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(In)Security, Care, and Solidarity in Times of a Pandemic

Civil Society
Gender
Governance
Policy Analysis
Security
Power
Solidarity
Political Cultures
S01
Ayşe Dursun
University of Vienna
Verena Kettner
University of Vienna


Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries around the globe to introduce dramatic measures such as social distancing and isolation, closure of schools and kindergartens, and travel restrictions to curb the rising infection rates. These short-term, immediate measures raised serious questions pertaining to social risks and insecurities, care, and solidarity. Reports have shown that anti-pandemic policies have often aggravated social inequality for precarious groups at the intersection of asymmetrical gender, race, and class relations.1 The proposed section takes these initial observations as a starting point and examines the implications of the anti-pandemic measures for women and other marginalized groups from a feminist-materialist and intersectional perspective. A special focus lies on how anti-pandemic measures (re-)organized reproductive labour, on whose shoulders the unpaid and precarious care work has fallen, and which role this has played in shaping existing and new forms of gendered, classed, and racialized inequality and insecurities. Another focus lies on affects and emotions that have played a crucial role in mobilizing public and private strategies to cope with the pandemic. Very often, feelings of insecurity and solidarity have existed next to each other and influenced the way how care is organized and practiced during the pandemic. The proposed section invites panels that tackle these and other issues at the crossroads between care, solidarity, and affective security policies in times of the ongoing pandemic. The section shall host four panels that develop theoretical and methodological approaches and frameworks to study intersectional inequality, care, solidarities, and affects in the context of the pandemic and provide empirical evidence through single-country or comparative analyses. The first panel shall have a policy focus and elaborate on immediate government response to the pandemic in different national contexts while considering the legal and institutional environment in which these policies have been developed and implemented, and assess their impact on women and other marginalized groups especially with regard to new care arrangements (e.g., due to the closure of schools and kindergartens) and institutional mechanisms of social solidarity (e.g., the efficacy of and access to national health and social security systems). The second panel shall have a broader focus and examine how competing public discourses construct concepts such as ‘risk group’, ‘security’, ‘crisis’ and others that have been key to the affective construction and management of the pandemic. A social phenomenon is considered a ‘security risk’ or a ‘crisis’ if it threatens hegemonic groups while long-term poverty, unemployment, and diseases faced by marginalized groups (e.g., people of colour, the homeless, refugees) are not considered as such.2 The papers shall consider the discursive construction of the ‘pandemic’ in this light. The third panel focuses on the changing experiences and conceptualizations of what “home” was and has become since the beginning of the pandemic with global call to #stayhome. This panel focuses on the changing organization of forms of production and reproduction at home, i.e. housework, remote work, and home schooling as well as the physical and affective effects of staying home such as the rise of domestic violence (insecurity), the prioritization of family against different forms of kinship (security). The fourth and final panel shall compromise papers that envision political alternatives to the model of the ‘self-responsible’ and ‘self-caring’ neoliberal subject and existing modes and models of social reproduction. This panel addresses the responses to the pandemic from ‘below’, i.e. from the perspective of the commons and solidarity economies. The spread of local shops and cooperatives, solidarity kitchens, local food production and distribution, mask-sewing workshops are all examples of the ‘private care initiatives’ already characterized the pandemic era from below. We would like to question the potential and limits of such (not so) new forms of togetherness, care, and processes of subjectification. 1The Sociological Review has set up an online blog on Solidarity and Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic “that documents and reports on the lived experiences, caring strategies and solidarity initiatives od diverse people and groups across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic”. For stories visit: https://www.solidarityandcare.org/stories 2 Strolovitch, Dara Z. 2013. Of Mancessions and Hecoveries: Race, Gender, and the Political Construction of Economic Crises and Recoveries. Perspectives on Politics 11(1): 167-76. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: We would love to propose Dr. Begüm Özden Fırat, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, as a third Co-Chair. (Contact: begum.ozden.firat@msgsu.edu.tr)
Code Title Details
P003 Alternative political practices and theoretical approaches to social inequality in the context of the COVID-19 crisis: feminist interventions View Panel Details
P019 COVID-19 and care: state responses and the impact of policy View Panel Details
P045 Gendered and racialized politics and discourses of the COVID-19 crisis View Panel Details
P055 Government responses to the COVID-19 crisis: Considering care and gender equality View Panel Details