News
'Whether society lives or dies as a result of the coronavirus crisis depends on the widespread recognition that it is only by giving that we receive.'
Congratulations to Ian Hughes and Kieran Keohane on this timely article about Covid-19 and society!
This stimulating and thought-provoking article brings together René Girard's "scapegoating" and "gift exchange" of Marcel Mauss to view our present society. "COVID-19 is a crisis in the original medical sense of the word, for ‘crisis’ means a turning point in an illness: either things get worse and the patient dies - with society deteriorating further towards authoritarian neoliberalism - or they get better and the ‘patient’ lives by rallying around a renewed social solidarity."
Read the full article here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/gift-rebuilding-society-after-coronavirus/
Ian Hughes is the author of Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personality Disorders Are Destroying Democracy and contributing author to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the MaREI Centre at University College Cork in Ireland. Ian’s blog is disorderedworld and you can follow him on Twitter at @disorderedworld.
Kieran Keohane is Senior Lecturer in the Moral Foundations of Economy & Society research centre, University College Cork.