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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adam Badger
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly ruptured our global society. We have seen health care systems, governments and commerce buckle under the strain of disease, lockdowns and unrest, but the rupture has also created space for radical (and anarchist) politics of mutual aid, as societal organising principles, to move into a more prominent position (and offers potential for this shift to remain after the crisis has subsided). However, in the short time since mutual aid has been thrust into the limelight, we have seen a multiplicity and spectrum of geographies, applications and approaches. Indeed, we have also seen its appropriation by government(s) that takes advantage of mutual aid's rallying cry of ‘solidarity not charity’; absolving the state's responsibilities to sufficiently fund social welfare when good neighbours will do it for free. In this paper we map out how mutual aid has been enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic by charity, contributory and radical groups to address specific and novel forms of vulnerabilities, and the opportunities and challenges this offers for the future. In particular we highlight potential tensions between the enacting of mutual aid practices and the political activism (or not) of the mutual aid actors. Our contribution is to reconceptualise mutual aid to (i) show where the real ‘mutualism’ of mutual aid is, and (ii) create a better understanding of how mutual aid can be mobilised in future emergencies which will inevitably arise in the current climate emergency.
Author(s): Mould O, Cole J, Badger A, Brown P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Year: 2022
Volume: 47
Issue: 4
Pages: 866-879
Print publication date: 01/12/2022
Online publication date: 09/06/2022
Acceptance date: 25/05/2022
Date deposited: 23/10/2025
ISSN (print): 0020-2754
ISSN (electronic): 1475-5661
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12553
DOI: 10.1111/tran.12553
PubMed id: 35937505
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