Covid-19: Bringing the social back in by Tine Buffel
The impact of changes – social and medical – brought about by Covid-19 will not be known for some time. So far, in the UK at least, numbers…
Tag: Features
Flipping the Script of the Disaster Flick by Elizabeth Durham
For Cameroonians faced with the realities and stereotypes of their country’s armed conflict, watching COVID-19 hit New York City before Yaoundé is cinematic catharsis. The WhatsApp messages start…
The politics of Amphibiosis: the war against viruses will not take place by Charlotte Brives
“We are at war.” This was Emmanuel Macron’s chosen refrain when he addressed the French nation about the current COVID-19 pandemic. He is certainly not the first to…
Governing COVID in Brazil: Dissecting the Ableist and Reluctant Authoritarian by Francisco Ortega
Brazilians, says Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro, are so tough they can fend off this pesky COVID-19 virus, the same virus that has killed more than 147,000+ people worldwide…
“Hygiene” is the Future: Lessons from “Post”-Cholera Haiti by Guilberly Louissaint
This essay is about paying respect. In 2018, after my first summer of preliminary fieldwork in the Artibonite region of Haiti, I returned disappointed and disillusioned. With the…
COVID 19 in the life of elderly people in rural Russia: A crisis of confidence, backed up by fear by Konstantin Galkin
At the heart of this ethnography are two stories of my informants, Ekaterina and Marina, who live in the countryside, in Karelia (a province in north-west Russia) and…
“Stay the fuck at home” by Des Fitzgerald
On April 5th, NHS Million, an unofficial campaign for people who “love and cherish” the UK’s National Health Service, tweeted a video of a distressed nurse recording a message in…
Katie Kilroy-Marac’s An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African Clinic by Nana Osei Quarshie
An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African Clinic Katie Kilroy-Marac University of California Press, 2019. 288 pages. Katie Kilroy-Marac …
Seeking Urban Metabolisms through Archaeology by Sarah Hayes
The metabolism of a city is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in its archaeology. Decades of excavations triggered by cultural heritage management legislation in Melbourne, Australia reveal a…
Neurological, Structural, and Pandemic Emergencies: Elective Cochlear Implant Surgery during the COVID-19 Pandemic by Michele Friedner
While conducting research in India during the summer of 2019 for my book on cochlear implantation, I kept on coming across an interesting object: a small cardboard office…
“It can be seen” – COVID-19’s Disasters for Workers by Hannah Borenstein
Ethiopia, where I am currently doing dissertation fieldwork, reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 13, 2020. But for runners who work in transnational sport, COVID-19 had…
The balcony: normativity lessons in times of crisis by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
The balcony has become a powerful domestic space symbolizing corona-solidarity in the south of Europe. Movie clips of Italians singing their national anthem from their balconies were broadcast…
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…
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…