ELIZABETH ELLIOTT The first cases of Covid-19 were recorded in Vientiane on March 24th; until then, Laos had been the last country in Southeast Asia to be officially ‘Covid-19 free’, a source of national pride, even if many had doubts. A landlocked country, surrounded by more populated and economically powerful nations, Laos has long felt…
Month: April 2020
Green Shoots
KATHARINE DOW ‘We’re in an incredibly unsettling period, globally, nationally. Can I allay some of my anxieties about what this means for me and my kids by buying a few instant mashed potato and extra chickpeas and corned beef? Well, maybe. Does that make me ridiculous? Possibly. Do I feel a bit better about it?…
Privilege In The Times Of Crisis: Musings Of A Field Epidemiology Trainee In India
NUZRATH JAHAN COVID-19 has invaded our lives physically and psychologically. For someone working in the health sector, and a field epidemiology trainee, the first week of COVID-19 went by in a whirlwind for me. Our contact session for the India FETP(Field Epidemiology Training Programme) got suspended and we were posted into field work to be…
Hinduism & Coronavirus: How The Digital Becomes Sacred
TILAK PAREKH The coronavirus has led to seismic and widespread changes across all nodes of society, not least, religion. In a recent article in The New York Times, Vivian Yee writes, “Religion is the solace of first resort for billions of people grappling with a pandemic for which scientists, presidents and the secular world seem,…
2009 Mexico Swine Flu – 2020 Italy Covid19: How I Experienced A Double Quarantine
SARA SALVATORI In this article, I will briefly describe my experiences during the two pandemics, swine flu and COVID-19, when I accidentally lived through quarantine in the most affected countries: Mexico in 2009 and Rome, Italy. When in 2008 I decided to go to Mexico to undertake fieldwork for my doctoral thesis, I could never…
Italy’s Hidden Epidemic: The Shadow of the Mafia over Post-Emergency Europe
FRANCESCO FLORIS On 4th April, more than two months after the declaration of the state of emergency and almost one month after the start of the quarantine throughout the national territory, comforting news began to arrive in Italy. The epidemiological curve has now stabilised, a new hospital specialising entirely in the treatment of critical coronavirus…
Anxiety, Scarcity and Precarity in a Time of COVID-19
SHARLI ANNE PAPHITIS On the 16th of March, I took one of my last trips into the office on the London Overground and found myself completely alone on an eerie train from Kings Cross. I had a feeling I wouldn’t make the journey for some time again since we had already been asked to ‘prepare…
How A Pandemic Shapes The City: Ethnographic Voices From South Africa
TAMIA BOTES, LESEDI M.S. CHOCHO, GEORGIA KELLOW, ELINOR BRONNVIK ENGELKING, LUCY KHOFI, EDNA BOSIRE, ERMA COSSA AND DESIREE MALOPE Like others globally, we are observing sudden and severely impactful changes to the world around us. South Africans found themselves thrust into rigorous, unprecedented social changes within a week of the first reported cases of COVID-19…
Humankind Crowned – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Virus
BERND BRABEC DE MORI To put it up front, this essay is not about relativization. I am sitting in my flat, trying to make ends meet between supervising my childrens’ chaotic home-schooling, my own home-office, and maintaining social and supply relations especially with more anxious elderly relatives. I am glad that the Austrian government decided…
Viral solidarity and the reinvention of a welfare state: Reflections from Denmark
KLAUS HOEYER, AMY CLOTWORTHY, AND NAJA HULVEJ ROD Anthropology has long been preoccupied with comparisons between societies and between social actors. And, seemingly out of nowhere, the Covid-19 virus has become an unwelcome facilitator of new comparisons. In these early days of what has become a global pandemic, many of us are trying to understand…
“When the Cherry Blossoms, we will meet again in Wuhan”: A Nurse’s Reflections
CORALINE CUI YA PING On 9th February 2020, Coralline, a nurse from Nanjing, volunteered to go to Wuhan to help attend patients in the Coronavirus pandemic. She will be living in a specific hotel with her colleagues, unable to leave for security reasons, until 2nd April 2020. She will need to be isolated for 14…
“When the Cherry Blossoms, we will meet again in Wuhan”:A COVID-19 Photo Essay
CORALINE CUI YA PING Coralline is a nurse from Nanjing, China. On 9th February 2020, she volunteered to go to Wuhan to help attend patients in the Coronavirus pandemic. Coralline and colleagues will be living in a specific hotel, unable to leave for security reasons, until 2nd April 2020. She will need to be isolated…
Latin America and the outbreak of COVID-19: a chronicle of multiple crises (II)
MARIA JOSE ROMERO, JASMINE GIDEON, PATRICIA MIRANDA, VERONICA SERAFINI This is the second in a series of articles on the outbreak of COVID-19 and the impact on Latin America. In the first article we explored the underlying factors of the health emergency, including the austerity policies and increased role of the private sector, through health public-private partnerships…
Latin America and the outbreak of COVID-19: a chronicle of multiple crises (I)
MARIA JOSE ROMERO, JASMINE GIDEON, PATRICIA MIRANDA, VERONICA SERAFINI The outbreak of COVID-19 is a global health emergency that is likely to trigger a global economic crisis, impacting on countries and citizens around the world. Latin America is a region that is experiencing a rapidly evolving situation. COVID-19 did not feature much in the news…
The ‘Swedish Experiment’
RACHEL IRWIN For now, Sweden is ‘going it’s own way’ in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We have not introduced the same draconian measures on public life as have other countries. We are not under ‘lockdown,’ and we are encouraged to exercise outside (but not too close to other people). As of 3 April…
A Postcolonial Question Regarding The Swedish Coronavirus Policy
MAGRITH MENA PORTOCARRERO Malmö, 31st March 2020. Last Friday, while the number of people infected and the number of deaths due to the COVID-19 was still becoming the new normal, I received an e-mail from the municipal organization in charge of Malmö’s schools. Framed as part of the Swedish public policy toward the coronavirus, the…
Coronavirus as infra-structural crisis: Some thoughts from locked-down India
ELISA T. BERTUZZO On Sunday 22 March, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, India‘s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a 14-hour “voluntary curfew”. 1.3 billion people, of whom a large number are day labourers and at least two millions live on the streets, were expected to stay at home and practice social distancing….
Thinking Ahead On Post-COVID-19 Vulnerabilities
MAXIME POLLERI As someone who has dedicated much of his scholarly career working on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, I came to understand the ripple-like effects of governments’ decisions in managing health risks. For instance, the Fukushima disaster, which led to the release of radioactive contamination throughout Japan, initially prompted the forced evacuation of many citizens. While…
Toward an Anthropology of ‘Foreign Bodies’: Migrant Health in the Age of Coronavirus
SCOTT SPIVEY PROVENCIO Invasion. Infestation. Contamination. Border closures. National lockdowns. Citizens only. Are we talking about the coronavirus pandemic or worldwide migrant and refugee ‘crises’? Every day, news headlines keep pouring in surrounding the mass proliferation of COVID-19, an entity that respects no borders. Doctors and politicians keep pushing for the halting of mobility and…
Quarantime: Disruption of Routine and the Global Suspension of Lived Temporalities
REBECCA IRONS On Sunday 29th the clocks went forward in the UK. Whilst the Nation may have scarcely noticed the incongruous change in time a year ago (lest it fall on a working day), this time around my social media was filled with sarcastic responses as to the significance of this annual event: “you’ll have…