The toilet paper panic: coronavirus and reflections from confinement by Abril Saldaña
The video shows two women coming to blows over a packet of loo rolls; the manager intervenes, trying to calm them down. One of the women has a…
Tag: Features
Don’t Fight the Future by Matthew Wolf-Meyer
For the last few years, I’ve been teaching a class called “Human Futures.” I designed it because I was struck by the increasing pessimism among the undergraduates I…
Epidemic Philosophy by Warwick Anderson
Can a virus ever prompt good philosophy? Within weeks of its emergence, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was galvanizing celebrity European philosophers and social theorists, most of them men in…
Our COVID Museum: Notes from Physician-Anthropologists on the Frontlines of an Evolving Pandemic in Seattle and New York City by Kimberly Sue
As the pandemic of SARS-CoV2 (the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19) unfolds it continues to impact contemporary forms of sociality and community, health, care, governance, and global interconne…
COVID-19 Forum II: Introduction by Christos Lynteris
Since the first installation of Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum was published on March 6, the cases of confirmed COVID-19 have risen more than ten times, from 100,000 to over…
Who Should Be Concerned? Zika as an Epidemic About Mosquitoes and Women (and some reflections on COVID-19) by Luísa Reis-Castro
For English click here. Quem deve se preocupar? Zika como uma Epidemia de Mosquitos e Mulheres (e algumas reflexões sobre o COVID-19) A nova epidemia de coronavírus, em…
El Virus: A Contagion of Racism & How Networks of Care Can Stop It by Argenis Hurtado Moreno
My mother FaceTimed me a month ago and asked if I needed her to ship me hand sanitizer from Phoenix to Oregon. I thought it a silly question,…
Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things: Eldercare in Wuhan under COVID-19 by Zhe Yan
When the pernicious effects of COVID-19 manifested clearly first in Wuhan, the entire city and the whole of Hubei Province came to a standstill. The lockdown of Wuhan…
Populist Pharmakons by Juan Carlos Gabaldon
On March 22, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro delivered a long cadena– an impromptu speech carried live by public and regime-controlled TV stations – dedicated exclusively to COVID-19. Wearin…
Epidemic Times by Helge Jordheim
Epidemics like Covid-19 fundamentally change the order of time. The present moves faster, the past seems further removed, and the future appears completely unpredictable. Everyday homogenous time spl…
Coronavirus and Carcerality by Ian Whitmarsh
A friend of mine works as a psychotherapist in a northern California prison. Three weeks ago, he and I were talking about coronavirus in prisons as we stood watching…
When Crisis Brings Us Closer: Reflecting on Family, Fieldwork, and Faraway Homes in the COVID-19 Pandemic by Sophie Chao
As the COVID-19 pandemic gains momentum, various forms and scales of lockdown and self-quarantine are being imposed across the world to halt the spread of the virus. With…
We urgently need to understand the medication histories of COVID-19 victims by Stefan Ecks
On March 18, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Howard Bauchner discussed a possible link between common hypertension medications and a heightened risk of dying with a coronavirus…
A home for Sofia: Family, disability and housing in times of Zika epidemics by Barbara M. Marques
For English click here. A casa de Sofia: família, deficiência e moradia nos tempos da epidemia do Zika Rumo à realização do sonho Caía uma chuva fina. Acordei…
Lessons for self-isolation from chronically ill patients by Ritti Soncco
Since the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the UK, the freedoms of movement, socialisation and conviviality that many of us take for granted have been radically…
Reproductive rights in the time of COVID-19 by Cassandra Yuill
As the global pandemic escalates, health services are rapidly changing, creating tension between reproductive rights and safeguarding against COVID-19 spread, revealing the question: what is essentia…
Disasters and capitalism…and COVID-19. by Vincanne Adams
I recently participated in a radio talk show on the topic of disaster capitalism and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Is the COVID-19 pandemic a disaster? If it is, how…
Against Social Distancing: A Call for Social Solidarity in this Time of Physical Distancing by Seth Holmes
In this time of apocalyptic “shelter in place” orders, school closures with impromptu home-schooling, and toilet paper shortages, everyone is asked and admonished to practice “social distancing”.&nbs…
Case studies in social medicine: a review by Joshua Franklin
Case Studies in Social Medicine is a new series in the New England Journal of Medicine that began in 2018 and concluded in March of 2020, totaling 15 brief…
COVID-19 Forum: Introduction by Christos Lynteris
Since its emergence in December 2019, COVID-19 has led to a global pandemic, in everything but name. To date, over 100,000 people have been infected across the globe,…
Provincializing Metabolism (On the Poverty of Modernism) by Maurizio Meloni
According to accepted wisdom and textbooks, “metabolism” is a nineteenth-century term and concept, established at the confluence of organic chemistry, cell biology, and physiology. In Microscopical R…
Decentering Metabolism: Peripheral and Southern Diffractions by Maurizio Meloni
In the last few years, a renewed interest in metabolic exchange, and in ideas of a porous and permeable body, has come from disciplines like microbiomics, nutrigenomics, and epigenetics. Moreover, a…
Head circumference by Emily Yates-Doerr
For Spanish click here. In the early months of 2016, as global media sources incited fear among pregnant women that Zika would result in babies with small heads…
The Social Life of Metrics by Rosario García-Meza
For English click here La vida social de las métricas Guatemala es uno de los países de Centroamérica que ha reportado en la última década uno de los…