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Social work and the search of a new commons
ОглавлениеThe adverse impact of COVID-19 on BAME and poorer communities is, obviously, not the product of some genetic, evolutionary or even moral differentiation, as pseudoscientific theories, once popular even within social work, have tried to present. It is important that the novelty and, therefore, unpredictability of the coronavirus does not lead to misinterpretations that either stretch the limits of logic or mystify scientific knowledge. As mentioned above, it is the limited access to universal health services, the impact of alienation, bad nutrition and lack of prevention that has led to an increase in mortality rates within BAME and poorer communities. All of the above factors had been exacerbated by an extended wave of austerity which undermined the universal and public character of health services in much of the world over the last 20 years. In short, health and social care services were unprepared to deal with a pandemic due to the lack of funding and protective equipment, and many of our communities were particularly vulnerable due to chronic health disparities and our societies have been put at risk due to the decision of many governments worldwide to prioritise “saving” the economy rather than acting to protect people. Such a catastrophic mix of events has been facilitated by a series of calculated political decisions; actions that lead to devastation were neither inevitable nor unavoidable.
What has been particularly interesting in the current discussion about the biopolitics of COVID-19 is the way contrasting interpretations about the limits of science have unfolded. On the one hand, many governments have made selective use of scientific research in order to justify some of the most irrational or even brutal choices with regards to the management of the virus. For example, in the UK the government has systematically used the catch-phrase “we are following the science” in order to deflect questioning on their passive and inactive approach that led to one of the highest mortality rates globally. Likewise, governments that used drastic approaches of social distancing (including lockdowns and curfews) have also referred to science in order to support their decisions. One may wonder, when was science right? When attempting to facilitate “herd immunity” through a passive approach or when advocating for drastic measures in order to contain the spread of the disease?
The answer to this question is crucial, as avoidance to deal with such contradictions could inevitably lead to mystification, metaphysical interpretation or even outright rejection of science. A closer examination of the diverse, contradictory and often complacent ways states have developed policies with regards to COVID-19 are in stark opposition to the unified and comprehensive work researchers have produced globally. The World Health Organization has confirmed that all governments had unrestricted access to the same comprehensive body of evidence about the unusually contagious and consequently deadly nature of the virus. How different states developed policies or which part of the evidence they tried to focus on was purely a political decision. However, COVID-19 has been unforgiving with political choices that manipulated science. Current assessments of political decisions suggest that countries that opted for a “herd immunity” approach (most notably the UK, US, Brazil and Sweden) suffered catastrophic consequences and interestingly also failed to “rescue the economy which was their declared objective”. At the time of writing this chapter, countries that managed to contain the pandemic through strict lockdown measures (for example New Zealand and Greece) managed to protect the population while retaining some economic activity. In this respect, COVID-19 seems to have offered us a prism through which we were able to view clearly the priorities, values and principles of our societies and states (John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre 2020)
As Richard Horton (cited in The Observer 2020), Editor of the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, recently said:
COVID-19 has held a mirror up to our society and forced us to look at who really is vulnerable, who really does make society work, who has to literally put their lives on the line while the rest of us are secluded in our houses. We’ve discovered something about ourselves that we may have been conveniently able to hide before but we can’t hide any more. And so the question is what do we do with that knowledge now?
Horton’s question about what is to be done is certainly not rhetorical. Despite the cynicism and complacency of many governments, COVID-19 also helped us shed light on important qualities and values long suppressed from mainstream political discourse, such as solidarity, collective action and socially meaningful (“essential”) work. For example, professions that the market economy had undervalued for too long such as nursing, social care, social work, food chain and factory work have now re-emerged as crucial and inspirational. The systematic undermining of those vocations and working-class jobs have come into question in recent months. The example of the weekly celebration and appreciation of health and social care workers that started in Spain and Italy and spread to the UK and other countries has been a powerful symbolic and collective action.
In a similar manner, people have sought creative ways to stay connected with each other and also extend solidarity with the most vulnerable members of our society. Social workers at a global level have been at the forefront of this search for a new commons: new and radically different ways of organising our public spaces, institutions and ultimately societies. It is not only practitioners who have continued practicing under extraordinary and dangerous conditions (often without the necessary personal protective equipment), but most importantly they have attempted to re-imagining the future of the social, in line with the collective and grassroots action emerging in different parts of the world. The current book presents extraordinary examples of how communities in countries such as Greece and Chile have used social media, arts and social movements in order to reclaim collective solidarity. The urgent need for reimagining different ways of organising our societies during and after the pandemic has been brilliantly captured by the Chilean social movements who have declared that “we won’t get back to normal because normality was the problem”.