Tools for Conviviality

Tools for Conviviality was published in 1973, two years after Deschooling Society.
In this newer work, Illich generalizes the themes that he had
previously applied to the educational field: the institutionalization of
specialized knowledge, the dominant role of technocratic elites in industrial society, and the need to develop new instruments
for the reconquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen. He
wrote that "elite professional groups ... have come to exert a
'radical monopoly' on such basic human activities as health, agriculture, home-building,
and learning, leading to a 'war on subsistence' that robs peasant
societies of their vital skills and know-how. The result of much
economic development is very often not human flourishing but 'modernized
poverty', dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans
become worn-down mechanical parts."
Illich proposed that we should "invert the present deep structure of
tools" in order to "give people tools that guarantee their right to work
with independent efficiency."