Waseda University’s Global Asia Research Center presents a Special Seminar:

From Tools for Conviviality (1973) to the Second Convivialist Manifesto (2020)

Speaker: Marc Humbert (Emeritus Professor, the University of Rennes, France)

Date & Time: October 26 (Mon), 17:00 (Japan Time)/ 10:00 (France Time)

Registration deadline: October 22 (Thu)

Coordinators: Dr. Yoshihiro Nakano and Prof. Shukuko Koyama

Abstract

With this lecture I wish to give an account of the rationale and of the core content of the movement of ideas called “convivialism”. Its argument has been drawn upon the seminal work by Ivan Illich Tools for Conviviality (1973). The tentative elaboration of a coherent statement, to explore all the implications of this work, started after a conference that I organized in Tokyo (Nichi futsu kaikan) in July 2010, that stated the following challenge: How to make our way Towards a society of advanced conviviality.

First analyses lead to the publication of a Manifesto by 64 intellectuals, The Convivialist Manifesto: A Declaration of Interdependence (2013), with translation into several languages, including Japanese  共生主義宣言経済成長なき時代をどう生きるか(コモンズ, 2017). We went on working and we published The Second Convivialist Manifesto: Towards a Post-Neoliberal World in February 2020 (Paris, Actes Sud). It has been signed by three hundred famous intellectuals from thirty-three countries.

In a few words we may say that “Convivialism” is a broad-based humanist, civic, and political philosophy that spells out the normative principles that sustain the art of living together that our world missed. Over and against neoliberalism, productivism, and populism, it values relations of cooperation that allow human beings to compete with each other without hubris and violence, by taking care of one another and nature. It is based in a renewed anthropological approach inspired from Polanyi (The Great Transformation) and Mauss (The Gift).

The second Manifesto is already available in French, German, English and soon in Italian and Portuguese.

Civic Sociology published an English version of ¾ of the text in its June 2020 issue, available in line: https://civicsociology.scholasticahq.com/article/12721-the-second-convivialist-manifesto-towards-a-post-neoliberal-world

Marc Humbert, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, LIRIS, Rennes University, France, Vice-chairman, Association des convivialistes.

 

How to participate:

Please send your e-mail message to: globalasia.socioeco.transition[at]gmail.com

Alternatively register via Google form (use the QR code below): https://forms.gle/N3PvN2YEhiVhHkR67

Once registered, you will receive the online meeting URL (Zoom) by the day before.