First published in 1940, Hans Scherfig’s The Stolen Spring (Det Forsømte Forår) is both a satirical crime novel and a wry social commentary. Through his description of a…
ABRIL SALDANA By August 2020, Latin America and the Caribbean has become the epicentre of the pandemic with more than 5.4 million COVID-19 cases confirmed and 210,000 fatalities.…
Embodied Practices and Production of Mobility in Moscow Public Transport during Covid-19 YANA BAGINA “… then I realized it is not hysteria, it’s just reality” (description of the…
VARVARA KOBYSHCHA AND KSENIA SHEPETINA The text is based on the data collected within the project “Everyday practices of public health: (Non)Following sanitary rules at Moscow public transport…
In Brazil, most state governors and city mayors in Brazil have been following the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and, in defiance of federal government protocol, have adopted…
The ‘new normality’ in the world of work: Bernardo, one of the authors of this piece, has Larsen’s Syndrome, a rare genetic disease. Because of this, he has…
The new appreciation of previously dismissed types of work may be short lived, and their ongoing fight for a living wage is certainly not won. However, this crisis…
This post draws on findings from a phone-based qualitative interview project in the Netherlands. During April 2020, we interviewed 59 seniors about their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis…
We are sharing below a ‘Letter to the Editor’ submitted to Nature. On May 6, 2020, an article titled “China is promoting coronavirus treatments based on unproven traditional…
In this contribution to Somatosphere’s Dispatches from the Pandemic we attend to practices of boundary making, of separating outsides from insides. The new coronavirus appeared on the global…
The story of Cain and Able from the Christian Holy Bible is common knowledge but to recap. Cain and Able both offer sacrifices to God: Cain offering produce…
In 2014, then Prime Minister David Cameron told the British public that ‘we are in danger of going back to the Dark Ages of medicine.’ He was introducing…
“Constrained to exist in public spaces, the homeless are constant targets of regulation, criminalisation, expulsion and erasure.” – Randall Amster On April 3, 2020, Californian Governor Gavi…
JAKUB CRCHA & SHACHI MOKASHI The coronavirus, by the virtue of its novelty, sudden unexpected appearance, and the scale of consequent disruption, has been easily incorporated into the…
From my balcony, I see Tampa Bay’s calm water, the Dali Museum’s distinctive architecture, the Mahaffey Theater’s empty parking lot, the balconies and porches of St, Petersburg, Florida,…
What is the object of epidemiological interventions during an epidemic? Is it the virus, the disease, the fear, the chaos, or the threat to security? And what is the objective…
New Intimacies and De-Masking in Medical Anthropology and Global Health. A Reflective Blog CLAIRE SOMERVILLE The concept of fieldwork, and its’ physical manifestation, the “field site”, has bee…
I met Pierre (34)[1] in a northern Santiago neighbourhood during my ethnographic fieldwork early in 2018. He was one of the hundreds of Haitians who arrived in Chile,…
Abigail AdamsCentral Connecticut State University I’m writing from my dining room table and the CostCo bulk carton of matzoh peeks at me from a kitchen cupboard. I’m reminded…
In The Anthropology of Epidemics, editors Ann H. Kelly, Frédéric Keck and Christos Lynteris curate a collection that provides insight into how ethnographic studies of epidemics might challenge…
CLARA FABIAN-THEROND As a medical anthropology PhD student my plan was to start ethnographic research, examining the socio-cultural impact of personalised therapeutics in the NHS colorectal and ov…
In The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction, Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham unpack the ‘how’ of the gig economy through quantative datasets and ethnographic vignettes from countries includ…
On a trip to Shandong, China, at the end of January 2020, a few days after the lockdown of Wuhan, I watched a video of a stewed bat…
Ben (77) wrote this poem when he became unable to visit his wife Lise in the nursing home where she lived, expressing the loss and desperation of suddenly…