COVID-19 as a breakdown in the texture of social practices

Michela Cozza; Silvia Gherardi; Valeria Graziano; Janet Johansson; Mathilde Mondon-Navazo; Annalisa Murgia; Kim Trogal

doi:10.1111/gwao.12524

COVID-19 as a breakdown in the texture of social practices

Gend Work Organ. 2021 Jan;28(Suppl 1):190-208. doi: 10.1111/gwao.12524. Epub 2020 Sep 29.

Authors

Michela Cozza¹, Silvia Gherardi², Valeria Graziano³, Janet Johansson⁴, Mathilde Mondon-Navazo⁵, Annalisa Murgia⁵, Kim Trogal⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Organization and Management, School of Business, Society and Engineering Mälardalen University.
² Research Unit on Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics University of Trento.
³ Faculty Research Centre in Postdigital Cultures Coventry University.
⁴ Department of Management and Engineering, Business Administration Linköping University.
⁵ Department of Social and Political Sciences University of Milan.
⁶ Canterbury School of Architecture University for the Creative Arts.

Abstract

'A lot of things need to be repaired and a lot of relationships are in need of a knowledgeable mending. Can we start to talk/write about them?' This invitation - sent by one of the authors to the others - led us, as feminist women in academia, to join together in an experimental writing about the effects of COVID-19 on daily social practices and on potential (and innovative) ways for repairing work in different fields of social organization. By diffractively intertwining our embodied experiences of becoming together-with Others, we foreground a multiplicity of repair (care) practices COVID-19 is making visible. Echoing one another, we take a stand and say that we need to prevent the future from becoming the past. We are not going back to the past; our society has already changed and there is a need to cope with innovation and repairing practices that do not reproduce the past.

Keywords: care; diffraction; invisibility; mending; repair.