"Imagining the Post-COVID Polity: Narratives of possible futures"

Speaker:
Dr. Paul Nesbitt Larking
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Huron University College, Adjunct Professor, Queen’s University, and fmr president of the International Society of Political Psychology. 

The COVID crisis is arguably the most important development of the 2st century so far and takes its place alongside the great eruptions of the past century. As with any crisis, the pandemic has generated sudden breaks and changes as well as stimulated visions and proposals for post-COVID societies. Our focus is on predictive and prescriptive narratives that envisage post-COVID societies. We theorize that the reality effects of a pandemic, coupled with associated economic and cultural shocks, have seriously destabilized both populist and liberal metanarratives and that a series of counter-narratives are currently emerging. We anticipate that societal changes conditioned by the pandemic have accelerated a turn toward five inter-related developments: A renaissance in rationality and evidence-based science; a reimagining of the interventionist state in response to crises in economy, society, and social order; a return to social equality; a reorientation to the local and communitarian, with reference in particular to solidaristic mutual aid, community animation, local sourcing and craft production; and the reinvention of democracy.