Abstract
Social Movements and Politics in a Global Pandemic (Bringel and Pleyers, 2021) offers an excellent example of what sociology or, in general, the social sciences can offer: narratives, meanings, evidence, and experiences to face crises as deep as the one that people all over the world are currently going through with the COVID-19 pandemic. With 46 authors from 27 countries from the five continents, this book is an exercise in collective, global, public, and critical sociology that help us to understand the diversity and, at the same time, the community of problems that we face as humanity.
Today, when the sociological imagination is more necessary and urgent than ever, the book edited by Breno Bringel and Geoffrey Pleyers helps us to better understand the troubled times we are living as individuals and societies.
The book provides tools to interpret what is happening in the present, to detect trends, and to develop projections for the future. At the same time, it offers a model of what sociology and the social sciences can contribute in these confusing times.
The diversity of authors and perspectives converge on common concerns: what is the magnitude of the crisis we are experiencing? How can we improve our epistemic tools so that the way out of this crossroads will be in an emancipatory direction? And finally, how can the experiences of resistance offered by social movements can provide this exit strategy?
‘It is easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of capitalism’. With this sentence, Frederic Jameson portrayed our times with terrible clarity, characterized by the circumstantial realization of the Thatcherian prediction that ‘[t]here is no alternative’ to the current order. We have lived through a desert era of imagination for other forms of social organization. But, since the pandemic began, we have experienced a reality that was only recently unimaginable: most of the world’s population was confined to their homes last year and with world trade temporarily suspended by an unprecedented health crisis.
What is striking is, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2020: 20–21) has stated, that ‘with this pandemic the conservative idea that there is no alternative to the way of life imposed by the hypercapitalism in which we live is also crumbling’. Experiencing phenomena that seemed unlikely has contributed to the denaturalization of certain beliefs, which, until recently, were seen as unmutable. Karina Batthyány remarks that the pandemic is making visible issues that have been hidden in the hegemonic debates, such as the centrality of care. The present world situation is also reinforcing that some epistemic keys are invaluable to understand and overcome the current moment: feminism, the intersectionality of inequalities, the logic of reciprocity, and the interdependence between human and non-human living beings.
We are facing a scenario that, in practice, dramatically forces us to think about other alternative situations to deal with a world full of uncertainty. In this sense, social movements reemerge as sources of experiences, interpretations of the world, and social transformations. The pandemic, as Paulo Henrique Martins affirms, has shown that the market is not the answer to all social problems as the neoliberal creed declaimed; it has also shown that the minimal state of neoliberalism increases threats and risks to our survival, as Domingues argues. We need to limit the commercial logic and claim a new notion of the Welfare State, as Jean de Munck points out. At the same time, the failure of the market and the State gives relevance to the power of society to respond to this moment, through solidarity and community ties. These conclusions are not new to critical social sciences such as sociology, but today they seem more transparent for the global public debate.
In this way, the authors agree on the critical nature of the pandemic. The pandemic is a crisis that amplifies the preexisting ones. In ‘this apocalyptic phase of capital’, as described by Segato, and using the words of Hanafi in his chapter, ‘what we are witnessing is a moment of truth regarding the crisis of late modernity and its capitalist system on a broad [scale]’. Therefore, for Arturo Escobar, The crisis calls on us to consider that what is at stake is a new historical project of society, as well as a different model of life, which allows us to relearn to co-exist with human beings and with all living beings in a mutually enriching way.
We need to rethink our relationship with the environment for a matter of survival because, as Ilán Bizberg points out, our destruction of nature is putting humanity at risk.
At the same time, we need to refound the relationship between human beings. The virus has also acted as a revealer and amplifier of inequalities between and within countries. We are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat. The Coronavirus has been most devastating among the most neglected, discriminated, and exploited populations: women; inhabitants of shantytowns, slums, and favelas; immigrants; and racial minorities (Afro-American and Latino in the United States, for example). The accumulation and interaction of these inequalities have confirmed the importance of intersectional and more comprehensive approaches to address the pandemic, highlighting the role of the social sciences in this context.
Also, we have seen a widening of the gap between central and peripheral countries: first, in the production of population data and statistics, as shown by Stefania Milan & Emiliano Treré; second, in the ability to protect against the pandemic; and finally, in the international division of labor, particularly in the production and access to protective supplies and vaccines. This should encourage the recovery and reformulation of perspectives such as Dependency Theory.
The pandemic also emerges in a context of global political crisis, characterized by the weakening of democracy and the emergence of authoritarian regimes that, in their conservative crusade against what they named as globalism and gender ideology, have also questioned the basic principles of the science and the notion of truth with ‘fake news’. However, politics, if understood as the collective organization to face common challenges, basically aims to increase the chances of survival of human beings in a chaotic or hostile environment. The experiences of resistance shown in the book could be an invaluable source for the redefinition of politics and, therefore, of the re-politicization of social life and vital issues such as climate change.
Notwithstanding, as the book warns us, this denialist and conservative wave could strengthen at this juncture, disputing the narrative of the crisis and pushing us further toward the precipice, through xenophobia, authoritarianism, racism, and the predatory logics of nature. In fact, leaders such as Trump and Bolsonaro have weakened the global response to the virus. Also, some authoritarian states have managed to confront the pandemic with relative success, which will have an effect on the new global geopolitics described by Bringel, despite the fact that censorship and the invisibility of problems are generating new crises as shown by Joy Y. Zhang in the Chinese case.
The Coronavirus is a battlefield (Pleyers, 2020) in which conservative, authoritarian, and neoliberal projects could win, warn Pleyers, Houtari, and Teivainen. Disaster capitalism may be the prevailing option, despite the risk involved.
As Katia Araujo warns, in a context where ‘[t]he boundaries between what can be considered undue control and the demands of control for the common good or the survival of the collective become indiscernible’. As explained by Montserrat Sagot, the novelty of these situations during the pandemic is that the fear of death or disease makes many people accept these extreme conditions of biocontrol without protest. Critical thinking and also social movements are fundamental to problematize these limits, denounce arbitrariness, and defend freedoms. Such as is shown by the Labour Activism in Indonesia, the mobilizations in Filipinas, Black Lives Matter in the United States, the favelados’ organizations in Rio de Janeiro, the solidarity’s organization in India, the Mutual Aid Groups in the United Kingdom, the Lebanese Uprising, the Medical Workers’ Strike in Hong Kong, the Maghreb revolts, and the French Strike Movement.
All these experiences are relevant because, as Segato stated, More than a fantasy of the future, we must pay attention to what is in fact there, the proposals and practices that emerge, what people are concretely doing and inventing. What is happening here and now around us and among us?
But, responses in the present have consequences for the future as well. For Donatella della Porta, constructing alternative public spheres, social movement organizations help us to imagine future scenarios, to create and recreate ties, and to produce resilience by responding to the need for solidarity. That is why the ability of social movements to reinvent and reconfigure themselves during the pandemic is important, as described by Sabrina Zajak. Because, as Lesley Woo stresses, ‘[i]n an unjust pandemic world, social movements are essential services [because they] save lives, now and in the future’.
Social movements, as Gravante and Poma say, ‘feed a counter-hegemonic emotional culture, which will be needed not only to overcome this pandemic but also the other crises that we will have to face, such as the climate emergency’.
The solidarity responses of social movements could be synthesized in the isiZulu term Asivikelane, meaning ‘I protect you, you protect me’, quoted by Kate Alexander. In this sense, they share the warning made by the Argentine poet Armando Tejada Gomez: Two ways of conceiving the world matter, One, save yourself, blindly throwing the rest off the raft, and the other, a destiny to be saved with everyone, compromising life until the last castaway. Importan dos maneras de concebir el mundo,
Una, salvarse solo, arrojar ciegamente los demás de la balsa
y la otra, un destino de salvarse con todos, comprometer la vida hasta el último náufrago.