Vernacular Values
In a 1980 essay, Ivan Illich introduced the concept of vernacular values to describe "unpaid activities essential for providing a livelihood, but which are entirely resistant to analysis using concepts developed in formal economics." The term "vernacular" refers to what is homegrown, homemade, or self-produced, as opposed to what is commercially exchanged. The vernacular domain, therefore, encompasses autonomous, non-market actions through which people meet their everyday needs—actions that, by their very nature, escape bureaucratic control. These are activities undertaken for their own sake, not subordinated to the economic system through what Illich calls "shadow work." In this sense, vernacular practices offer a way to resist commodification and economic dependency.
Illich observes a clear pattern: as the economy expands, so does shadow work—a process that ensnares individuals within the modern system of needs, condemning them to a form of "modernized poverty." This process, he argues, wages a "war on subsistence" by eroding the vernacular domain, forcing people into structures of dependency that strip them of the ability to meet their own needs autonomously. Illich’s work was groundbreaking in illustrating how the economic mentality of scarcity has proliferated, shaping modern individuals into what he termed "homo economicus." The rapid industrialization that transcended both capitalist and socialist paradigms created an inescapable structure of dependency. While similar to Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation—where violent dispossession of the means of production makes people reliant on wage labor—Illich’s analysis diverges. Marxist thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg argued that primitive accumulation was an ongoing process rather than a historical singularity. Illich, however, contends that technological expansion and increasing reliance on experts to fulfill basic needs have resulted in a level of alienation beyond mere dispossession. Not only are people excluded from production, but they are also stripped of any autonomous form of thought, action, and subsistence.
This alienation results in what Illich calls "radical monopolies," where people can no longer meet their needs independently: they must learn through institutionalized schooling, heal through clinics and hospitals, move through motorized transportation, and inhabit spaces only through government-provided housing and services. This monopolization of essential human activities consolidates dependence on economic and state structures, further eroding the vernacular domain. Illich’s analysis also sheds light on how economic mentality has been instrumental in reformulating the colonial enterprise. Modernity has restructured notions of need, development, and otherness in a way that perpetuates colonial domination. He highlights the West’s universalizing mission, arguing that "without the universal mission to the world outside, what we call the West would not have come to be." This civilizing mission, particularly prominent in the development era, operates by imposing a framework of scarcity upon non-Western societies. People must be "improved"—made ‘developed’, ‘civilized’, ‘articulate’—through integration into the economic logic of modernity.
The universalizing principles of coloniality are deeply embedded in Illich’s conception of scarcity and its war against subsistence and the vernacular domain, particularly in relation to language. He traces modern colonial thought to the imposition of universal languages –through the obscure character or Elio Antonio de Nebrija, the first proponent of a universalized language which entails a simultaneous repression of vernacular expressions while creating a need for knowledge to be taught and not learned. The drive to eliminate "waste"—whether wasted time, inefficiency, or diversity—underpins the capitalist political economy and serves as a mechanism of colonial control. Illich’s articulation of the "war against subsistence" is tied to capitalism’s construction of scarcity, which assigns value to commodities while simultaneously eroding alternative ways of knowing, doing, and being. His argument, now more widely acknowledged within heterodox Marxism, suggests that capitalism not only creates unrecognized forms of labor (shadow work, such as unpaid domestic labor) but also disvalues or actively destroys other forms of valuations. The processes of emancipation and recognition into the capitalist system paradoxically increase efficiency-driven exploitation while severing the connections between unpaid labor and subsistence. Said simply, people are forced into a condition of modernized poverty, where they are left with no access to the means of subsistence (or marginally) and instead rely on any dependent forms of assistance to subsist. In seeking equality within this system, people become further entrenched in economic dependence, requiring assistance, development, and progress—even when these do not benefit them directly.
Following Karl Polanyi’s analysis in The Great Transformation (1944), Illich extends the argument that markets have not only become disembedded from nature and social relations but have also universalized the laws of scarcity. This process has eroded vernacular values in favor of market society, further entrenching dependency on economic structures. Thus, vernacular values represent a counterforce to the expansion of economic rationality and its accompanying shadow work. Illich suggests that the goal should not be to demand more rights, seek inclusion within the economic system, or gain recognition from the state. Instead, the challenge is to reject a system that defines subjectivity solely through participation in its structures. Rather than striving for wage labor, class inclusion, or state recognition, the vernacular domain offers a radical alternative by fostering autonomy and self-sufficiency beyond market dependencies.
Defending, reclaiming or reweaving vernacular values
As the formal economy expands, it simultaneously increases the burden of shadow work, fostering dependency while eroding the vernacular domain. A radical rejection of the imposed logic of scarcity would enable the rediscovery of vernacular values in spaces where they have been subsumed by economic and bureaucratic structures. This shift would not simply mean resisting commodification but actively reconstructing complementary relationships between convivial, autonomous practices and necessary economic exchanges. Reclaiming these proportions requires the intentional creation of spaces where self-sufficiency and collective autonomy take precedence over imposed market dependencies, allowing communities to define their own means of subsistence beyond the dictates of economic rationality.
This transformation necessitates a redefinition of the relationship between people and tools, centering on homo habilis rather than homo industrialis. The assumption that certain economic structures are natural or inevitable must be rejected, as only machines can communicate without vernacular roots. Vernacular values hold the potential to disrupt radical monopolies. They encourage the creation of autonomous praxis and a subversive rejection of dominant ways of seeing the world. The vernacular domain is inherently pluralistic, resisting the reduction of life to professionalized, commodified services. In this realm, tools function as extensions of the body, enabling rather than constraining agency. More importantly, vernacular values emphasize mutual reciprocity, complementary and sufficiency over clientelism, fostering relationships based on shared responsibility rather than dependency on service-providing professionals. Ultimately, Illich’s vision of the vernacular domain calls for a reimagining of subsistence beyond economic logic—a return to autonomous, communal forms of living that resist the totalizing grip of capitalism, the state, and technocratic monopolies.
The Community of Acapatzingo in Mexico City, part of the Francisco Villa Popular Organisation of the Independent Left (OPFVII) is an example of the reformulation of vernacular values. An organization that emerged from the urban periphery, the story of Los Panchos underscores the importance of struggle in the face of imposed precarity as a way to recover and reclaim dignity from the urban margins. The 596 families in the eight hectares that make up the Acapatzingo housing community have developed a form of self-management based on voluntary community work. This process involves an organization in brigades by zones of the community and working in commissions that cover almost all areas of daily life – from health, education, vigilance, food, communication and sports, among others. The conformation of these commissions operates through general councils of representatives, which all members agree to participate in by subscribing to a series of organizational principles such as a) the centrality of democracy: a process that reproduces the Zapatista model of commanding by obeying (mandar obedeciendo); b) the practice of criticism and self-criticism —to promote equality and the constant improvement of the collective process — and; c) collective leadership and the division of community work as a key point for self-management and the maintenance of autonomy.
This organizational process has resulted in the construction of collective spaces for children, senior citizens and youth, water collection, filtration and purification systems, collective management of electricity as well as the development of three greenhouses, composting systems and fruit trees that produce food, a community radio station, spaces for procuring collective health and care, as well as a system of education up to secondary school. The process of autonomy has then taken shape as the recovery of space and transforming it into a place through the struggle for dignity and a redefinition of a good life. For thinkers such as Illich, Jean Robert or Heni Lefebvre, this process is understood as a way of recovering the right to inhabit: the possibility of self-managing a place, through a struggle in resistance to the state, progressively eliminating its ‘necessity’ while producing a radically democratic form of community management, reaffirming human dignity and reformulating its relationship with the environment.
As Illich argues, every attempt to replace vernacular values with standardized commodities has not led to greater equity but has instead deepened a hierarchical modernization of poverty. In this framework, poverty is no longer defined by lack of market access but by the loss of autonomy—the most marginalized are not simply those excluded from economic participation but those whose vernacular domain has been most restricted, leaving them unable to find fulfillment even in the few non-market activities that remain. The Acapatzingo experience is thus a project that arises from the possibility of recovering vernacular values against the radical monopoly of institutions. The possibility of learning, healing, eating and dwelling implies a refusal of education, health, food or housing. As the community’s motto states: housing projects not only imply the possibility of self-managing the construction process, but also implies a life project in itself. The process involves breaking with the radical monopoly of institutions to rebuild community networks that give people back their capacity to trust in internal, local processes and to dare to imagine and inhabit other possible worlds beyond the state and the market. The possibility of conviviality implies a possibility of regaining control of tools, freeing oneself from the radical dependence that defines homo economicus or the needy man and, in turn, recognizing the definition of a common roof by establishing socially imposed limits.
References:
Illich, I. (1980). Vernacular Values. Philosophica 26. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82612 Ferraris, D. Linslata, L., Marcos, S., Alvanado, P. (2024). Pensar con los pies. Diálogos con Jean Robert. México: Bajo Tierra Ediciones. Esteva, G. (2024). La fuerza social de la esperanza. México: Clacso. Tornel, C. (2024). The experience of Los Panchos and the autonomous community of Acapatzingo in Mexico City. Radical Ecological Democracy: https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/the-experience-of-los-panchos-and-the-autonomous-community-of-acapatzingo-in-mexico-city/
Further exploration:
The Energy of the People’s (Documentary). La Sandía Digital (2020). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXlA-2S_uAs El Género Vernaculo, una categoría heurística (Conference). El Colegio de Tlaxcala (2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_GT_J6Ce3w&t=1918s Discussion forum on Illich and the Vernacular Domain. (Forum). David Bollier: https://www.bollier.org/ivan-illich-and-enclosure-vernacular-domains Intervention: Intervention – "Vernacular Values: Remembering Ivan Illich" by Andy Merrifield: https://antipodeonline.org/2015/06/26/vernacular-values/ Koyaanisqatsi - Life out of Balance. (1983). (Film) Godfrey Reggio (Dir.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4MXPIpj5sA
Contributor: Carlos Tornel (Global Tapestry of Alternatives, Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South)