Tools for degrowth? Ivan Illich's critique of technology revisited

It’s time to act! Understanding online resistance against tourism development projects

“…Productivity gains are mainly seen as increasing the wealth and well-being of a small elite, at the expense of a larger public that includes future generations. The portrayal of the elite as insane, greedy, and selfish decision-making minority for people outside their circle directly correlates to the reverse relationship of scale and democracy, as discussed by Cattaneo et al (2012) or Samerski (2018). The online petition serves as a vehicle for grassroots activists, be it locals, tourists or environmentally conscious global citizens, to participate in the discourse of alpine tourism development and reclaim their right to democratic participation.…”

“…This reinforcement of the commons (Euler, 2019;Schneider et al, 2010) is related to Ivan Illich's (1974) concept of conviviality. Conviviality reorients human interaction around the spirit of social relations (Latouche, 2009) by liberating it from the inverse relationship of scale and power (Cattaneo et al, 2012), manipulative technologies, and the powerful elite controlling complex systems (Samerski, 2018).…”

A meta-narrative analysis of smart tourism destinations: implications for tourism destination management

“…In fact, these definitional boundaries are neither precisely or explicitly discussed nor problematized, resulting in implicit though vague dichotomies, such as 'smart' vs 'not smart'. In fact, these semantic categories are strongly related to 'the traditional and neoclassical theories of growth and development' (Albino et al, 2015, p. 10;Samerski, 2018;Gretzel et al, 2020). Applying smart city principles to smart tourism destinations has, however, been criticized due to the risk of urban bias (Gretzel, 2018).…”

Assessing the Openness and Conviviality of Open Source Technology: The Case of the WikiHouse

“…Illich spoke of "tools for conviviality" that "foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user" [20] (p. 22). Although there is no fixed definition of "convivial tools", Illich [20] has formulated a set of criteria/conditions that qualify them: (i) convivial tools are easy to use or require learning by doing (i.e., no preparatory education or certification by specialists is demanded to use the tool); (ii) they are at the user's judgment regarding whether and when they are used; and (iii)s they are adapted to the user's preferences and not the other way around [20,26].…”