The Chaos of Asynchronous Grief
Spoiler: I hate to say it, but Americans have only begun the five stages of grief, and we aren’t all going through it in the same way…
Tag: COVID-19
Gavin Smith: Rereading Marx on machines in the time of COVID-19
Gavin Smith, University of Toronto “One of the many perils lies in normalizing the ‘batshit crazy’ presently underway.”—Wallace, Liebman, Chavez & Wallace 2020: 5 The COVID-19 pandemic has…
No Longer a Field
by Rachel Howard (Fieldwork in a Time of Coronavirus series) An intersection at the author’s fieldsite. Image by the author. Suspending my fieldwork due to the COVID-19 pandemic…
Sociological Reflections In Times Of Change And Uncertainty: Managing Risk, Trying To Adapt And Being Creative
CATARINA DELAUNAY Covid-19 crisis is not democratic in the sense that it affects everyone equally regardless of age, gender, class, ethnicity or geographic area where one lives, as…
Events of Disruptive Transformation by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon
We have been discussing the prospects of catastrophes of our own making for decades. We have been debating risks linked to anthropogenic climate change and runaway technologies, trying…
COVID-19 Forum III – Introduction by Christos Lynteris
Thirty-eight days have passed since the publication of Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum II. In the course of these days the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the globe…
Sociological Reflections In Times Of Change And Uncertainty: Surveillance, Control And Punishment
CATARINA DELAUNAY On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic on Covid-19. Several countries, across the world, including Portugal, declared a state of…
“La gente tiene que comer”: Food and COVID-19
Lisa Grabinsky Oregon State University “La gente tiene que comer.” (“People have to eat”), my mother replied when I decided to study Nutrition and Food Science, believing that…
The ‘Invisible Enemy’: A Critical Look at the Use of Military Metaphors and Anthropomorphisation During The COVID-19 Pandemic
JAMES FOTHERBY In mid-March, before becoming infected with Coronavirus, Boris Johnson declared that his government must act like “any wartime government” while facing a deadly “enemy”. During John…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
Awakening to being the “other” A schizophrenic streak
In discussions on COVID-19, it has become a common trope that disciplines like anthropology are particularly relevant and fitting for writing about the pandemic. Indeed, the pandemic unearths…
COVID-19, the Freedom to Die, and the Necropolitics of the Market by Vito Laterza
Field hospital constructed in Gothenburg, Sweden in March 2020. Photo: Helén Sjöland. While reading Giorgio Agamben’s (2020) anthropological note on the “danger” of habituation of Italians to…
HIV: God’s punishment for sexual deviants or a holy gift against Corona? by Tankut Atuk
In Turkey, HIV has never been considered a “Turkish” issue, but an issue of Eastern European sex workers and Western queers, both perceived as sexual deviants. However, according…
“There are worse places to spend a lockdown”: Privileged and at risk British retirees in Spain by Emma Fàbrega
It was a sunny Tuesday morning, at the beginning of March 2020. The dirt pétanque field in a Catalan coastal town was filled with English chatter about golf,…
Trench Warfare of Mindsets in Switzerland’s Approach to The COVID-19 Pandemic
HÜSLER SAMIRA-SALOMÉ & PYTHON ANNICK MARIA ILDIKO On 26 March 2020, the Federal Council declared an extraordinary situation in accordance with the Epidemic Act and issued a set…
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber: “A Matter of Priority”: The Covid-19 Crisis in Indonesia
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber, University of Cambridge COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in Indonesia. The government ignored the crisis for too long, relying on a dubious religious discourse of divine pro…
Quaran-Teen 2020: Our Constantly Evolving Society
[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…
COVID-19 Stories: How PhD Students are Experiencing Disruption And Uncertainty During The Pandemic
VAS PAPAGEORGIOU, WILL KENDALL AND LIDIA LUNA PUERTA We are graduate students at an extraordinary time. At the early stage of our careers, we were still learning how…
How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently
COVID-19 has prompted a renewed awareness of how we use our bodies under “normal” circumstances. COVID-19 is also demanding that we change our bodily behaviors to prevent the…
Equine PPID Connectivities and Covid-19: 2020 Journal Reflections
KIM CROWDER March 8th. I book a routine vet visit for my geriatric rescue pony’s annual vaccinations and hormone-monitoring test. March 22nd. In line with pandemic protocols the…
Video conferencing and the limits of representability
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Christian Elliott, an undergraduate senior majoring in cultural anthropology at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Video conferencing and the limits of re…
“In Beijing They Eat Snakes And Then Pig Out”: Xenophobia, Geopolitics, and the Role of the Italian Far-Right in Covid-19 Constructions of China
FRANCESCO FLORIS Well before the high rate of infections grew and lay citizens became affected by COVID-19 in Italy, fear, news from China, fake news, and the statements…
Very, very mild: Covid-19 symptoms and illness classification by Felicity Callard
Mild ‘[A] large portion won’t notice that they have it’. ‘Another substantial portion will have very, very mild symptoms’. ‘A small portion will have a very significant reaction’.…