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: Features
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…
Rethinking the house as a public health technology of preparedness by Imogen Bevan
The main public critique levelled at the UK government’s “Stay Home” campaign was its failure to be implemented fast enough, and the abandonment of community contact tracing in…
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…
Advocacy Letters: An Invitation by Emily Yates-Doerr
Somatosphere is launching a new series to share political and social advocacy letters. Please submit your open letters to emilyjf@gmail.com Dear Reader, We are launching this series to…
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…
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…
Entrepreneurship and E-Health: How Promises of Innovation are Transforming India’s Primary Care Sector by Sandra Bärnreuther
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…
Health for all? Access to healthcare among precarious populations in Norway by Vilde Fastvold Thorbjørnsen
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…
From Quality of Life to Disability Justice: Imagining a Post-Covid Future by Faye Ginsburg
Like a CT-scan of the American body politic, the Covid-19 crisis has revealed deep fault-lines in our medical system, especially the inequities that stratify health care along lines…
A Viral Education: Scientific Lessons from India’s WhatsApp University by Banu Subramaniam
We know of allopathy, and homeopathy, but how about cowpathy? The last is a line of consumer goods that feature the healing properties of the sacred “Hindu” cow…
By Desperate Measures Relieved?: Public Health, Prisons, and the Politics of Life by Jason Ludwig
As COVID-19 continues to claim lives and devastate economies, experts have been contemplating strategies for accelerating the development of a vaccine. A paper published in March in the…
Defining Wellbeing: Tensions in the World Bank’s approach to Universal Health Coverage by Marlee Tichenor
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…
How to Make Sense of “Traditional (Chinese) Medicine” In a Time of Covid-19: Cold War Origin Stories and the WHO’s Role in Making Space for Polyglot Therapeutics by Helen Tilley
Note: I wrote this for anyone trying to “teach the virus,” something I will soon be doing myself. The question in the title is meant to signal that…
The Significance of Covid-19 as Crisis by Marijn Nieuwenhuis
What is the significance of COVID-19? The honest response is that I don’t know which, however, does not prevent me from thinking that it has something crucial to…
Go Suppress Yourself | A Chronicle by Anthony Stavrianakis
In December 2019, reports emerged of a pneumonia of unknown origin in the city of Wuhan, China. A week into 2020, a novel pathogen was identified–– “severe acute…
The management of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil and necropolitics: An essay on an announced tragedy by Daniel Granada
In recent years, we have seen cuts in budgets for health, education and social security in Brazil. On the other hand, we have also seen an increase in…
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…
A ‘grand projet’: Universal Health Coverage and social protection in Senegal by Anna Wood
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…
Health Insurance for the poor: insights from the Kenyan coast by Jacinta Victoria Muinde
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…
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’.…
Not on the Beach, or Death in Bondi? by Warwick Anderson
Sydney’s Bondi Beach in January 2012. Photo: Alex Proimos As sometimes happens in Sydney in late March, toward the end of summer, that particular Friday was brilliantly hot…
The Public-Private Welfare State: constructing a data-driven health coverage in India by Marine Al Dahdah
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. “Health for…