Les­sons from CO­VID-19

• How is resilience among inhabitants of rural Yucatan being developed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters during 2020?
• How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect (ethnic)communities?
• How are economies and communitarian structures changing in the context of the Corona crisis?  
• Does communitarian cohesion represent a crisis management factor in the sense that alternative, sustainable forms of economic activity are justified?

The direct health impacts and loss of human lives are devastating, and the unprecedented disruptions to societies and economies will be felt globally for years to come. In Mexico as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise the national economy braces itself for a shock of unprecedented severity and complexity that is expected to trigger ‘the worst recession since the Mexican Revolution 1910’. In the national context already weakened by prolonged sluggishness, heightened inequalities, and policy uncertainties, the health emergency has quickly spread economywide, triggering a simultaneous supply and demand shock, with losses in the formal labour sector. Despite the substantial interest and ongoing investment by local and national governments, non-governmental organizations and development agencies to bolster the resilience of local Mayan communities in Yucatan, it is unclear which domains should be prioritized in policies and programs.

The scope is to analyze social and economic resilience/sustainability in (ethnic) communities taking into account the communitarian cohesion of two different “cases”: the case of rural Mayan communities in the South of Mexico and the case of the “Kommune Niederkaufungen” in the middle of Germany. We are going to discuss the relationship of social cohesion (solidarity), social and natural capital and sustainable economies.

In November 2019, the first case of the new Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was detected globally. This marked the beginning of an unprecedented pandemic that affected and still affects, the entire planet in 2020 as one of the most severe global shocks of modern time. The direct health impacts and loss of human lives are devastating, and the unprecedented disruptions to societies, social cohesion and economies will be felt for years to come. In Mexico, the Federal Government decreed “Jornada Nacional de Sana Distancia” (a campaign to promote social distancing) for the entire population from March 24 to June 1, 2020, which included the temporary suspension of non-essential economic activities of the public, social and private sectors (DOF: 03/24/2020). Subsequently, Mexico entered the phase called "Nueva Normalidad", which consisted of the gradual economic reopening based on the “Epidemiological Risk traffic-light": a system for monitoring infections, hospital occupancy and deaths to regulate the reopening of "non-essential" economic activities (DOF: 05/14/2020); this system is still being implemented, and it is forecasted to continue in mid-2021.

In addition, the 2020 “Mexican tropical cyclone season” (May-November) was quite intense, leaving different material, economic and social effects in the southern region. In Yucatan, at least five strong meteorological phenomena, have impacted, causing incommensurable damage among the state's municipalities, where 75 of 106 have been declared natural disasters.

On the one hand, sudden breaks in production, value chain disruptions, uncoordinated border closings, lower international trade flows, and travel bans have taken a toll on the level of activity. On the other, reduced working hours, layoffs, confinements, and heightened uncertainties have dampened aggregate demand. Meanwhile, the need to increase public spending to cushion the impact of the downturn is likely to put pressure on government budgets, and bankruptcies loom large on a highly leveraged financial sector. Moreover, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has recently warned that working- hour losses in the first half of 2020 could be equivalent to over 400 million fulltime jobs worldwide, and that 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy are at immediate risk of seeing their livelihoods reduced. In Mexico more than half of inhabitants are employed into the informal sector without benefits and social security. In this context, the socio-economic costs of the overall situation cannot be overemphasized.

If people are not allowed to leave their home and can no longer participate in everyday life (as usual) in accordance with applicable protective measures or have to absent from their wage work or school, this means a disunification of life. The isolation that goes hand in hand with a disengaging crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic further intensifies the effects of - in the words of Zygmunt Bauman - 'negative globalization' and makes solidarity in a society dwindle.

Finally, analyzing the impacts and changes in the social dimensions among rural communities are vital to understanding the resilience of social-economic systems, as well as the impact of labor losses in rural communities in Yucatan due to COVID-19.

A short biographical review suggests an absence of knowledge, regarding the economic, social and labour impact in rural areas, in the context of the pandemic. However, literature on resilience suggests that social capital and natural capital play a central role in promoting the six domains of resilience among rural communities, such as the following literature:

• Cinner, J. E., and M. L. Barnes. 2019. Social Dimensions of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems. One Earth 1(1):51–56.
• Folke, C., R. Biggs, A. V. Norström, B. Reyers, and J. Rockström. 2016. Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society 21(3): art41.
• Valensisi, G. 2020. COVID-19 and Global Poverty: Are LDCs Being Left Behind? European Journal of Development Research 32(5):1535–1557.

Our considerations are also based on sustainable economic activities as practised in communities. On the one hand, we are referring to the post-colonial criticism of political economy. On the other hand, we refer to the importance of commons in the formation of alternative, sustainable and in this sense also resilient economies

• Mogeda El Sayed El Keshky/Sawzan Sadaqa Basyouni/Abeer Mohammad Al Sabban (2020): Getting Through COVID-19: The Pandemic’s Impact on the Psychology of Sustainability, Quality of Life, and the Global Economy – A Systematic Review. Front. Psychol., 12 November 2020.
• Federici, Silvia (2016): Feminism and the politics of commons. In: Hlavajova, Maria/Sheikh, Simon (eds.): From FORMER WEST: Art and the Contemporary after 1989.  Utrecht: BAK.
• Grosfoguel, R. (2011). Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality. TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(1). Retrieved from escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq

We propose to use and apply the five social factors that provide resilience/sustainability/solidarity in linked social-ecological systems, including (1) assets, (2) flexibility, (3) social organization in the community (structures), (4) social practices of taking care, sharing and responsibility (networks) and (5) agency. Additionally, emerging frontiers of resilience include applying social capital networks approaches, investigating power relations and exploring how transformative versus adaptive changes can promote resilience.

We propose a mixed-method approach, which combines qualitative and quantitative methods including ethnographical observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and workshops, as well as full income questionary at (a.) municipalities of Yucatan (Map: shows the research area: Cantamayec, Chankom, Mama, Mani, Mayapan, Sotuta, Tahdziu, Teabo, Tecom, Tixcacalcupul and Yaxcaba, into the rural localities <2,500 inhabitants and (b.) a workshop/interviews with key informants at “Kommune Niederkaufungen” (nearby Kassel).

Moreover, qualitative data analysis will include grounded theory techniques, to categorize data, within the different theoretical frameworks (resilience-sustainability-solidarity approaches) being proposed. Selected informants for in-depth interviews, focus groups, and workshops will be selected through the snowball (non-probabilistic) sampling technique.