Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.

The threats of emerging diseases have shaken certainties about health systems, the effectiveness of governance, lifestyles and the reality of national sovereignty. The Covid-19 Crisis analyzes the global issues related to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through investigations and reflections related to both the epidemic itself (epidemiology, computerized surveillance tools and vaccines) and to the societal issues it raises (work, innovation, religious practices, behaviors and societal models). This eclectic approach highlights scientific working methods that meet the requirements of health crises, as well as technical solutions and societal practices adapted to epidemic situations. It also presents feedback and testimonies.

This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of global pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It brings together the reflections of leading social and political scientists who are interested in the implications and significance of the current crisis for politics and society. The chapters provide both analysis of the social and political dimensions of the Coronavirus pandemic and historical contextualization as well as perspectives beyond the crisis. The volume seeks to focus on Covid-19 not simply as the terrain of epidemiology or public health, but as raising fundamental questions about the nature of social, economic and political processes. The problems of contemporary societies have become intensified as a result of the pandemic. Understanding the pandemic is as much a sociological question as it is a biological one, since viral infections are transmitted through social interaction. In many ways, the pandemic poses fundamental existential as well as political questions about social life as well as exposing many of the inequalities in contemporary societies. As the chapters in this volume show, epidemiological issues and sociological problems are elucidated in many ways around the themes of power, politics, security, suffering, equality and justice. This is a cutting edge and accessible volume on the Covid-19 pandemic with chapters on topics such as the nature and limits of expertise, democratization, emergency government, digitalization, social justice, globalization, capitalist crisis, and the ecological crisis. Contents Notes on Contributors Preface Gerard Delanty 1. Introduction: The Pandemic in Historical and Global Context Part 1 Politics, Experts and the State Claus Offe 2. Corona Pandemic Policy: Exploratory Notes on its ‘Epistemic Regime’ Stephen Turner 3. The Naked State: What the Breakdown of Normality Reveals Jan Zielonka 4. Who Should be in Charge of Pandemics? Scientists or Politicians? Jonathan White 5. Emergency Europe after Covid-19 Daniel Innerarity 6. Political Decision-Making in a Pandemic Part 2 Globalization, History and the Future Helga Nowotny 7. In AI We Trust: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Pushes us Deeper into Digitalization Eva Horn 8. Tipping Points: The Anthropocene and COVID-19 Bryan S. Turner 9. The Political Theology of Covid-19: a Comparative History of Human Responses to Catastrophes Daniel Chernilo 10. Another Globalisation: Covid-19 and the Cosmopolitan Imagination Frédéric Vandenberghe & Jean-Francois Véran 11. The Pandemic as a Global Total Social Fact Part 3 The Social and Alternatives Sylvia Walby 12. Social Theory and COVID: Including Social Democracy Donatella della Porta 13. Progressive Social Movements, Democracy and the Pandemic Sonja Avlijaš 14. Security for Whom? Inequality and Human Dignity in Times of the Pandemic Albena Azmanova 15. Battlegrounds of Justice: The Pandemic and What Really Grieves the 99% Index

This book is a collective journal of the COVID-19 pandemic. With first-hand accounts of the pandemic as it unfolded, it explores the social and the political through the lens of the outbreak. Featuring contributors located in India, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Bulgaria, the book presents us with simultaneous multiple histories of our time. The volume documents the beginning of social distancing and lockdown measures adopted by countries around the world and analyses how these bore upon prevailing social conditions in specific locations. It presents the authors’ personal observations in a lucid conversational style as they reflect on themes such as the reorganization of political debates and issues, the experience of the marginalized, theodicy, government policy responses, and shifts into digital space under lockdown, all of these under an overarching narrative of the healthcare and economic crisis facing the world. A unique and engaging contribution, this book will be useful to students and researchers of sociology, public health, political economy, public policy, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to general readers interested in pandemic literature.

This book highlights the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy, at a time when the world economy has experienced large demand and supply shocks. To limit the transmission of the corona virus, all governments shut down production, restricted movement of people, etc, which led to severe curtailment in demand, and disruptions in supply chains all over the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has dragged the world economy into an abrupt and unforeseen recession. According to IMF estimates, world GDP will fall by over 3 percent due to the outbreak of this pandemic - the steepest slowdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The ILO has predicted a loss of about 25 million jobs due to this pandemic. Emerging markets will lose at least 2.4 percent of their GDP in 2020 alone. Loss in global travel revenue due to COVID-19 is estimated at USD 810.7 billion. Financial markets have been badly hit and about USD 83 million has been pulled out of developing markets since the outbreak of COVID-19. The list of sectors impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, is endless All governments have announced stimulus packages comprising a mix of fiscal and monetary measures, but it is difficult to predict how quickly businesses will respond to these measures. The papers in this book, which are the proceedings of an online global conference, have attempted to analyze and summarize the thoughts of academicians on these vexed issues.

This book depicts and reveals the socioeconomic dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis, and its global, regional, and local perspectives. Explicitly interdisciplinary, this volume embraces a wide spectrum of topics across economics, business, public management, psychology, and public health. Written by global experts, each chapter offers a snapshot of an emerging aspect of the COVID-19 crisis for the benefit of academics and students, as well as the institutional, economic, social, and developmental policymakers and health practitioners on the ground.

This edited collection offers interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the key health challenges faced by individuals, communities, and governments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking the Danish context as a starting point, it extrapolates to discuss the international relevance of a range of issues. The book contains 4 parts: · Part 1 looks at the societal reactions to COVID-19, discussing issues around health communication, legitimacy, ethics, and bio-politics. · Part 2 approaches the health and well-being of specific groups during the crisis. · Part 3 assesses how the crisis stimulated sustainable solutions to key problems, from digital methods for delivery of healthcare, to changes to the food supply chain. · Part 4 looks broadly at how historical developments in the study of epidemiology and current scientific perspectives enable the understanding and, to some extent, management of the COVID-19 pandemic. With contributions from scholars across the social sciences, health sciences, and humanities, each chapter provides not only insight into a particular issue, but also the theories and scientific methods applied to understand and overcome the COVID-19 crisis. It will be important reading for both scholars and policy makers, informing an appropriate response to future health crises.