Introduction

Some scholars and activists have called for conviviality as a revolutionary normativity to fight inequality, injustice, and oppression. Others, like Ohta, find in conviviality an “earnest match” that is a virtue, an alternative, and a non-Western way of resolving conflict. Conviviality is not a rigid concept. It is an analytical tool that looks at interactions in the course of the everyday. If incompleteness is the normal order of things, natural or otherwise, conviviality invites us to celebrate and preserve incompleteness and mitigate the delusions of grandeur that come with ambitions and claims of completeness. The success of a concept usually depends on its operationalization, although this makes some scholars cringe. A comparison between conviviality and sociability reveals their similarities and differences while shedding light on the advantages of using conviviality in place of sociability. When violence is unacceptable according to coeval parameters, and there is no room for negotiation, there is no conviviality.