Latency and crisis: mutual aid activism in the Covid-19 pandemic

Ferrari, E. (2022) Latency and crisis: mutual aid activism in the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative Sociology, 45(3), pp. 413-431. (doi: 10.1007/s11133-022-09513-7) (PMID:35966137) (PMCID:PMC9362100)

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.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ferrari, Dr Elisabetta
• Authors: Ferrari, E.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Qualitative Sociology
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0162-0436
• ISSN (Online): 1573-7837
• Published Online: 05 August 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Author
• First Published: First published in Qualitative Sociology 45(3): 413-431
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License