1st Edition
Psychosocial Perspectives on Community Responses to Covid-19 Networks of Trust and Social Change
This highly topical edited book documents the community response to Covid-19 across national contexts, exploring the widespread development and mobilisation of community initiatives and groups. It provides rich analysis of case studies from the Global North and South, including South Africa, the USA, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Australia, the UK, Turkey, and Argentina.
The Covid-19 pandemic motivated a significant community response globally, with the widespread development and mobilisation of "bottom up" community initiatives and groups. These community responses were an essential yet often unseen and unrecognised means by which people survived the pandemic. This book asks questions such as how were community responses to Covid-19 shaped by national, cultural and political processes and phenomena; how did community responses to Covid-19 interact with public policies, on health, education, and social welfare; and what are the likely political implications of the community response to Covid-19? Discussing the provision of abortion care in Latin America, the support to marginalized communities in Kolkata, and the mobilisation of carnival "krewes" in New Orleans, to give a few examples, the text adopts and develops a novel socio-cultural psychological approach, weaving together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplinary fields.
The text highlights the importance of integrating multiple levels of analysis, including psychological, sociological, and political/ideological, to investigate how communities respond to crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they can plan for and manage future crises. This is essential reading for academics and students in psychology and the social sciences, as well as policy-makers, charities, and third-sector organisations.
1. Social distance and social connection: A psychosocial approach to the community responses to Covid-19
Luiz Gustavo Silva Souza & Emma O’Dwyer
Part 1. Psychosocial and psychological resources to the community response to Covid-19
2. The role of emotions in grassroots activism in Mexico City
Tommaso Gravante and Alice Poma
3. Resilience, organisation, engagement: Defying inequalities in carrying out community work in Rio de Janeiro's favelas during the Covid-19 pandemic
Luana Almeida de Carvalho Fernandes, Alfredo Assunção, and Pedro Paulo Gastalho de Bicalho
4. Volunteering motivation to combat Covid-19: Evidence from community responses in China
Susan Schwarz, Gary Schwarz, and Qing Miao
5. Grassroots movements and Covid-19 in Buenos Aires - Vital networking and social media in times of crisis
Victoria D’hers
6. Collective action, protest, and Covid-19 restrictions: Offline and online community participation in Italy and Australia
Carlo Pistoni, Maura Pozzi, Emma F. Thomas, and Craig McGarty
7. How can Covid mutual aid groups be sustained over time? The UK experience
John Drury, Maria Fernandes-Jesus, Guanlan Mao, Evangelos Ntontis, Rotem Perach, and Daniel Miranda
Part 2. Communities transforming social representations and public policies
8. Reimagining infrastructure of care in the pandemic time: Sketches from Kolkata
Raktim Ray, Amit Chatterjee, Koumi Dutta, and Dana Sousa-Limbu
9. Abortion care in times of crisis: An autonomous feminist model in Latin America and the Caribbean
Mariana Prandini Assis, Oriana López Uribe, Ruth Zurbriggen, and Verónica Vera
10. Clash of cultures: Bureaucracy meets localism, informality and trust in responding to the Covid-19 crisis in Cape Town
Manya van Ryneveld, Eleanor Whyle, and Leanne Brady
11. Psychological, social, and political implications of UK Covid-19 mutual aid groups
Emma O’Dwyer and Luiz Gustavo Silva Souza
12. Re-constructing the meaning of aid through the politicisation of communities in a welfare state: The psychological responses to the governmental aid plans against Covid-19 in Turkey
S. Bengisu Akkurt, Ahmet Çoymak, Yasin Koç
13. Covid-19, carnival, and community in New Orleans, 2020
Martha Radice
Biography
Emma O’Dwyer is a senior lecturer in political psychology at the University of Greenwich, London, UK. Her research interests include how people understand and orient towards issues like foreign policy and military intervention, and political participation, citizenship, and social change, examined frequently through the lens of social representations theory.
Luiz Gustavo Silva Souza is an associate professor in social psychology at Fluminense Federal University, Brazil. His research interests involve social representations, identities, and practices; ideology, active minorities, and mutual aid; the social-psychological understanding of health issues and contexts, action research, veganism, and human-animal relations.
