COVID-19,Structural Inequalities and the Challenges of Self- and Social Transformations: Critical Ontologies and Epistemologies of the Present and Alternative Planetary Futures

In her essay, Chaudhuri invites us to pay more attention to structural inequalities in Indian society and the way it shapes the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on our lives. It is a truism to state that the less privileged are more severely impacted by this pandemic without equitable and dignified access to support systems like health and livelihood. The way structural inequalities impact our lives is through institutions and, sometimes, institutional creativity and universality can mitigate some of these unequal life chances. In India, our institutions of state and service delivery systems like public health institutions have been slaves of the existing structures of inequality—caste, class and gender. At the same time, the way out of this is not an approach of what Sen (2009) calls ‘transcendental institutionalism’ but a comparative historical approach, which also can be linked to critical and creative ontologies, epistemologies and actualisation of the present. Structural inequalities exist, but they are neither transcendental nor absolute; they do not totally determine our fates, including the fates of the vulnerable. We have the capacity and potential to transform existing frames and organisations of structural inequality and turning our fates into processes of destiny and alternative mutual destination.

Chaudhury is concerned with the destructive impact of structural inequality, but she seems to be limited only to structuralist approaches and does not acknowledge their limits in solving the problems of inequality. In this context, Cohen (2000) urges us to realise that equality is not only a matter of rules that define a structure of society but also a matter of personal ways of thinking, conduct and modes of living. Cohen, here, suggests us to work with and beyond what Ronald Dworkin and Andre Beteille call equality as a right and equality as a policy to equality as a matter of personal modes of thinking, being and relationships (Beteille, 1987). Even a sociological exploration of structural inequality and policy suggestions for its transformation is not enough. We need to initiate multidimensional movements of self, society, economy and polity so that we do not reproduce structures of inequality and accompanying disrespect and annihilation in our personal, interpersonal, trans-personal, institutional and structural relations. It calls for a practice of a new ethics, aesthetics, politics, spirituality and yoga of equality, where we are ever wakeful to the call of equality in our lives as a matter of both our everyday practice and our structural consciousness. This calls for greater role of creative and transformative action on the part of self, social collectives, public action and social movements.

This also calls for paying attention to the ontological dimension of inequality in its production, reproduction and transformation, which seems to be missing from Chaudhury’s engagement. An ontological approach challenges us to realise our own role in production and reproduction of structural inequality and the way we can transform this in manifold ways, for example, by sharing our resources as well as joy and suffering with the vulnerable. As Ricoeur (1995) challenges us to realise: sharing means not only to be concerned with what is our share of the distribution of resources but how do we share in with self, other, society and the world.

An ontological approach to inequality and its transformation is part of a critical ontology of the present, which is historical as well as animated by an urge to overcome the fatalism of the present and create alternative different presents and futures (Foucault, 1984). This is accompanied by cultivation of what Vattimo (2011) calls ‘weak ontology’, which is a realisation of our own limits, and rather than asserting our own knowledge, ignorance, arrogance and power in a strong way. For reduction and transformation of structural inequality, we also need cultivation of weak ontology, which, in the economic field, is manifest in such practices as an economics of solidarity and an attitude and relationship of what Gandhi calls aparigraha or non-possession. This is also accompanied by a critical epistemology of the present, where we go beyond the primacy of the epistemic in modernity, especially the epistemology of certainty and cultivate alternative epistemologies of life. Our contemporary COVID-19 condition brings to the fore our inability to know our own uncertainty. Acknowledging our limits and uncertainty calls for a new practice of knowing, a more humble as well as courageous way of knowing, a new border crossing between ontology and epistemology, which can be called an ontological epistemology of participation.

Critical ontologies and epistemologies of the present help us in the creation of solidarity. We can, here, revisit Durkheim’s discourses of mechanical and organic solidarity and realise their limitations and possibilities. But now machines and organic lives intermix in ever unexpected ways. In order to come to terms with the contemporary challenges of COVID-19, which is also related to the crisis of climate change, we need to think of creating solidarity with machines, humans, nature and divine. COVID-19 is a manifestation of the limits of the primacy of the human or anthropocentrism, and we need to create solidarity not only among human beings but also among human and the non-human. This calls for interrogation and transformation of anthropocentric and sociocentric perspectives of sociology. Chaudhury refers to C. Wring Mills, but Mills’ sociological imagination seems to suffer from the problems of anthropocentrism and sociocentrism, and it does not cultivate appropriate relationship with Nature and the Divine. COVID-19 points to the dangers that can befall humanity when we want to conquer Nature and swallow up all wild animals and burn our forests. It is a crisis of civilisation and not just of existing structures of social inequality. In order to respond to this crisis of civilisation, especially civilisation of modernity of which sociology is a part, we need to link current crises of pandemic, crises of sociology, crises of capitalism, crises of climate change and crises of civilisation together.

Speaking of solidarity, we need to cultivate solidarity as a process and envision and practise processes of solidarisation. It is not only just a pragmatic political process but is related to compassion. During COVID-19 crises, we have seen work of such border-crossing compassion, where people come together to help and uplift each other in spite of structural inequalities, which, however, is not a substitute for appropriate public policies and collective actions by state and market. Solidarity has a spiritual dimension as well.

In her article, Chaudhury refers to the relationship between sociology and common sense. How do we engage with our senses and their further cultivation? For example, as COVID-19 and other pandemics are related to our inability to hear the voices of Nature, here, we need to cultivate our hearing senses so that we can listen to the cries of both Nature and vulnerable social groups like the migrant workers. Primal people of the world have far more developed sense to listen to each other and Nature. But sociology as part of the discourse of modernity privileges speaking over listening. For realising further possibilities with our senses such as listening, hearing and seeing, we need to further develop our senses, which would contribute to a deeper realisation of common sense. Common sense is also not bound only to the realm of sense perception, that too empirical sense perception. It also touches what Sorokin (1947) calls the super-sensate. For a new sociology of common sense, we need to bring both sense perceptions and super-sensate perceptions like intuition and spiritual perceptions together, thus deepening and widening our doors and windows of perception.

In her essay, Chaudhury refers to both practice and sociology, which needs further rethinking. Practice has both a pragmatic and spiritual dimension. In sociology and anthropology, we are used to a habitual view of practice as, for example, in the works of Pierre Bourdieu, but practice is not just conventional habit, it is also a site of critical thinking, transformative practice and post-conventional realisation as suggested in Tagore, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and Jurgen Habermas. We need to realise practice as a sadhana. Practice, here, embodies both moral and spiritual strivings. Practice involves both immanence and transcendence. For interrogation and transformation of structures and structural inequality, we need immanent and transcendental practice together, as we need immanent and transcendental critiques. And our engagement with the discipline of sociology also needs a trans-disciplinary creativity and vocation. Sociology emerged as a modernist discipline with its own self-valorising pronouncement, for example, the superiority of the sociological method over the psychological, as in the case of Emile Durkheim. Crises such as COVID-19 challenge us to understand the limits of such disciplinary chauvinism and cultivate a trans-disciplinary sociology with greater collaboration and communication with epidemiology, economics, politics, philosophy, ethics and spirituality, among others.

In her article, Chaudhury seems to lament the cultural turn in sociology, but we need to relate such a turn to other turns such as the ecological, linguistic, feminist and the onto-decolonial, where we critique existing frames and organisations of ecology, language, gender relations and colonial structuration. We need to bring both structure and culture, agency and structure together in non-reductive and open ways, and, here, any one-sided lamentation and privileging would not help us come to terms with our contemporary challenges and cultivate alternative disciplinary as well as planetary futures. New developments in cultural sociology, as in the case of Jeffrey Alexander et al. (2004), deal with structural issues of trauma and transformations as well which can be fruitfully applied to sociological engagement with the trauma of structural inequality in India and the world. In Indian sociology, we have inspiring efforts of bringing together structure and culture, structure and agency, and cultivation of a new structural–cultural sociology, as in the works of Uberoi (1974) and Das (1977), which can help us here.

The current discourse of the new normal, which Chaudhury refers to, hides the pathological, such as pathology of structural inequality. We need to work with and transform both our new normality and pathology and realise as Honneth (2007, p. 35) argues: ‘A paradigm of social normality must, therefore, consist in culturally independent conditions that allow a society’s members to experience undistorted self-realization’.

In the context of our current predicament, there are varieties of talks about post-COVID futures. But without multidimensional transformations—social, economic, political and spiritual—our post-COVID futures may not be different from our current condition. In this context, we need to cultivate alternative planetary futures both in discourse and in practice, and, here, just a sociological reference to structural inequality is not enough. But future is not only a fact—a cultural and social fact—but also is a matter of values (Appaduari, 2013). We are challenged to create pathways of beauty, dignity and dialogues and alternative planetary futures, which are not reproductions of existing dead and killing systems and ways of thinking and systems of inequality.