Social Distance and Social Connection: A Psychosocial Approach to the Community Responses to Covid-19

Abstract

This chapter outlines a psychosocial approach to the Covid-19 pandemic and the community responses to the crisis. Socio-cultural phenomena shape the daily experiences of individuals and groups. However, the actions of individuals or active minorities also transform groups, institutions, communities, and societies. We propose a psychosocial approach based on the theory of social representations in articulation with the concepts of social identity, social practices, and active minorities. Worldwide, social representations and social identities related to the Covid-19 crisis have contributed to strengthening ideology (pro-dominance symbolic forms), political polarisation, and intergroup conflict. Dominant groups have oppressed a large majority of the world population, imposing poverty, violence, hunger, sexual exploitation, environmental devastation, exploitative work conditions, state brutality, and war. Covid-19 has been an additional crisis in a worldwide reality characterised by ongoing human and environmental catastrophes. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals, collectives, social movements, and organisations have also constructed social practices, social representations, and social identities with counter-ideological effects. These actors have effectively built communities mobilising large sectors of society to resist physical and symbolic annihilation. They have protected and empowered marginalised groups and influenced the formulation and application of public policies.