Solidarity in the Time of COVID-19?

Abstract

This article critically examines how solidarity has been enacted in the first 2 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly, but not exclusively, from a United Kingdom perspective.1 Solidaristic strategies are framed in two ways: aspirations to overcome COVID-19 (utopian anthropocentric solidarity); and those that are illusory, incompatible, contradictory, and disrupting of solidaristic ideals (heterotopian solidarity). Solidarity can also be understood more widely from a biocentric perspective (solidarity with all life). In the context of COVID-19 a lack of biocentric solidarity points to a probable cause of the pandemic; where COVID-19, harmless in bats, jumped species as a consequence of closer contact with humans. Solidarity, therefore, is not only expressed in a fight against a viral enemy but is also a reminder of human activity that has upset balances within ecosystems.