Abstract
This article critically examines how solidarity has been enacted in the first 2months of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly, but not exclusively, from a United Kingdom perspective.1 Solidaristic strategies are framed in two ways: aspirations to overcome COVID-19 (utopian anthropocentric solidarity); and those that are illusory, incompatible, contradictory, and disrupting of solidaristic ideals (heterotopian solidarity). Solidarity can also be understood more widely from a biocentric perspective (solidarity with all life). In the context of COVID-19 a lack of biocentric solidarity points to a probable cause of the pandemic; where COVID-19, harmless in bats, jumped species as a consequence of closer contact with humans. Solidarity, therefore, is not only expressed in a fight against a viral "enemy" but is also a reminder of human activity that has upset balances within ecosystems.
Highlights
COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, a city in China’s Hubei province with a population of 11 million people
One striking feature of this pandemic is how it bound people together to stand in solidarity against COVID-19, with the common purpose of slowing infectivity, morbidity, fatality from the disease, as well as to ameliorate indirect harms of coronavirus to our taken for granted way of life
“sharing similar objectives or circumstances; mutual assistance and help, in situations of hardships; symmetric relationships between those engaged in solidarity”; and “a link to individual and collective well-being.”[5]. They elaborate on the idea of solidarity as “enacted commitments to accept costs to assist others with whom a person or persons recognise similarity in a relevant respect.”[6]. Interestingly “persons who recognise similarity in a relevant respect,” in Prainsack and Buyx terms, are “bound together in solidarity as opposed to charity.”
Summary
COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, a city in China’s Hubei province with a population of 11 million people. People from different countries have adopted all kinds of solidaristic strategies in response to the pandemic at various levels of social order. It is beyond the scope of this paper to make any grand claims for this work – either as a robust national or international comparative study. It is possible, to critically explore the early stages of the pandemic through the lens of solidarity in the United Kingdom and beyond
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