COVID-19 and The Lessons Anthropology Learned from HIV/AIDS by Merrill Singer
On April 24, 1980, Ken Horne, a San Francisco resident, was reported to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as a young man suffering with an old man’s…
Tag: COVID-19
PrEP in Thailand in the time of COVID-19
In 2012, the first PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) drugs came onto the market, poised to revolutionize the field of HIV prevention. ‘The Pill’ promised to usher in a kind…
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…
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…
COVID-19 and the extraordinary normality of the War on Drugs by Jennifer L. Syvertsen
As if it were not challenging enough during the “normal emergencies” [1] of the United States-led War on Drugs, research and advocacy for sane drug policies becomes even…
The metropolis and mental life in the age of COVID-19: Delaying descent into the blasé attitude by Rafael Wainer
The COVID city: Class, physical isolation, and virtual connection At the time of writing this we are all experiencing what the classical sociologist Émile Durkheim would call a…
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…
Wrong, but Useful – for Whom? The Politics of Pandemic Modeling by Marit Tolo Østebø
On March 17th, after a tepid initial COVID-19 response, Prime Minister Boris Johnson began encouraging citizens to avoid non-essential social contact. President Donald Trump followed suit, introducin…
Some Chloroquine-AZT Parallels and Science’s Credibility Struggles
As an anthropologist and STS researcher, a great deal of my academic career has been proudly dedicated to studying and denouncing the bias, inequalities, and prejudice within both…
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…
Ysyakh 2020 – solstice festival online
Midsummer, solstice on the 21 June is for many northern peoples and cultures an important holiday. In Finland it’s called Juhannus and a state holiday. In Yakutia, where…
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…
Social Inequality in Times of Pandemics
We should not expect COVID-19 to behave in the same way as historical pandemics of plague. But both show how inequalities exacerbate mortality outcomes. It’s a gorgeous, warm…
On Living through Plagues and Wars in Lebanon
In much of the Global North COVID-19 is wreaking existential havoc. For the war-seasoned Lebanese in the throes of an economic meltdown and ongoing protests, it is yet…
(E)thnographic Correspondence and Collaborative Improvisation
by Joelle Powe, Thea McRae, Christina Jones and Laith A. Ayogu. Screenshots from virtual meetings with authors on Google Hangouts and Zoom, taken during quarantine in various locations. Screenshot…
Engaging the Pandemic
How one medical anthropologist is boosting our capacity to understand and contend with COVID-19. In late February 2020, I traveled back to the United States from India and…