COVID, KINSHIP & A MORAL ECONOMY

How are kinship and caring related to world economic systems, and might these concepts be central to a post-pandemic vision of flourishing for people and the planet? Kenan Senior Fellows Michaeline Crichlow and Dirk Philipsen teamed up with academics from several schools and disciplines to explore this and other questions in a special issue of Cultural Dynamics on “Markets, Race, and COVID-19” that comes out this month.

“The demands emanating from these twin crises, Covid-19 and racial justice, seem to coalesce around the need for an economy that is more caring than what we have known and endured,” wrote Crichlow and Philipsen in the introduction to the issue, which they co-edited. “Covid-19 has unambiguously peeled back the layers of socioeconomic inequality and sociocultural divisions globally. In stark terms it has revealed the gendered, raced and classed sacrifices and suffering endured by those unable to retreat from its ravages and secure themselves. The Covid-19 pandemic has multiplied the modes of disruption and cumulatively deepened insecurities at various levels—from local health and employment, to housing vulnerabilities, macro-economic shocks, systemic market strains and a global specter of unprecedented levels of debt and poverty.” Read more here.