ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to specify the nexus between inequality and conviviality and to offer some methodological suggestions on how to study this nexus. It reviews the debate about conviviality. Since Ivan Illich incorporated the term conviviality to the humanities vocabulary, a wide variety of heterogeneous contributions have applied the categories and tools developed by Illich to various fields of knowledge or have expanded and reformed his concepts to adapt them to the study of contemporary problems. According to the diagnosis of the convivialists, capitalism, especially in its current configuration of financial capitalism, destroys the greatest human asset, which is “the richness of its social relations.” Although the Convivialists themselves can be seen as a transnational social movement, convivialisme as a concept is used to articulate a diverse range of other social movements, including critical movements of economic growth and deacceleration, alongside ecological movements.
