Interdependence

I have come across this term quite frequently recently.

Firstly, it came up when I was considering help seeking by women dealing with domestic violence. I read an interesting article, written as an exploration of the disabled sector fight for independence. The author (Reindal 1999) identified ’embeddedness’ (i.e. being part of a supportive network) and ’embodiment’ (i.e. enabled to materially support oneself) as the key building blocks to interdependence. In my exploration of help seeking by victims of domestic abuse, these ideas seemed to resonate with this group. After all, abusers who practice coercive control often detach women from their networks and take away any financial independence in order to isolate and control them and make help harder to seek. In a surprising analogy, she calls those who recognise their own interdependence as representing a ‘social movement’. I was intrigued by the idea.

Another instance of the use of this term, I found in Hickel’s book ‘Less is More’. He criticises capitalism and its growth fetish and advocates for an appreciation of an inter connected, interdependent world, where humans take their place alongside the natural world. He argues for an understanding of society that draws on the insights of ecology where we understand ourselves as part of a ecological network, rather than as a striving, isolated, independent individual – a common conception of an ‘adult’. Surely as individuals, refusing help for fear of being seen as child like in dependence, we are much more vulnerable to being picked off by unscrupulous capitalists.

Arendt does not use the word, but it is perhaps implied in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. She describes the subject of a totalitarian state as atomized and isolated, even from families and friends. She is explaining Nazism and Bolshevism but I wonder what she might make of the politics of the right in the USA and here, in the UK., if she were alive today. Liz Truss and her commitment to tax cuts reinforces notions of capitalist choice – for some sections of the polity – to drive growth, expansion and wealth. Both Arendt and Hickel argue that never ending growth is absurd, dangerous and unsustainable.

Perhaps the recent resurgence in trade unions and protest movements such as Enough is Enough, and Don’t Pay might turn into a counter to this atomization. We are very far from a totalitarian state.