This book explores the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic is poised to be a permanent fixture in the modern world which in contemporary times will be thought of in terms of before and after the pandemic. It looks at how the pandemic has brought to the fore the question of the appropriate ethics, politics, and spirituality and highlights the present condition of humanity and the need to rethink alternative planetary futures. It argues that the pandemic has existential and epistemic implications for human life on planet Earth, and a post–COVID-19 future requires a fundamental transformation of the present economic, political, and social conditions. Drawing on empirical case studies on the COVID-19 pandemic from Africa and beyond, contributions in this book challenge the reader to rethink alternative planetary futures. It will be a useful resource for students, scholars, and researchers of African studies, citizenship studies, global development, global politics, human geography, migration studies, development studies, international studies, international relations, and political science.

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

How the politicization of the pandemic endangers our lives—and our democracy COVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. Pandemic Politics examines how Donald Trump politicized COVID-19, shedding new light on how his administration tied the pandemic to the president’s political fate in an election year and chose partisanship over public health, with disastrous consequences for all of us. Health is not an inherently polarizing issue, but the Trump administration’s partisan response to COVID-19 led ordinary citizens to prioritize what was good for their “team” rather than what was good for their country. Democrats, in turn, viewed the crisis as evidence of Trump’s indifference to public well-being. At a time when solidarity and bipartisan unity were sorely needed, Americans came to see the pandemic in partisan terms, adopting behaviors and attitudes that continue to divide us today. This book draws on a wealth of new data on public opinion to show how pandemic politics has touched all aspects of our lives—from the economy to race and immigration—and puts America’s COVID-19 response in global perspective. An in-depth account of a uniquely American tragedy, Pandemic Politics reveals how the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic has profound and troubling implications for public health and the future of democracy itself.

COVID-19 isn’t simply a viral pathogen nor is it, strictly speaking, the trigger of a global pandemic. Since the outbreak began in late-2019, an outpouring of clinical and scientific research, together with an array of public health initiatives, has sought to understand, mitigate, or even eradicate the virus. This book represents a snapshot of critical responses by researchers from 10 countries and 4 continents, in a collective effort to explore how Cultural Studies can contribute to our struggle to persevere in a "no normal" horizon, with no clear end in sight. Together, the essays address important questions at the intersection of culture, power, politics, and public health: What are the possible outlines for the panic-pandemic complex? How has the pandemic been endowed with meanings and affective registers, often at the tipping points where existing social relations and medical understanding were being rapidly displaced by new ones? How can societies discover ways of living with, through, and against COVID that do not simply reproduce existing hierarchies and power relations? The 30 essays comprising this collection, along with the editors’ introduction, explore the formative period of the COVID pandemic, from mid-2020 to mid-2021. They are grouped into three sections – ‘Racializations,’ ‘Media, Data, and Fragments of the Popular,’ and ‘Un/knowing the Pandemic’ – themes that animate, but do not exhaust, the complex cultural and political life of COVID-19 with respect to identity, technology, and epistemology. No doubt, readers will chart their own pathway as the pandemic continues to rage on, based on their own unique circumstances. This book provides critical-intellectual guideposts for the way forward – toward an uncertain future, without guarantees. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Cultural Studies.

This book explores the unparalleled adversities and strain that the COVID-19 pandemic caused on the social and economic lives of people. The book allows readers a glimpse into the experiences of death of near and dears, loss of livelihood, psychological trauma, restrictions on movement and social life, shifts in international relations, and effects on big and small industries caused by the pandvnemic. It focusses on the major shifts caused within communities and highlights how politics, power dynamics, and socio-cultural systems have been reset and recovered during recent times. The volume also offers suggestions to offset economic hardships the pandemic has caused especially to the poor and marginalized as well as policy changes to help governments and communities to build more resilient economic and health infrastructure and support systems. With interdisciplinary contributions, this book is an essential read for students and researchers of public health, social sciences, health economics, healthcare management, development studies, public policy, and South Asian studies.

This book provides a critical media analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, using the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel to reveal the deliberate practices of those that have weaponized a deadly, serious disease against the most vulnerable members of society.

Separating FACT from FICTION in the COVID-19 Epidemic People are afraid. COVID-19 has upended our lives as it poses new medical dangers, economic suffering and grave uncertainty about the world around us. The collateral damage is enormous, but politics invade perception. There are so many unknowns. Does a treatment work? Is a vaccine coming? How likely are you to catch COVID and how can you best protect yourself and your family? What are the real risks and what is hysteria? Where are our fear leaders? What are their agendas? From Fox News Medical Contributor and the author of False Alarm (Wiley, 2008) comes COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science by Marc Siegel, M.D. This shocking exposé of the facts as the media covers the national pandemic news and spread of the invisible virus reinforces the notion that we must arm ourselves against fear tactics that limit our abilities to safely make decisions and protect our families in a world of uncertainty. Life for citizens of the developed world before the pandemic was safer, easier, and healthier than for any other people in history thanks to modern medicine, science, technology, and intelligence—but COVID-19 has stolen that security and our nation's peace of mind. Now there is a pandemic virus, as well as a crippling epidemic of fear sweeping America. Why? The answer, according to nationally renowned health commentator Dr. Marc Siegel, is that we already lived in an artificially created culture of fear that was just waiting to be unleashed. In COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science, Siegel identifies three major catalysts of the culture of fear: government, the media, and our own psyche. With fascinating, blow-by-blow analyses of the most sensational false alarms of the past few years, compounded now by the worst contagion of our lifetimes, he shows how fear mongers manipulate our most primitive instincts—often without our even realizing it. COVID shows us how to look behind the hype and hysteria, inoculate ourselves against these crippling fear tactics, and develop the emotional and intellectual skills needed to take back our lives, even as we battle the pandemic itself.