The long now and liminality: Will we create communitas? A macro-social perspective of COVID-19

Abstract

The ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has changed society are the source of widespread discussion. But references to a ‘new normal’ are mostly confined to hybrid working and a possible four-day working week. Should future-scoping remain so narrow, a major opportunity for fundamental rethinking will be lost. This commentary seeks to take up and expand the argument of a 2021 article on the effects of COVID-19 by exploring the wider social implications and the opportunity presented by this existential crisis. Specifically, this critical analysis explores whether COVID-19 and its impacts have created a moment of liminality – a time of “transition during which the normal limits to thought are relaxed, opening the way to novelty and imagination, construction, and destruction” potentially leading to what Victor Turner refers to as communitas in which we can rethink the issues of our time and in which new social structures and understandings can form.