Ivan Illich

A plea for research on lay literacy

This paper distinguishes scribal literacy, the ability to read and write, from lay literacy, the pervasive set of assumptions taken for granted by readers and non-readers who participate in a literate society. The task for the study of literacy is to uncover and examine these assumptions. The route to the discovery of these literate assumptions is through a consideration of the relations between the vernacular and the literate forms of language.

Vernacular Values and Education

This chapter was originally prepared for a lecture in New York at Teachers College, Columbia University, in the spring of 1979. It is a fragment from a larger study on which I am working. There, I distinguish between two domains of social activity that tend to be confused in current economics under the heading of “informal sector.” Within this informal sector I discriminate between the area of shadow economics and the vernacular domain. I analyze the narrow and different constraints within which the concepts derived from formal economics can be applied to the one and then to the other of these areas. This distinction of two opposite domains within the informal sector is applicable to disciplines other than economics.

The Wisdom of Leopold Kohr.

on modesty, not on plenty. A native of the village of Oberndorf near Salzburg, he began with the propensity of Salzburg folk to trust and enjoy the local ways distinctive of each valley. He saw the truth in their suspicion of universal values. He perceived how a good life could be corrupted. Kohr remains a prophet today because even those social theorists for whom small is beautiful have not yet discovered that the truth of beauty and goodness is not a matter of size, nor even of

A Plea for Body History (Twelve Years After Medical Nemesis)

As a public cause, the pursuit first appears with the emergence of the nation state. Here, people came to constitute a resource, a &dquo;population.&dquo; Health became a qualitative norm for armies and then, during the nineteenth century, for workers; later, for mothers. In Prussia as in France the medical police were charged with its enforcement. But the pursuit of health was also understood as a personal right, as the physical realization of the Jeffersonian right to the pursuit of happiness. The valetudinarian’s dream of a ripe old age on the job, together with the economy’s demand for productive workers and fertile reproducers fused in the idea of health. But, what began as a duty and entitlement has been transmogrified into a pressing need. In 1986, I would place the historical phenomenology of this novel need into the center of research. For many of our contemporaries, the pursuit of health has become consubstantial with the experience of their bodies.

Philosophische Ursprünge der grenzenlosen Zivilisation

Vielen Dank fur diese liebenswurdige Einfuhrung. Herr von Weizsacker, Ernst Ulrich, du bist nicht der erste, der sich diesen Paradiesvogel eingeladen hat, obwohl du ein Ornithologe bist und weist, das diese Art Prachtvieh weder mitsingt, noch zwitschert, sondern krachzt. So lande ich in diesem Kongres uber die Grenze, die Entgrenzung und die Planung der Grenzen: in einem Expertengesprach uber die Grenze „in ihrem ganzen Umfang“, wie man das im 18. Jahrhundert von Weib und Politik gesagt hatte. Seit unserem Gesprach im Fruhsommer bereite ich mich darauf vor, hier uber die absolute Neuartigkeit der heute dominanten Verwendung des Wortes und des Begriffes von „Grenze“ zu sprechen.

Development: Its Three Dimensions

During the 1960s, &dquo;development&dquo; acquired a status that ranked with &dquo;freedom&dquo; and &dquo;equality.&dquo; Other peoples’ development became the rich man’s duty and burden. Development was described as a building program-people of all colors spoke of &dquo;nation-building&dquo; and did so without blushing. The immediate goal of this social engineering was the installation of a balanced set of equipment in a society not yet so instrumented: the building of more schools, more modern hospitals, more extensive highways,

An Address to "Master Jacques"

To prepare my presentation for this meeting, I wanted to read about twenty of Ellul’s books, those which had heretofore escaped me. My student and friend Jose Maria Sbert made his library available to me, and there I discovered at least half of them; further, he had copiously annotated some volumes, even to the point of underlining whole paragraphs. After spending a few evenings immersed in this treasure, I was astounded by the freshness and vivacity with which, over the years, Ellul continually recaptures the fundamental intuitions of his earliest work, always clarifying them more. His tenacity, humility, and magnanimity in the face of criticism make him an example one must bow to.

Computer Literacy and the Cybernetic Dream

Technological Literacy has been placed on the agenda for a second year at this meeting of educators, engineers and scientists. This year, the theme is technology and the imagination. Imagination works day and night. I want to speak about the imagination in daytime when people are immersed in neon light. Only indirectly I will refer to that mini-competence on keyboards at switches and in face of graphs which makes everyone feel a little bit of a hacker. As useful as it might be, I look at this kind of pseudo-literacy mainly as a condition to keep your sense of humor in a world that has been programmed. I will deal with the machine and its cybernetic logic only insofar as these induce a vaguely dream-like mental state. I am concerned about how to keep awake in the computer age.

Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

Ivan Illich, Pantheon Books, A Division of Random House, New York. First American Edition. Copyright 1976 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Calder & Boyars, Ltd., London. Copyright

Die Substantivierung des Lebens im 19. und 20 Jahrhundert — eine Herausforderung für das 21 Jahrhundert

Sie haben mich hierher eingeladen, obwohl sie sehr wohl wusten, das ich Ihrem Vorhaben widersprechen werde. Ich bin davon uberzeugt, das Gesundheit und Verantwortung einer verlorenen Vergangenheit angehoren, und das ich — da ich weder Romantiker, Phantast noch Aussteiger bin — auf beides verzichten mus. Nur wenn es mir gelingt, diesen Verzicht auf Gesundheit und auf Verantwortung eindeutig zu artikulieren, kann ich dem Vorwurf entgehen, hier als ihr Alibikritiker aufzutreten.