Latency and Crisis: Mutual Aid Activism in the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Qual Sociol
; 45(3): 413-431, 2022.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1982275
ABSTRACT
Activists have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by organizing for mutual aid creating collective action to meet people's material needs and build ties of solidarity. I examine the difficulties encountered by mutual aid activists during the pandemic through Alberto Melucci's notions of latency and collective identity. Through digital ethnographic observations of the Instagram accounts of mutual aid groups based in Philadelphia, USA, as well as interviews with the activists, I explore how mutual aid, conceptualized as latency work, was practiced by activists in the unprecedented conditions of the pandemic and how activists approached collective identity processes. I show that activists experienced a compression of latency and mobilization within the crisis context of the pandemic, which made it more difficult for them to pursue the construction of a collective identity. I also suggest that the effects of this compression were further exacerbated by the logic of immediacy that characterizes social network sites.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Language:
English
Journal:
Qual Sociol
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S11133-022-09513-7
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