Solidarity During the Pandemic in Brazil: Creative Recombinations in Social Movement Frames and Repertoires

Abstract

To confront the economic and health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazilian civil society mobilized in an extraordinary upsurge of solidarity. A diversity of social groups, from popular movements to large companies, carried out emergency initiatives in response to multiple scarcities created or exacerbated by the pandemic: the lack of food, of cleaning supplies, of personal protection equipment, of qualified information, of physical and mental security, and so on. This chapter draws from the social movement literature to examine this heterogeneous process of mobilization in two dimensions. First, we explore how old social movement repertoires took on new meanings at the same time that actors created novel forms of action. In particular, we show that the peculiar conditions of the pandemic, which combined the need for social isolation and for face-to-face contact, led to the creative combination of online and offline repertoires. Second, we examine how the mobilization process also occurred through the creative recombination of collective action frames through which actors disseminated messages defining problems and solutions and justifying action. In this sense, we argue that the solidarity initiatives were often carried out through frames that connected them to political agendas that went well beyond the pandemic, such as anti-racism, feminism, and the struggle against economic inequality.