Solidarity work, duty to care, and commoning during the pandemic crisis

Abstract

The article explores civic solidarity acts during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on qualitative research conducted in Hungary largely online, we explore how solidarity work initiated civic collaborations which reconfigured human efforts, time, and labour to mitigate crisis conditions in multiple ways and shaped the political potentials of solidarity practices. The inquiry captures different reasonings and practices in managing the division, valuation, and responsibilities in solidarity work. It also examines how the sense of the duty to care became an essential component in the pandemic operation of solidarians. We identify three different modes of articulating and organizing the duty to care in response to crisis conditions which embraced various engagements with the principles of commoning in solidarity spaces and beyond: reparative, sheltered, and transformative modes of commoning. Our inquiry also contributes to the discussions on the transformative potentials of civic experiments in collective solidarity actions in societies governed by an authoritarian regime, such as Hungary.