Convivialities : an orientation

Conviviality has become one of the latest groovy things. Along with cosmopolitanism and a host of other terms, it is (almost) everywhere (see, Hinchliffe and Whatmore 2006, Karner and Parker 2011, Hollingworth and Mansaray 2012, Noble 2013, Blommaert 2014, Wise and Velayutham 2014, Harris 2014, Heil 2014, Wessendorf 2014, Neal et al. 2015, Padilla et al. 2015, Da Costa 2016, Valluvan 2016) so much so that some scholars now talk of the ‘convivial turn’ (Neal et al. 2013), the latest in a series of ‘turns’ over the last 2–3 decades. It has become a preoccupation with good reason. In this special issue of the journal, we focus on the critical but productive possibilities of this ‘turn’ as scholars from around the world grapple with the challenges of intercultural relations in an increasingly globalised world, and the consequences this has for local relations of living together. We do not intend to offer a literature review of this ‘turn’ here as others have covered that territory (see, Heil 2014, Nowicka and Vertovec 2014). In what follows, we wish to map some of the reasons for this ‘turn’, and its methodological and conceptual consequences