SOLIDARITY CIRCUITS: BUILDING COLLECTIVE RESPONSES AMID THE CRISIS

Abstract

The solidarity campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil highlighted fundamental issues for studies exploring the interface between solidarity and economics in the social sciences. The study aims to contribute to this theme by investigating the interpersonal relationships and economic practices that sustained the exchanges within associative-based solidarity campaigns during the pandemic. Grounded in ethnographic research on one of these campaigns, I argue that the relationships based on solidary economic practices established before the pandemic enabled emergent collective responses. These relationships and practices, which are (re)invented and (re)named, I have termed “solidarity circuits”, inspired by Viviana Zelizer’s concept in Economic Lives (2011). The dynamics of these circuits were related to crisis markers and strengthened by the previous existence of associations, highlighting the crucial role of intermediaries in articulating these medium-reach structures.

Keywords:
Pandemic; Economic circuits; Economic life; Associativism; Solidarity