Radical, militant, civic: Conceptualizing and practicing mutual aid in the COVID-19 pandemic

• In Event: 30603 - Global and Comparative Approaches to Activism

Abstract

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, groups of activists, neighbors, and volunteers came together to help their communities by organizing for mutual aid. Mutual aid is a form of grassroots activism that creates bonds of solidarity while helping people meet their basic needs (e.g. food, medicines). While mutual aid has long been a feature of social movements, prior to the pandemic the topic had been relatively underexplored in the literature. In contrast to recent work, which has so far primarily examined COVID-19 mutual aid in a single location, this paper considers how activists in different countries conceptualized and practiced mutual aid during the pandemic. I investigate the experiences of activists across the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States, three countries that saw the emergence of countless mutual aid projects. Relying on a systematic mapping of mutual aid groups and 63 in-depth interviews with activists, the paper suggests the emergence of three different models of mutual aid in these countries: “radical” in the US, “militant” in Italy, and “civic” in the UK. I argue that these models are influenced by different political trajectories, such as the anti-racist mobilizations in the US, the legacy of urban movements in Italy, and the importance of “neighborliness” in the UK. By comparing how mutual aid was conceptualized and practiced by American, Italian, and British activists during the pandemic, this paper departs from discussions of whether COVID-19 experiences lived up to abstract theorizations of mutual aid, to instead center activists’ meaning-making processes and critically assess the place of care-based solidarity within present (and future) social movements.

Author

• Elisabetta Ferrari, Aarhus University