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'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.'
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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.