Medical Anthropology at UCL

Why positive thinking won’t end loneliness

NOEMI CASSIN House of Lords London SW1A 0PW Dear Lady Barran, I am writing to you to discuss your latest Campaign to End Loneliness report, titled “The Psychology of Loneliness”. Although I was glad to discover the British government created a Ministry for Loneliness, I was saddened to see that you are tackling the subject…

Neglect of vaginal health in US health education

CAROLINE MOORE Dear Dr. Miguel Cardona, RE: Neglect of vaginal health in US health education I am writing as someone who was educated in the US through high school and was fortunate enough to be given a fairly comprehensive health education. However, for many Americans, this is not the case. My courses in Medical Anthropology…

Menus without calorie information should be available in all restaurants in the UK

NINA DYNE Neil O’Brien MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Primary Care and Public Health), House of Commons,LondonSW1A 0AA Menus without calorie information should be available in all restaurants in the UK Dear Mr O’Brien, I am writing to you to highlight the demonstrable public health need for menus without calorie information to…

An open letter on virtual wards

HELEN ROBERTSON Deliver To: Amanda Pritchard,NHS Chief Executive Officer10 South Colonnade Canary Wharf, London, E14 4PU Dear Amanda Pritchard, In 2022, your team announced the expansion of virtual wards across England to reduce demand for hospital beds. In response, Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) have been tasked with establishing 40 – 50 virtual ward ‘beds’ for…

Seeing Women Rough Sleepers

FILIS LIU To: C/O Xerox Unit 4, 191 Pasadena Close, Hayes, UB3 3NQ. Dear Mayor Sadiq Khan, I am writing to draw your attention to the alarming rise in homelessness, particularly among women. Impacted by the economic downturn, the issue of homelessness in London has reached a critical point, with 3570 recorded rough sleepers during…

Rethinking Indigenous Suicide in Canada and Giving Land Back

HUGH KNAPP Canadian Minister of Healthjean-yves.duclos@parl.gc.ca Re: Suicide in our indigenous communities Dear Mr. Jean-Yves Duclos, I write to you with an urgency to rethink about how and why we are losing a staggering number of young indigenous people to suicide throughout our country. How does the reality of ending one’s life comes to…

The missing yet critical discussion in the Hong Kong primary healthcare development: On achieving effective chronic disease management

EMILY LIU 26 Jun 2023 Dr PANG Fei-chau Commissioner for Primary Healthcare, Health Bureau Dear Dr Pang, I want to begin this letter by acknowledging the work you have been doing on geriatric and community medicine and congratulating you on your new position as primary healthcare commissioner to lead the…

Improving healthcare for people with learning disabilities

LILY ROSE Amanda PritchardCEO of NHS EnglandPO Box 16738RedditchB97 9PT Dear Amanda Pritchard,CEO of NHS England, striving for improving health nationally and ensuring high quality care for all. I study Anthropology at UCL with a particular interest in medical anthropology which has allowed me to explore different practices, approaches and injustices across health systems globally….

Response to the Illegal Migration Bill

WILL FAY 26th of June 2023 Suella Braverman House of CommonsLondonSW1A 0AA Dear Suella Braverman, I am writing as a medical and anthropology student to advocate for policy change impacting refugee and migrant health and suffering, in light of your Illegal Migration Bill (Braverman and The Lord Murray of Blidworth 2023). As I am sure…

BAME maternal health disparities

PIRADAB VIJAYARATNAM Rt Hon Steve Barclay MPSecretary of State for Health and Social Care 39 Victoria Street LondonSW1H 0EU 20th March 2023 Dear Mr Barclay, RE: BAME maternal health disparities. It is not due to race but racism. My mother, who is Sri Lankan, recounts her traumatic experience of pregnancy in the Netherlands as powerless and…

Applying anthropological techniques to achieve your strategic goals for North West Cancer Research.

CHRISTINA PHILPOTT Dear Alistair Richards, My name is Christina, I’m studying MSc Biosocial Medical Anthropology at University College London. My discipline examines the many different factors – cultural, socioeconomic, political and biological – that contribute to a person’s susceptibility to disease and understandings of health. I am a strong supporter of the amazing work North…

Improving access to hospice care in the UK

RAPHAEL ARDANI The Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP 26th March 2023 House of Commons London SW1A 0AA RE: Funding for hospice services in the UK Dear Secretary of State, What does death mean to you? I appreciate that starting this letter with such a bold and direct question may be somewhat unorthodox, but I am…

An open letter to the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza.

TARA MAYHEW Dear Dame Rachel, The Children’s Commissioner’s Big Ask Survey (2021) gave voice to children and revealed the state of their nation. Children said they want good mental and physical health, and the survey demonstrates, they know exactly how to achieve it. They want to be outside, playing in open spaces. They want to…

The Woman’s Health Strategy for England neglects the realities of being a woman

NAOMI HANSEN House of Commons London SW1A 0AA stephen.barclay.mp@parliament.uk Dear Sir Barclay, I am writing to you today in regards to the Women’s Health Strategy (WHS) for England, which you presented to Parliament in July 2022. You rightfully point out that for far too long, women’s voices have not been listened to, that there are…

Paying more attention to long-term caregivers in contemporary China

CHENGYUE PENG (to No. 57 An Ding Men Wai Da Jie, Dong Cheng District, Beijing) Dear Ms Sun: I am writing to advocate more concern for long-term caregivers, whose labour has been undervalued and underpaid in and out of the family in today’s rapidly ageing China. I hope you can take some action as the…

A Letter to the Secretary of Health and Social Care

ELLA ADENIKE ODUTOYE House of CommonsLondonSW1A 0AA Dear Steve Barclay, Gender bias is an issue that has burdened health care services for decades, as you said when announcing the women’s health strategy in 2022.1 It presents as ‘under representation of women in health studies, the trivialisation of women’s complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of…

Decolonising the medical curriculum: how do we get students involved?

LAUREN PEREIRA-GREENE 134 74 Huntley Street Building UCL Medical School London WC1E 6AU Dear Professor Faye Gishen, I am a third-year medical student, currently completing an intercalated degree in Medical Anthropology. I am writing to express concern around the disengagement between some medical students and efforts to decolonise the medical curriculum. The meaning of ‘decolonisation’…

A call to redress the attitudes and approaches to PMS in the UK

NANO QUIRKE-BAKRADZE To the Chief Executive of Health Education England, Dr Navina Evans 4 Stewart House 32 Russell Square WC1B 5DN 2nd April 2023 Dear Dr Navina Evans, I am writing to you to address my concern on the attitudes and approach to pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). PMS is a syndrome where women experience a…

A Letter to the National Medical Commission of India: Improving doctor-patient relationships.

ANANYA CHOYAL To Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma Chairperson of the National Medical Commission Pocket-14, Sector – 8, Dwarka Phase – 1 New Delhi 110077 India The National Medical Commission (NMC) act of 2020 sets to reform the medical education sector. The act states that the commission would develop “competency based dynamic curriculum at undergraduate level,”…

The Hidden Toll of the Pandemic: Adolescent Social Isolation and Its Relevance as of Today

FAYEZA AHMED To Professor Chris Whitty   Chief Medical Advisor and Expert Advisor  Department of Health and Social Care   39 Victoria Street, London  SW1H 0EU  Dear Professor Chris Whitty, I am writing to express my concern about the ongoing issue of social isolation due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a Medical Anthropology student, my aim…

Does Data Really Save Lives? Considerations in Digitising Health

SERENE LIM To: Simon Bolton, CEO of NHS Digital Boar Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 6AE Dear Mr. Bolton, “Data saves lives” has played a central role in NHS messaging since the pandemic and continues to be a driving factor behind the NHS’ digitisation initiatives. Whilst I applaud the forward thinking and acceptance of necessary…

Introduction to the Third Annual Advocacy Letter Series

CARRIE RYAN In the coming weeks, the third annual Advocacy Letter Series will feature 22 student letters that call for change on a wide range of health topics, including ageing care, sexual assault response, and moral injury amongst medical professionals. These student letters were written this year during the module I teach at UCL called…

Reclaiming relationships and thinking differently about people in healthcare systems: reflections on insider-fieldwork, access and inclusion

SARAH YARDLEY Instead of trying to construct healthcare systems that don’t rely on people knowing each other, our energies would be better spent focused on creating mechanisms that facilitate relational working through equitable opportunities for people to connect with each other. I wonder what your reaction to reading the above statement is? By people, I…

Treading softly while jumping through hoops: ethnographic adventures in pursuit of palliative medication work-as-done in hospice, hospital and at home

DR SALLY-ANNE FRANCIS & DR SARAH YARDLEY “I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” (W.B.Yeats) “A rapid, focused ethnography will be conducted using a cross-sectional approach,” we said. It sounds so neat and simple. Yet in this compact statement there are two parallel stories of navigating…

Reflecting on reflexivity: A practical example of reporting your reflexive practice

DR JESSICA REES As distinguished by Chiseri-Strater (1996) “to be reflective does not demand an ‘other,’ while to be reflexive demands both another and some self- conscious awareness of the process of self-scrutiny” (p. 130). If knowledge reflects the identity of its producers (Haraway, 1991) then it is important for researchers to acknowledge their influence…

Living with multiple health conditions in an East-London borough: early findings from a participatory photography project

ESCA VAN BLARIKOM Multimorbidity in the UK Historically, biomedicine focused on single disease categories. As a result, many of our current clinical guidelines are almost exclusively focused on managing single conditions. Considering that in the UK, people with multiple health conditions make up most primary healthcare encounters (Cassell et al. 2018), these approaches urgently require…

Rapid ethnographies in the NHS

STEPHANIE KUMPUNEN Long-form ethnography is a long-term investment…but rapid ethnography can help sometimes Traditional long-form ethnography on health and care services has proven essential to understanding the social and cultural aspects of illness and care provision. As a research approach for quality improvement, ethnography has been described as able to help us to identify conditions…

Early Career Ethnographers of the NHS: Series Introduction

REBECCA IRONS Social Science and Humanities research with and on the NHS has never been more urgent than in a post-pandemic context. However, interdisciplinary collaboration with health services presents particular issues ranging from practicalities of access to expectations and differing disciplinary approaches between the clinical and the social/humanities. Being a long-time Latin Americanist myself, I…

Modernizing the US Coast Guard’s Miscarriage Leave Policy

JULIEANN THOMAS March 1, 2022 Rear Admiral Eric Jones Assistant Commandant for Human Resources (CG-1) United States Coast GuardWashington, DC 20593 United States of America Dear Admiral Jones, My name is JulieAnn Thomas. My husband, CDR * * * * (ret.) served for 20 years in the US Coast Guard (CG) as a cutterman, an…

Redressing Transgender Healthcare in the UK

KATERINA DOWNING University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT 12/05/2022 FAO: Cass Review Team NHS England PO Box 16738 Redditch B97 9PT Dear Dr. Cass, I came across the “Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people”[i] while following the appeal of the 2020 ruling that prevented under-16’s consenting to hormone…

An Open Letter to the American Obesity Foundation

VICTORIA ANTONIOU Dear Ms. Okon, I would like to begin this letter by acknowledging the hard work you and your organisation, The American Obesity Foundation (AOF), have been doing for many years now, aiming to prevent obesity and its subsequent diseases all over the United States. This is by no means an easy job, I…

Black Lives and Black Minds Matter – It’s Time to End Racism in Mental Health

ELEANOR BREEN O’BYRNE Dear Sajid Javid, I am writing to you regarding the troubling and longstanding racial disparities which exist within mental healthcare. This is evidenced by the the fact that black people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than their white counterparts (NHS Digital, 2021). Racial disparities…

A Reformation of Transgender Healthcare in the United Kingdom

SEVEN MELL Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP House of Commons, London SW1A OAA 4th March 2022 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to you, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to express an immense dissatisfaction with the NHS’ provision of healthcare for transgender individuals in the United Kingdom. My intent is…

Mental Health on Campus: An Investment in Long-Term Mental Health is an Investment in Individual and Institution

KABIR KHANNA Dr Michael Spence President & Provost’s Office University College London Gower Street London WC1E6BT United Kingdom Mental Health on Campus: An Investment in Long-Term Mental Health is an Investment in Individual and Institution Dear Dr Michael Spence, I write this letter as one of the 40,000 people currently studying at UCL. Over the…

Food is neither love nor salvation

HE ZHANG Professor Linying Li Beijing Institute of Technology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences China Women’s Health Network No. 5 Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081 Dear Professor Li, It is my pleasure to write to you. I am a Chinese student studying for the degree of Master of Arts in Health Humanities…

Changing the Singapore Approach to Sugar

NATASHA STURGESS Mr Gan Kim YongMinistry of Health16 College RoadCollege of Medicine Building Singapore 169854 6th March 2022 Dear Minister, I hope this letter comes to you well. I am writing to you in light of the recent parliamentary budget debate on the 28th February 2022, to which Sembawang Minister of Parliament (MP) Poh Li…

Dear Mr. Javid, CAMHS Is a Joke

NAPAT PRASITSIRIGUL Dear Mr. Javid, CAMHS is a joke. Like many others my age, I enjoy mindlessly scrolling through TikTok in my free time. Occasionally I come across a teenager parodying their experiences at CAMHS. These clips usually follow the same pattern: a teenager comes to their CAMHS appointment and discloses worrying information about their…

Prioritising Continuity Of Care Within General Practice

ROWAN VICK MAEER 18 High Street Bromsgrove B61 8HQ Dear Sajid Javid, I am writing to you concerning your proposed changes to the NHS in 2022, which involves restructuring primary care to ‘join up’ healthcare (2). Whilst I agree that ‘joined up’ care between the different health and social sectors is a priority, I am…

Fighting to Improve Disability Awareness within Healthcare

JILLIAN MANN Dear Erin Stampp, My brother, Hank, has faced a lifetime’s worth of scrutiny and maltreatment. Hank was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at the age of two years old. He is wheelchair bound with spastic quadriplegia. But more importantly, he is a Marvel-loving, Beatles fanatic with a contagious smile in his second year of law…

An Introduction to the Second Annual Advocacy Letter Series

CARRIE RYAN How can students apply anthropology to catalyse social change? In the coming weeks, the second annual Advocacy Letter series will showcase thirteen student Advocacy Letters that examine a wide range of contemporary health issues, including transgender healthcare, immigration policy, and mental health services for youth. In these letters, students draw on anthropological insights…

Understanding Covid Vaccine Resistance

Sheba Mohammid and Daniel Miller Right now, Trinidad and Tobago are suffering amongst the highest death rate from Covid in the world. As small islands, everyone seems to know people who have died. According to a Trinidadian doctor specialising in this field one reason for this is co-morbidity with diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Diabetes is…

A letter for the 97%

ISOBEL THORLEY Dear Elizabeth Truss, Nadine Dorris and Priti Patel, As the Minister for Women and Equalities, Minister of State Mental Health, and Home Secretary, I am writing to you because you have the responsibility to tackle an issue that your government has failed to acknowledge, namely the lack of gender-based-approaches to policy implementation during…

A Letter to Matt Hancock

URSULA WHITE February 2021 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to express my concern on discovering that, as of February 2021, Operose Health has acquired AT Medics, a company that currently has contracts to operate 49 GP London surgeries (Lacobucci 2021). Operose Health was created in January 2020 as a subsidiary of Centene, a…

Letter to Jens Spahn

JASMIN SIMAO AJAYI Dear Mr. Spahn, I am a German citizen from Munich, currently in my final year of studying Anthropology at the University College London (UCL). I am writing to you today to address an issue that has come to my attention recently: the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on economically disadvantaged and minority ethnic people in…

Beyond the data: Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups

PETER BICCAREGUI Calling for a follow up report. On the 5th April 2020, almost a year ago to the day I’m writing this letter, Belly Mujinga died at only 47 of COVID-19 (Croxford 2020). She was spat on by a man who claimed to have COVID-19. The CPS deemed that there was insufficient evidence to take the case to court, as the man provided a…

It’s Not A Sin: improving HIV/AIDS education in the UK

PIA KEELEY-JOHNSON Dear Gavin Williamson, I am a queer woman living in London who, like more than 18.9 million people1 who sat down to watch Russell Davies’ hit show It’s A Sin over the last two months, just received the best HIV/AIDS education of my 23 years of life from a TV drama. I was not totally ignorant to…

Eating Disorders, Education, and TikTok

EMILIE THOMPSON 28th February 2021 Dear Mrs Murdoch, Please let me express my enormous gratitude for the work you and your team continue to conduct in the face of the current pandemic. The NHS are demonstrating unwavering resilience and dedication that is nothing short of inspiring. As a postgraduate student from UCL, I write in response…

An Epidemic of Loneliness

PEPE WEISCHER Dear Mr Spahn, The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has strained the capacity of the German health system in unprecedented ways, but it seems to me that one crucial aspect of lockdown measures has been profoundly undermined: the loss of social cohesion and mental health support for children and adolescents. By no means do I…

A Letter for Malcolm Reed

TANYA SHARMA Dear Professor Malcolm Reed, (Lead Co-Chair of the Medical Schools Council), I am a medical student in the UK writing to you to discuss the teaching we have had on Social Determinants of Health as part of our medical education and how it may be beneficial for this to be further developed and…

A Letter to Tedros A. Ghebreyesus

AY NASSIMOLDINA Dear Dr Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, The world is in a vulnerable state right now, and we have trusted you with the World Health Organization to lead us through a global health crisis. However, it is so vital not to relax or neglect health issues that might be veiled with seemingly optimal solutions. I appreciate and…

A Letter to Andrew Selous

SHOLA AJAO Dear Mr Andrew Selous, It is unfortunate that I find myself writing to you again during these unprecedented times. As you may recall, I wrote July of last year concerning the case of Belly Mujinga, a black woman, a victim of a racially motivated attack, who later died after being spat on whilst working…

Fighting Inequality by Improving NHS Dental and Oral Care

MAXINE PEPPER 22nd March 2021 Dear Sir Stevens, RE: Fighting inequality by improving NHS dental and oral care The COVID-19 pandemic brought the discourse on health back to the heart of society. I personally cannot remember ever talking about health and illness prevention more than during the previous 12 months. Given your long list of recent media appearances, I believe you must feel the same. However, my anthropology…

Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Calls for Public and Global Health Change

Series Introduction CARRIE RYAN For the next few weeks, the UCL Medical Anthropology blog will run a special series called ‘Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Calls for Public and Global Health Change.’ This series will showcase nine Advocacy Letters written by UCL anthropology undergraduates and postgraduates. In these letters, students use anthropological insights to advocate for change on a variety of health-related topics, including, for example, dental care, loneliness, and vaccine hesitancy. These Advocacy Letters…

Covid-19 and Vaccine Inequalities in South Africa: The Second Year

Lerato Coulter, Nunu Dlamini, Jonathan Govender, Sarah-Jayne Du Plessis, Ryan Harries, Khanyisile Maphalala, Dineo Mtetwa, Katso Sebina, Hannah Sunpath, Storm Theunissen and Lenore Manderson University of the Witwatersrand Twelve months after it all began here, sanitisers, physical distancing and masked guards had become just part of the everyday, and we had lost count of deaths…

“Not the Chinese, I’m a Pfizer girl!” The covert politics of pharmaceutical branding in Covid struck Hungary

ARIEL BINETH HUNGARY. The country has one of the highest death rates of COVID-19 globally.1 Hospitals are filled with ICU patients at some places outnumbering staff 5:1.2 Nurses and doctors struggle with physical burnout, infrastructural breakdown, and government crackdown. The shadow of Prime Minister Viktor Orban floats above the pandemic by obstructing statistical transparency and…

Vaccine envy and vaccine snobbery – why we look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine

MARIA LARRAIN The vaccine rollout has been well-underway in the UK since Margaret Keenan was the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer Covid-19 jab in December 2020, a week before her 91st birthday. It marked the start of what Health Secretary Matt Hancock called “the fightback against our common enemy, the coronavirus”….

Between Jab Lines and Pandemic Orientalism in Urban Sri Lanka

VICHITRA GODAMUNNE & RAPTI SIRIWARDANE-DE ZOYSA The global COVID-19 vaccination drive has been steeped in geopolitical rivalries, captured not in the least within mainstream Euro-American media narratives. Coverage of the vaccine efforts in the so-called “Global South” has been replete with orientalised visions of these countries where the same international media-predicted pandemic disorder that did…

Vaccinating vaccines: Ethnography and the info-politics of public health

DAN ARTUS What exactly can an ethnography of vaccination hope to achieve? And how could one be undertaken? Although any given individual is likely to have received multiple vaccines throughout their lifetime, the act of administering one is typically extremely quick via injection, oral drops or even a nasal spray. Moreover, it occurs in specific…

The (Anthropological) Vaccine Rush

BEN KASSTAN It would be an understatement to say I rushed to the Jerusalem Arena stadium to receive the COVID-19 vaccination last week. Rolling down my sleeve after the jab, I felt as if I’d been marked with privilege while very conscious of the entrenched global public health inequalities that prevent the same timely access…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – Vaccines in View: Social Science Perspectives on COVID-19 Vaccinations

Incorporating pandemic public health, social inequalities, geopolitics, conspiracies and beyond, COVID-19 vaccines find themselves at the centre of the most significant debates of our time. As anthropologists and social scientists we have important voices that need to be heard on this matter, and are once again placed in the unique position of watching noteworthy global…

Troubled Togetherness: Visually Impaired People’s Unsettling and Tiresome Journey towards Community Belonging

ANNAMARIA DALL’ANESE The word ‘community’ has heart-warming connotations of mutual support and reciprocal understanding. The sense of belonging that stems from being integrated into a social world perfused with care and empathy is seen as so universally desirable that nothing hints at the difficulties that becoming part of a specific community may entail. The focus…

Changing perspectives, Infrastructuring care

MICHELA COZZA On 21 March 2020, during the first COVID-19 pandemic peak in Italy, a group of doctors working at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, published an article titled “At the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic and humanitarian crises in Italy: Changing perspectives on preparation and mitigation” (Nacoti et al., 2020). This title…

PHOTO ESSAY: SHELTER IN PLACE

AMANDA NESCI For many, home is seen as a place you come back to, retreat, relax, decompress. How does this relationship change when our homes become our whole world? Due to the shelter in place orders as result of the COVID-19 outbreak, our homes have become much more: offices, gyms, classrooms, studios, bars. Windowsills become…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Consciously (Re)Quarantined

As nations across Europe find the inevitable domino of new national lockdowns knocking into them, we may all approach ‘this time’ differently from the last. During the interim a lot has happened to reconfigure our realities, both politically and pandemically: Black Lives Matter, the US elections, the French terrorist attacks…sparks are flying, and we all…

Bioethical and Biopolitical Considerations Concerning Racism and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile

RAÚL VILLARROEL Given the great shockwaves caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which in recent months has shaken the whole world, there is cause to suspect that this may have led to the perceptual error that the pandemic is exclusively a health-related issue. Given that this perceptual error is not insignificant, it must be addressed…

Bioethical Guidelines of ‘Extreme Triage’ Under Covid: The Question of ‘Possible Lives’ in Latin America

ABRIL SALDAÑA Assuming a shortage of medical resources to treat patients with Covid-19, many countries in Latin America have discussed or established bioethical guides for limited resource allocation in the case of a public health emergency or what is known as ‘extreme triage’. Under a principle of social justice, these guides propose to allocate resources…

Bioethics as a Mediator in Times of Pandemic

CARLA ALICIA SUÁREZ FÉLIX During the last months, as the world has been marked by the pandemic, there has been much discussion about the role that bioethics could have as a guide for decision making at times when human life is in crisis. Among the flow of academic reflections on the current state of humanity…

Complex Bioethics and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Alterity and Otherness as a Necessary Framework for Thinking About New Social Relationships in a New Post-Pandemic World LUCAS FRANÇA GARCIA AND JOSÉ ROBERTO GOLDIM In Brazil, the first identified case of the new coronavirus was traced to February 26, 2020, in the city of São Paulo, capital, and on March 17, 2020, the first…

When Coronavirus Meets an Armed Conflict

Death and Dying in Colombia During the COVID-19 Pandemic MARÍA FERNANDA OLARTE-SIERRA Not all dead bodies are the same, just as not all deaths are equal. Some dead bodies are more uncomfortable than others. The COVID-19 pandemic has rattled socio-cultural, biomedical, forensic, and funerary customary dealings of death and dead bodies. We are confronted daily…

Problemas bioéticos ¿emergentes o persistentes? expuestos por la pandemia COVID-19

JOSÉ RAMÓN ACOSTA SARIEGO El escenario de una catástrofe anunciada. La pandemia COVID-19 ha mostrado en toda su crudeza las falencias, vulnerabilidades, injusticias y desigualdades que aquejan al entramado económico, social, cultural y político contemporáneo. Una vez más ha quedado expuesto que las determinantes de la salud individual y colectiva rebasan con mucho el ámbito…

Values Revealed: COVID-19 in Cuba

CARLOS JESÚS DELGADO DÍAZ The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Cuba on March 11, 2020. Since then, 2291 patients have been confirmed to have had the disease, with 1893[1] recovering and being discharged from hospital, and 84 deaths. 240 are currently hospitalized and another 516 suspected cases are in isolation due to epidemiological…

Introduction to Series: COVID-19 voices from Latin America and the Caribbean

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. Coronavirus cases keep rising sharply, especially in Brazil, with more than 3 million confirmed cases, followed by Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru. As under testing seems to…

Something Old, Something New

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 pandemic from an interview with a 45 y.o. woman) The COVID-19 pandemic brought attention to the moving body that has been perceived as a source of the…

Subway: a silver lining of the COVID-19 quarantine in Moscow

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 during the coronavirus pandemic” funded by Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the bachelor thesis of Ksenia Shepetina defended at the Faculty of Social Sciences of HSE…

On the tendency to periodise capitalism through the event of the global pandemic

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 pervasive tendency of mythologising what seems too ungraspable to theorise. The virus’ emergence has captured the theoretical imagination of many political projects; in fact, there is a…

The Pandemic Push to Rethink the Field Site

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 been described historically as ‘the single most significant factor determining whether a piece of research will be accepted as “anthropological”’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). Its primary purpose delineates…

Mapping out the Affect of Covid-19 on Cancer Care in the UK: Reflections on a Changed Landscape

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 ovarian cancer treatment setting, in late spring. The arrival of coronavirus in the UK, however, halted this planned start date. Instead, over the last three or so months…

From Transmutation to Strangeness: The House under Scrutiny

MARÍA FLORENCIA BLANCO ESMORIS La Matanza, Buenos Aires, Argentina I woke up, changed, and my partner made mate[1]. I looked at my cell phone and I had at least 18 new e-mails. The routine began. The transmutation of the house that was part of the beginning of this physical isolation experience in Argentina started to…

The Making of a Paper Crisis: Coexisting with COVID-19 in Indonesia

GEGER RIYANTO The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly far from over in Indonesia. In fact, as I write this piece (June 6th), the COVID-19 infections are constantly escalating. Each day we set a new record of infection numbers. However, many people do not feel like we are approaching a critical juncture of the pandemic. The public,…

The Case Against The ‘Singularity’

GRAHAM WILKES The definition of a ‘Singularity’ is something with ‘an unusual or distinctive manner or behaviour’. Something, or an event, that is ‘out of the ordinary’. Something that can be perceived to be so rare that it doesn’t warrant serious consideration, even though its impact may be devastating. So, does that mean that we…

Caring in the times of Corona

PARAS ARORA How does one write about social isolation, mental health issues, and care work-induced fatigue in a local context already scarred with abandonment, loneliness and chronic caregiving? In what ways has the pandemic entered these contexts and what can we gain by attending to the pandemic’s mode of entry into already fragile lives? In…

The Virus And Fear: How Will We Deal With These Two Pandemics?

MARTA ABATEPAULO DE FARIA Considered the most severe respiratory syndrome since the Spanish flu (an H1N1 pandemic) in 1918, which killed between 20 and 50 million people worldwide[1], the Covid-19 pandemic has been spreading fear and uncertainty in the population. Ornell et al. (2020)[2] e Schmidt at al. (2020)[3] discourse about how efforts to contain…

Lives and Deaths with Dementia During Covid-19: Our Shameful (But Hopefully Transformative) Post-Pandemic Legacy

CRISTINA DOUGLAS “How do I escape from here?” The question took me by complete surprise. “This is a care home, Muriel. Your daughter brought you here because it’s safe for you.” Little did I know at that time, only about two months ago, that this will change so dramatically in a matter of weeks. Muriel…

It’s More Than A Juxtaposition: On Discussing Black Lives Matter Demonstrations in the ‘Land of the Free’ and the COVID-19 Pandemic

TIFFANY LOERA NOTE: Blog article edited by author 1st December 2022 No te preocupes hija, estamos bien, my mom says reassuringly to me over the phone as we discuss the current state of the United States. As nations around the world begin to ease their lockdown restrictions, the U.S. reports over 100k deaths from the…

Pain and Plight of People with Disabilities during COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections from Nepal

OBINDRA B. CHAND Recently, in a public forum Lindsay Lee, a WHO Technical Officer with expertise in disability issues, mentioned, “What worries me perhaps more than anything is just the existing barriers that people with disabilities face. I can speak for this myself, personally. Lindsay further explained that health care access is already difficult for some people with disabilities,…

Goethe wears a mask against COVID-19

INAYAT ALI Did Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—the eminent German intellectual of the modern era—wear a mask in his lifetime? Although the question is interesting, the answer is unknown. Nonetheless, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Goethe is wearing a mask–on his statue on Vienna’s renowned Ringstrasse (Ring Street), near to Austria’s National Opera House. Masks are…

Patterns of Contamination: From Fukushima to COVID-19

MAXIME POLLERI In the spring of 2016, I was invited to witness the work of citizen scientists in Fukushima. These citizen scientists were mostly farmers attempting to revitalize the sociocultural life of their region, which had been heavily affected by residual radioactivity in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. At 5:30 on a…

Vectors And Viruses: What Coexisting With Mosquitoes Can Teach Us About Living With Coronavirus

ROSIE SIMS My mask is green with zebras on it, a feeble attempt to liven up the veil of cotton protecting me from others, or others from me. An artefact of a new era. Interaction with other humans reduced to deciphering expressions conveyed by eyes and crinkling foreheads, voices muffled by layers covering mouths. A…

‘Maybe When All This Is Over Jesus Will Come Back’: Crisis, Post-Crisis And Millenarian Time

GARETH BREEN The Pursuit of the Millennium is an influential book by Norman Cohn. In it, Cohn shows quite precisely how in Medieval times millenarian movements periodically rode and arose from within waves of social, political and economic unrest. The book has been influential upon our understandings of why Protestantism took hold in China at…

How Our Behaviour Affects Virus Evolution

DR GUL DENIZ SALALI COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2), but coronaviruses have been among us for years. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, and different strains (genetic variants) choose different species as their hosts. Many people may have first heard about coronaviruses during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, when a strain was…

Cowboys and Coronavirus: Protesting Covid-19 in ‘The Land of the Free’

ROSIE MATHERS Over the last couple of weeks protests have broken out across America against lockdown measures imposed to reduce the spread and contraction of Covid-19. Rallies across Northern and Southern states have seen demonstrators take the streets to call for an end to quarantine, an urgent reopening the economy, and the return of over…

God’s Daily Briefings: Religious Leadership in a Global Pandemic

TILAK PAREKH The Voice of God Religious leaders possess immense power and influence. Believers may listen to government ministers or public health officials, but, above all, they place their faith in the religious elite. For many religious people, their quotidian lives are determined almost entirely by their faith. From mundane, banal activities such as what…

Memes, Migrants, And The Epidemiological Imagination

JOSH BABCOCK As COVID-19 escalated to officially pandemic proportions early this year, Coronavirus-prevention advice began circulating via Facebook and WhatsApp in Singapore. Mostly in English and Mandarin, the advice ranged from speculative antiviral uses of onions—“Slice an onion and leave it in the middle of the room overnight so it absorbs all the viruses”—to more…

Pandemic Predictions- The World Post-Covid-19 for Indian Females

DEVASHREE JUVEKAR As the entire world is grappling with the novel coronavirus pandemic, many experts and researchers have predicted a number of social and economic changes that the world would undergo post-pandemic, ranging from an increase in nationalism and decrease in globalization to changes in food choices and a global hunger crisis. I am going…

Mental Health Avenues Amidst A Global Pandemic: Conceptualising The Biosocial Medical Framework Within Urban ‘Green Spaces’

TIFFANY LOERA Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. This is my morning mantra. As I lay in my bed in the early hours of the morning, I am aware of the limited capacity I have to walk the short distance to my workspace. Like clockwork, the strict schedule I have carefully designed for maximum productivity, relentlessly and…

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 some try to defend. Containment measures were imposed based on the life style and living conditions of the middle class, without considering those with less capacity and…

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 emergency, and have been taking several measures, with a strong impact both on people’s daily lives, and in various sectors of the economy and society. Being a…

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 Johnson’s admission to the Intensive Care Unit in early-April, Michael Gove stated that the Cabinet Office would continue to “marshal all the resources of government in the fight…

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 of measures, including the closure of all the shops, restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities. Businesses at which the recommended distance cannot be maintained (e.g. hairdressing salons)…

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 to live and work in the world of academia. Now, as the COVID-19 outbreak unfolds across the world, students globally are having to adapt to yet another…

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 vet cancels all non-emergency equine visits. March 24th. It’s suddenly warm. The pony looks unwell, overheating in his super-shaggy winter coat. The grass is growing fast, flushed…

“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 of some politicians, were already circulating. These circumstances lead to a growing wave of diffidence towards the Chinese communities in the country, culminating with acts of racial…

Why do we talk about Eurobonds? Or: The Big Division in the Euro Area

INGA AENNE FELDMANN The corona virus health crisis sent many countries of the world in a lock down to protect their elderly and vulnerable from severe illness and death. With the pandemic epicentre reaching Europe in March 2020, also the European Union (EU) Member States (MS) shut down – but while most of them are…

A Lesson In Composure: Learning From Migrants In Times Of Covid-19

CHRISTIAN UNGRUHE The Covid-19 pandemic teaches a number of painful lessons. Many people, persistently deprived from access to adequate health care, housing, education or jobs, pay a devastating price for structural inequalities. For some, think of refugees on the road or holding out in camps, political measures such as lockdowns may even worsen their already…

“Getting Closer” Through Art: Facebook and Turning to Art in The Time of Covid-19

MANUELA PELLEGRINO How to feel close when physically distant? This is, of course, not a new dilemma in itself; indeed, people who live far from their loved ones have long relied on technological solutions: video-calls with multiple participants, for instance, re-establish a ‘visual’ connection, albeit deprived of tactile sensory perception. Social distancing, however, has become…

In The Midst Of COVID 19, The Search For The Missing In Mexico Continues

CAMILA RUIZ SEGOVIA Night had fallen at the coastal state of Veracruz, Mexico, when a group of men kidnapped Luis Guillermo, 29. He was an independent businessman by day and a DJ by night, according to Lucía, his mother. The date was June 28, 2013. Nearly seven years after he went missing, his whereabouts remains…

Experiencing Corona Virus in the Andes

LUCIA STAVIG A mix of huaynos, cumbia, and bird song still greet the sun in the Andean community in which I am riding out the month-long quarantine. At first glance, it might seem that not much has changed for this community in the age of COVID-19. Women in polleras still take their pigs and sheep…

Letter of concern regarding the UK’s Criminal Justice System and its handling of Rape and Serious Sexual Assault cases, with regards to Operation Soteria’s one year review.

MACKENZIE DEARSLEY Letter Directed To: The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP, Home Security & MP for Fareham Government representative of Home Office’s Operation Soteria initiative. Trigger Warning: Rape and Serious Sexual Offense, a Letter of Concern Dear Rt Hon Suella Braverman, My name is Mackenzie Dearsley. I am a 27-year-old Anthropologist currently studying…