In the Journals – Prisons and Pandemics
Prisoners’ Round by Vincent Van Gogh via wikimedia Welcome back to In the Journals! My name is Ally, I am a graduate student beginning a Master’s in Anthropology at…
Tag: coronavirus
On Vulnerability, Resilience, and Age: Older Americans Reflect on the Pandemic by Sarah Lamb
Every morning, Americans wake up to fresh news of the heavy toll the coronavirus pandemic is exerting upon vulnerable older people—from the likelihood of developing a more severe…
How is the pandemic affecting people with dementia? A case study by Dena Shenk
Our team is completing a rapid appraisal study of the perceptions of frontline long-term care (LTC) workers in a southern state about care during the COVID-19 pandemic. One specific…
From Transmutation to Strangeness: The House under Scrutiny
MARÍA FLORENCIA BLANCO ESMORIS La Matanza, Buenos Aires, Argentina I woke up, changed, and my partner made mate[1]. I looked at my cell phone and I had at…
Thinking Sex in Times of Corona: A Conversation by Max Schnepf
Over 30 years ago, Gayle Rubin argued in her seminal piece – “Thinking Sex” – that “sexuality should be treated with special respect in times of great social…
The Making of a Paper Crisis: Coexisting with COVID-19 in Indonesia
GEGER RIYANTO The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly far from over in Indonesia. In fact, as I write this piece (June 6th), the COVID-19 infections are constantly escalating. Each…
“Out of options:” The implications of COVID-19 for hospitalized patients with cognitive impairment by Kelly Colas
“How about a walk today?” I asked Mr. T each morning I arrived to the hospital, visiting him on my morning rounds. Mr T. grinned back at me…
The Case Against The ‘Singularity’
GRAHAM WILKES The definition of a ‘Singularity’ is something with ‘an unusual or distinctive manner or behaviour’. Something, or an event, that is ‘out of the ordinary’. Something…
Caring in the times of Corona
PARAS ARORA How does one write about social isolation, mental health issues, and care work-induced fatigue in a local context already scarred with abandonment, loneliness and chronic caregiving?…
Quaran-Teens 2020: Reflections on Teaching Auto-Ethnography to Quaran-Teens 2020
By Dr. Rebecca Hodges Photo by the author of her classroom in March 2020, emptied by coronavirus quarantine. When the coronavirus epidemic response made us close campus, we…
Imagining the #PostCoronaUniversity in Brazil
Frequently, we Brazilian scholars have received concerned questions from foreign colleagues asking what the h… is happening in Brazil. In fact, the situation in the country since June…
A Virus Podcast Goes Viral by Thalia Gigerenzer
In the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a relatively obscure virology podcast called “This Week in Virology” suddenly became wildly popular. Seemingly overnight, the show suddenly gained…
Cultures of Hygiene: Interview with Claudia Liebelt
This interview was completed and edited between 25 and 29 May, 2020 over E-mail in Berlin. What is your current research during the Corona pandemic about? What…
The Epistemology of Cutting and the Metaphysics of Continuities
By Meredith Root-Bernstein, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France; Center of Sustainability and Applied Ecology, Santiago, Chile; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Santiago, Chile § Confinement …
Quaran-Teens 2020: Changes Because of Quarantine
[The following students are high school seniors at “KTH School” taking International Baccalaureate Social and Cultural Anthropology. After their final IB exams were cancelled, they decided they would…
Trust and the Test: Producing Narrative Certainty in an Evolving Pandemic by Jennifer J. Carroll
“COVID is the thing that works differently. It’s not our experience of the illness that works differently.” A recent observation by Hannah Alcock We both spend a lot…
Sharing responsibilities, coping with the coronavirus: why Swedish and French response strategies are not that different by Morgan Meyer
Citizens, governments and academics spend much time these days with one activity: making comparisons.[1] National response strategies to cope with the coronavirus are compared, as well as whether…
Population Ageing and COVID-19 Infections in Sri Lanka by Kalinga Tudor Silva
This essays builds on my previous research on history of malaria epidemics in Sri Lanka, intergenerational support mechanisms for elderly and ongoing research work on identity, infection and…
Ten Film Scenes Every Stay-At-Home Cinephile Should Know
Ted Gideonse is a medical anthropologist who studies the effects of public health discourses about HIV and drugs. As people with more than a passing understanding of biology…
Imagining Rural Immunity
Political myth-making about America’s rural “heartland” is doubly pernicious, increasing rural vulnerability to COVID-19 and ignoring the disintegration of rural health services. In March 2020, Fair…
How to Start a Meditation Practice
I came to meditation because my brain is always running. The part of an academic’s job that requires me to think and theorize sometimes grows much larger than the…
Saving Anthropology from COVID-19
Higher education is at a crossroads. Can we adapt to the ongoing challenges and create transformative educational courses for an uncertain future? As colleges and universities started shutting…
Sign Languages as Disaster Entertainment
Sign language interpreters have become social media celebrities of our coronavirus moment. But signing is not a form of light entertainment; it should be lifesaving information. Dutch health…
The Funny Wrath of Italy’s Viral Mayors
In March 2020, a video of Italian mayors scolding citizens for failing to stay at home went viral. Only ostensibly insignificant, these clickable white men reveal new forms…