Towards a Theory of Social Repair

The programs of social distancing that attended the COVID-19 pandemic produced isolation on an unprecedented scale. Yet, while many social networks were damaged during the pandemic, some groups were better equipped to reconstruct their networks. Though sociology has many words to describe the breaking of bonds, it has relatively few to describe their reconstitution. To fill this analytical gap, we offer the term “social repair,” which we define as the process by which threatened and broken social ties are restored and brought back to strength. We position this ability to mend broken ties as a previously unrecognized dimension of inequality.