Not Going Back to Normal: Designing Psychologies Toward Environmental and Social Resilience

Kalantidou, Eleni

The new life circumstances COVID-19 brought to the fore created new designs of everyday practice, either imposed by states or adopted by individuals to avoid contracting the virus. Despite the reasoning behind the implementation of certain measures in conditions of lock down or while pursuing herd immunity, they entail socio-political ramifications that will most likely impact the day after. This article investigates their connection to aspects of life such as democratic and human rights, privacy, and individual and community protection as well as their impact on environmental and social resilience. Concerning the latter, it questions institutional unpreparedness or unresponsiveness in the face of the pandemic and the role economic development and mass production have played in causing it. In light of this, it additionally explores states’ expectation for individual accountability, as a means to contain the virus and identifies a shared pattern of dependence on individual behavioural change found in both COVID-19 and climate change responses. Reflecting on all of the above, the last part of the article evaluates the rescuing ability of individualisation, nominates a critical view of the current psycho-behavioural context and puts forward the pursue of a psychological turn driven by existing alternative models of production and consumption.