Faced with Covid-19, we are interdependent: it is enough for a person not to respect the barrier gestures to contaminate those who apply them. Thus, if one would tend to think that the health crisis has brought out individualism and the fear of the other in some, the sociologist Séverine Durand notes the opposite phenomenon. Maintenance.
Doctor in environmental sociology and holder of a master’s degree in social psychology, Séverine Durand is a specialist in knowledge and experience in ordinary life situations. If she has been working since 2007 on the relationship to environmental changes, she follows with interest the societal impact of the health crisis on the French population. For her, the rapprochement between individuals undeniably goes beyond the development of a fear of the other.
Why doctor: Has confinement impacted our relationships with others?
Severine Durand: As a scientist, I find it difficult to answer when I don’t have precise data, but I can provide some answers based on the feedback from the first societal studies that we have. I am thinking in particular of the one that was carried out in the Covenant laboratoryto which I am attached, who questioned ‘life in confinement’.
With confinement, our relationships with others have taken other forms but have not necessarily withered away, on the contrary. Although one might think that it has induced a withdrawal into oneself, the study reveals that confinement has also led people to re-establish ties with their family, which they had been able to neglect a little in recent years. Some say that these relationships have been strengthened: this is particularly true in the family circle, but also with friends and neighbours.
A few days ago, on a personal basis, I had the opportunity to hear a group of about forty people talk about how everyone had experienced confinement and deconfinement. There were two parts: questions of fear and anguish emerged in one half, while those of solidarity and revisited links were present in the other. Thus, I noted that many people had developed links with their neighbors, which they did not necessarily do so far.
How is the development of these new links explained?
For relations with our loved ones, the time vector comes into play, but also anxiety: this is what stimulated the desire to call back the great aunt to whom we hardly spoke anymore, for example. Neighborhood relations can be explained more by the spatial immobility caused by confinement. Indeed, our modern Western societies are characterized by sociabilities that are built a lot on social affinities, which revolve around the sharing of common values and activities.
100 years ago, relationships were mostly defined by the spatial sphere: we had little mobility, most grew up and aged in the same village. With the constraint of immobility, we had to organize ourselves again based on what is located in spatial proximity: this encouraged solidarity.
For example, by proposing to his neighbour, whom we did not know but who we knew was alone and elderly, to do her shopping, we discussed with her. Concretely, confinement has pushed people to discover their neighbors more, to organize solidarity in restricted spaces. This shows that, in their practices, many French people have become a little closer to people with whom they did not necessarily have a link until now.
What happened to the French during the crisis?
The crisis has shown everyone’s capacity for resilience at all levels, with the incredible formation of solidarity networks, which did not exist before: it is the constraint that leads us to innovation. Thus, in a rather unexpected way, I find that the fact that the crisis has shown the value of solidarity networks goes in the thesis of a rapprochement between humans in general, against the idea of a fear of the other which would be growing.
Whether it is a platform to support the medical community or municipal centers for social action, calls for solidarity have been overwhelmed with proposals. This is a considerable indicator, which shows that, faced with the crisis, one of the main human driving forces has been the desire to help, to reach out to others. When you think about it, offering to go shopping for a fragile person means accepting to put yourself in a little more danger in the face of the virus for the other. For me, this is really an argument that shows that the crisis is rather a revealer of humanity.
Why do we tend to think that the situation has brought out the individualism of some?
This corresponds to what I had been able to observe in my investigations: when there is a climatic cataclysm somewhere, we see more of the ‘horror’ side in the media, as with the people who come to loot the houses. In reality, numerically, this is not what dominates. Often, when one particularly notices and relays facts, it is that they do not correspond to the norm.
For example, we will always tend to talk about those who do not respect the so-called ‘barrier gestures’ or people who have participated in the black market with masks: it is because this is not what is done the most . Negative emotions are always more intense than positive ones: this is why these elements have more place in the public space. However, they do not necessarily reflect a reality experienced by all people.
Despite everything, in the current context, can the other be considered a threat?
I think there may be a slightly more accusatory look from those who do not respect barrier gestures as we think they should be applied. In my opinion, we have really become aware of our interdependence and of the fact that the practices of some condition those of others. Indeed, if 10 people are very careful and 10 others do anything, in the end, everyone will get sick. In short, I don’t know if we can speak of an accentuation of the fear of the other, but perhaps of greater attention to the practices of others, because they concern us directly.
Nevertheless, this fear is human, it is part of us. From a philosophical point of view, Levinas was talking about the idea of radical vulnerability: as a human being, we feel vulnerable in our body in the face of everything that is external: nature and others. I hypothesize that there is a fairly direct link between ecological fear, which confronts us with our vulnerability vis-à-vis nature, and the rise of fear of the other. Thus, in the context of growing environmental uncertainties, Covid can further heighten concerns.
With deconfinement, why does solidarity take precedence over fear of the other?
I don’t have the impression that we turn into psychosis vis-à-vis the other because I have the feeling that that of the virus is starting to decrease sharply. It seems that we are in a form of relaxation in terms of health rhythm: since mid-March the situation was distressing, but, now, it is relaxing. Indeed, during confinement, the fear of the virus was much stronger, all our actions were directed to fight against its spread. There, we are aware that it will last, but the fear is gradually decreasing: we know that we will have to combine the resumption of a more habitual life and the presence of the virus.
At the same time, there is a rise in practical and financial concerns: we don’t know if we will go back to work, or be able to go on vacation… Perhaps the deconfinement actually confronts people more with uncertainties as to the consequences. economic and social. And, of course, we don’t like that: we prefer to be able to project ourselves. With these uncertainties hovering, the climate inevitably leads to anxiety, but I don’t know if it’s so much that of the other as that of the future of the world.
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