Polycrisis, Solidarity, and Political Action

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

Disasters are often accompanied by a sense of political optimism. As rupturing events, crises are seen as opportunities to catalyze transformative social and political change. In a time increasingly defined by “polycrisis”—the combination of climate chaos, global pandemics, economic insecurity, and warfare—it is crucial to examine whether and how such transformative change might be achieved. Evidence shows that disasters produce an immediate surge in solidaristic sentiment and action. However, mutual aid efforts, political organizing, and government investments in social welfare too often fade after the acute period of crisis. Under what conditions can publics, organizations, activists, and governments leverage post-disaster solidarity into political struggle that transforms policy and builds durable, more liberatory social structures? This session combines insights on solidarity and political action across a range of disasters and sociological subfields. Topics include: (1) how the insurance industry is shaping the kinds of solidarities that arise in the wake of climate disaster; (2) what the global memorialization of COVID deaths tells us about how societies grapple with mass mortality; (3) reflections on the mutual aid networks that arose in New York City during the pandemic; and (4) the relationship between mutual aid and political activism in populations targeted with state violence.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Kirstin Krusell, University of California-Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• How the Insurance Crisis is Mediating the Kinds of Solidarities that Arise in the Wake of Disaster - Rebecca Elliott, London School of Economics and Political Science

• When Millions of Bells Toll: Remembering and Forgetting COVID-19 Deaths - Bin Xu, Emory University

• Free Us All: Building Solidarity Amidst Migrant Raids and Genocide - Fareen Parvez, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Reflections on Mutual Aid and Solidarity during COVID, Drawing on Research from 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed - Eric Klinenberg, New York University

• Two Disaster Case Studies from Forthcoming Book on Climate Politics - Daniel Aldana Cohen, University of California-Berkeley

Session Organizer

• Kirstin Krusell, University of California-Berkeley