte‑
mological inequalities as differences in the ability to influence the
processes that distinguish not the false from the true, but the knowl‑
edge recognized as valid and valuable from knowledge considered to
be trivial or superfluous.
As a relationship, inequality, in the four levels mentioned above,
assumes meaning and consequences in the realm of conviviality, that
is, in the context of social interactions which, in turn, reflect existing
inequalities. This is the basis of the inseparable nexus between in‑
equality and conviviality: they are reciprocally constituted.
28 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
fInAl consIderAtIons: hoW to study convIvIAl fIgurAtIons?
To study the interactional dimension of common life based on a
relational and interdependent perspective requires methodological
accuracy and also important challenges, beginning with the defini‑
tion of the unit of observation or analysis. What is a suitable unit? A
neighborhood or an indigenous community, as in most of the studies
studies on fragile convivialities? A corpus of specific texts as used by the
authors linked to Konvivenz, or the entire planet as the convivialistes pre‑
fer? These examples clearly show that the specific unit of reference to
study conviviality varies for each case and individual study conducted.
Nevertheless, there are some common requirements for defining
this unit of analysis. Given the relational perspective, the units cannot
be previously defined based on geographic or political‑administrative
references (a country, a city, a village, etc.) since it is not known in ad‑
vance what is the web of relationships that is relevant to shaping the
conviviality observed. That is, the study of conviviality requires rela‑
tional units that precisely allow adjusting the scope of the observation
to the spectrum of the relationships relevant to each specific study. The
unit chosen should also allow incorporating relevant relations that are
not face‑to‑face given that conviviality is also shaped by communi‑
cations mediated by artefacts such as letters, telegraphs, telephones,
computers, etc., obviously not including a few cases such as ethnic
or religious groups that reject technological innovations or historic
contexts in which communication technologies were still not avail‑
able. In addition, the unit adopted should also permit the temporal
flexibility to allow integrating a diachronic perspective to the study of
conviviality. That is, even if the different programs analyzed insist on
the contingent and even fleeting character of convivial relations, con‑
viviality is certainly not a‑historic, it is historically constituted. This
creates the need to develop tools to study the process of constitution
and transformation of conviviality over time.
In addition to the unit of investigation, another important meth‑
odological aspect to be considered is the focus of analysis, given that
the emphasis on relations and interdependence implies that the start‑
ing point are not actors or structures but the interactions themselves.
When effectuated in its radicality, the relational and interdependent
analysis first implies considering that actors do not exist prior to in‑
teractions, but are only constituted through them and second, that
structures and interactions are mutually constituted.
Before the recent group of studies characterized in their whole as
a “relational turn” (Dépelteau, 2013), it was Norbert Elias who, in the
tradition of the social sciences, best explored and developed instru‑
ments for studying societies from a relational and interdependent
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29
perspective. Particularly suggestive and useful for our proposals is
his category of figuration. Figuration is a resource that is simultane‑
ously theoretical and methodological with which Elias seeks to mark
his distance from both methodological individualism and structur‑
al‑functionalism, since he affirms that these approaches represent
the individual and society as “distinct and, moreover, antagonistic
figures” (Elias, 1971, p. 141). Figuration seeks to reconcile these figures
separated by traditional sociology in order to emphasize the relations
of interdependence, whether they are of cooperation or competition,
between the various individuals. Working with the recurring image in
his work of society as a game, Elias defines figuration as:
a changing construction developed by the players not only with their intellect
but with their whole person, acting and leaving others acting in their mutual
relations. As we can see, figuration is tension field [Spannungsgefüge].
The interdependence among the players is the condition for them for build‑
ing a specific figuration. Interdependence means both, interdependence as
allies and as adversaries. (Elias, 1971, p. 142, my translation)
For Elias, as relational units of reference, figurations are flexible
in scope and can refer to small groups or even entire societies in
which millions of people are found linked by interdependent ties. If
we expand the concept of figuration to incorporate not only people
but also other living beings, as well as spirits and artifacts involved
in a single web of interdependence, we reach the definition of a unit
of observation or analysis that is useful to the various investiga‑
tions guided by the notion of conviviality—from the more anthro‑
pocentric studies to those decidedly guided by post‑humanism.10
After all, a figuration, or in our specific case a convivial figuration,
is a relational and dynamic unit of reference that is constituted and
adjusted during the research process. Convivial figurations can also
circumscribe interactions that do not imply face‑to‑face contact and
can be studied both from a synchronic or diachronic perspective. In
addition, in figurations, the actors are not prior to the interactions
studied but are constituted in the realm of the interactions—as are
the structures. That is, structures only become real—in the sense of
having practical effects—in the realm of the actions and relations of
interdependence between the various participants of a figuration.
In the image of the players, the structures are, for Elias, the game to
which properties are attributed (such as good, slow, etc.) as if it had
its own existence. It is obvious, however, that the game only exists
to the degree to which people interact as players.
Convivial figurations are, by definition, dynamic, that is, they
are found in a permanent process of reconfiguration and trans‑
30 THe NeGlecTed NeXUs BeTweeN coNvIvIalITy aNd INeQUalITy ❙❙ Sérgio Costa
[10] Müller (2018, p.1) also refers in
a very suggestive way to figurations of
conviviality. The reference, for this au‑
thor, however, is not the sociology of
Elias but his dialogue with Caribbean
writers and intellectuals.
Received for publication
on January 3, 2019.
Approved for publication
on March 22, 2019.
NOVOS ESTUDOS
ceBraP
113, Jan.–Apr. 2019
pp. 15‑32
formation. Considered from a perspective of a long duration, the
convivial figurations know both diuturnal transformations as
well as moments of inflection motivated by the accumulation of
smaller transformations or by ruptures (catastrophe, revolution,
radical institutional change, etc.) in the relationship between in‑
equality and conviviality. To identify the different stages (pre‑and
post‑inflection) with a single convivial figuration we refer to re‑
gimes. Thus, if the convivial figuration studied involves, for ex‑
ample, racial relations in South Africa, we would say that the end
of Apartheid marked a change in regime given that the character
of the nexus between inequality and conviviality changed. Com‑
bined, convivial figurations and convivial regimes constitute the
nucleus of the methodological resources that we use to study the
nexus between inequality and conviviality. As a whole, these re‑
sources allow studying the link between conviviality and inequal‑
ity from a perspective that captures the historicity of (social) life
and emphasizes the relations and interdependencies between:
individuals and other individuals; individuals and society; society
and nature; human and non‑human entities; different regions of
the world; and various forms of knowledge.
Sérgio Costa [https://orcid.org/0000‑0001‑6347‑0614], graduated in economics and socio‑
logy from Brazil and Germany, is professor of sociology, director of the Institute of Latin American
Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and speaker of the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Convi‑
viality‑Inequality in Latin America (Mecila).
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