THE HANDSHAKE IN A PANDEMIC. DIPLOMATIC ETIQUETTE

Abstract. Business relations, including diplomatic, are based mainly on interconnectedness and trust. In business meetings, complete strangers often encounter each other and the basic gesture of trust is a handshake. At a meeting, it was used to show that the men hold no weapons in their hands and that they had good intentions. In XIV th. century, when the Black Plague spread across Europe, French were forced to temporarily, for centuries, abandon their cheek-kisses at a meeting [5]. Will the same fate await handshake in a coronavirus pandemic?

The COVID-19 has changed our ways of life and created new rules of conduct in society, including in the field of business etiquette. We are witnessing a marked transformation of traditional etiquette, watching the meetings of officials and politicians’ meetings.

With the spread of the pandemic worldwide, strict measures have been established by the World Health Organization to prevent the rapid escalation of the virus [9]. The basic daily rule was to avoid close bodily contact and touching between people.

What about the handshake? Can we find an equivalent alternative? Policy makers have experienced, one by one, practical metamorphosis in business etiquette and have been asked to be resourceful. Other alternatives to shaking hands have emerged: exchanging “foot greetings”, saying hello with his elbows, greeting with the Indian gesture «namaste».

May this be time to reconsider the «diplomatic meaning» of the handshake? Moreover, due to the coronavirus pandemic, world leaders were forced to limit the physical meetings, preferring instead to virtual or «online» ones as far as possible. It is unlikely, however, that the handshake will become irrelevant in the future. Especially since during the pandemic the handshake at a face-to-face meeting made sense of a stronger and «doubled» trust towards the interlocutor. In other words, it has become a non-verbal connotation, not just of good intentions, but a marker for elevating the status of the counterparty.

Keywords: diplomacy, handshake, COVID19, etiquette, safety, protocol, pandemia, norms