Abstract
The cycle of attention and inattention has plagued efforts to prepare for future pandemics in global health for decades. After the initial outbreak and eventual resolution or gradual acceptance of endemicity, the amounts of funding, scientific research, and scholarly discussion about potential future pathogens becomes muted. Similarly, in sociology, we too have witnessed ebbs and flows of academic publications in the sociology of pandemics (Dingwall, Hoffman, and Staniland 2013; Zinn 2021; Pickersgill 2020; Nelson 2020) and in the broader sociology of global health (Harris and White 2019).
Like many academic fields, sociology has reoriented much of its research activity to be about the pandemic. With so much written, work needs to be done to ensure that our respective findings can be cumulative and be linked together to form collective insights into the post-pandemic world. This volume, A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society, edited by Steve Matthewman, is a welcomed collection that takes stock of pandemic research conducted in the past few years and points researchers to future directions (it is also available open access online). The volume is organized into 12 different chapters, written by contributors from sociology (the most represented discipline, with 8 contributors), anthropology, disaster studies, economics, communications, Indigenous studies, epidemiology, and philosophy. Empirical material and case studies have been drawn from different parts of the world, including Australia (where most of the authors are located), New Zealand, Canada, China, Sweden, and the United States.
The volume’s many contributions largely revolve around three themes. First, authors reflected on the role of the social sciences in anticipating and documenting the pandemic’s effects. In part, the social sciences can illuminate alternative futures. Matthewman (Chapter 2) opens up this thread of inquiry by stating that “COVID-19 has forced appreciation of, and focus on, the social. With this comes renewed relevance for the social sciences” (p. 14). In the chapter, Matthewman points to some of the roles the social sciences can play: in speaking truth to power, the perils of prognostication, and demanding utopia. As Matthewman argues, “ideas and knowledge can be transferred as easily as viruses” (p. 14), and the social sciences can play a key role in spreading knowledge about “impossibilities” that were realized during the pandemic, such as how “homelessness was ended in Aotearoa New Zealand, free childcare was provided in Australia, hospitals have been nationalized in Spain,” and more (p. 14). Relatedly, Simon Lambert (Chapter 5), writing about Indigenous urgencies and disasters, argues that “the response/recovery nexus of any crisis is contingent on whose interests are identified and addressed as being at risk, and for colonized people this authority is primarily wielded by a colonial master who was rarely liable for the loss of Indigenous lives” (p. 71). The strategies used to prevent and mitigate disasters like COVID-19 thus embed the interests of those in power. Social science, in partnership with Indigenous knowledge, can be called upon to question these power relations, if they are given time and space to do so.
The social sciences also play a crucial role in untangling the effects of the pandemic. Cordula Dittmer and Daniel Lorenz (Chapter 6) remind us that pandemics—throughout history—have altered social, political, and economic institutions in their wake. As the authors argue of the 1918 Flu, “the effects of past pandemics . . . on the social processes of the last century have hardly been researched and discussed to date” (p. 87). Similarly, Luke Goode (Chapter 12) reminds us that while there will be a temptation to set an end date to the pandemic, “The crisis is still unfolding. The sands have been shifting from the start and, even once it is declared ‘over,’ its impacts will reverberate in complex ways for a long time to come” (p. 195). Sociologists working today must therefore be cognizant of these enduring effects and account for the pandemic in different domains of life.
Second, this volume’s authors reflect on the effect of the pandemic on social science methods and the conditions of its knowledge production. For those who particularly rely on qualitative and in-person field work to collect data, the pandemic posed a problem as researchers balanced their own health and safety, similar needs of their respondents, institutional constraints, and the imperative to study and document the unfolding pandemic. Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark, Ash Watson, and Deborah Lupton (Chapter 10) offer a review of three creative case studies where qualitative research leveraged innovative methods to offer us insight into social life during the pandemic. For instance, researchers relied on digital photo diaries used to explore fitness practices during lockdown, digital ethnography of TikTok to examine the circulation of health information on the platform, and creative writing workshops where participants’ beliefs and feelings about data practices were queried.
L. L. Wynn and Susanna Trnka (Chapter 11), similarly, provide reflections on phenomenology and ethnography during the pandemic. While demonstrating the fruitfulness of documenting the shared experiences of isolation during the pandemic, the authors urge caution, as while “we aim to interpret, we must tread a careful line between extrapolating from our own experiences and perceptions, documenting those of others and remaining acutely cognizant of the limits of this enterprise” (p. 191). Kate Huppatz and Lyn Craig (Chapter 9) point to the structural conditions of the academy that have shifted as a result of the pandemic. Using care work as an example, the authors show how early-career female researchers are most affected. The authors urge us to help in the endeavor of reimagining the academy, arguing for “an ethics of care, in that collective wellbeing, rather than individual competition, is prioritized in research, teaching and leadership practice” (p. 148).
Third, authors discuss the importance of appreciating the effects of the pandemic on society at the macro level. While the aforementioned contributors focus on the micro level and individual experiences of the pandemic, the remaining contributors urge us to take a step back to appreciate the broader societal shifts that have occurred as a result of the pandemic. At the level of geopolitics, Naoise McDonagh (Chapter 7) offers a reflection of how geopolitics shaped vaccine diplomacy between the United States and China during the pandemic and how this competition is rooted in history and a country’s view of itself as a “civilizational state.” The author argues that these large-scale geopolitical rifts will continue to have an impact on society after the pandemic.
At the level of the nation-state, Richey Wyver (Chapter 4) shows how the case of “Swedish exceptionalism” and the strategy of “herd immunity” have a deeper historical root in Swedish nationalism and identity. Tim Dare and Justine Kingsbury (Chapter 8) also offer us words of caution with the redesign of public health infrastructures globally: while vaccine passports may seem like a good public health strategy, these practices may also mask deeper inequalities that shape who has access to health care and vaccinations. These macro-level transformations of society, while consequential, may be imperceptible if we only look at snapshots in time, or if we look at different parts of society in isolation. In order to do that, sociologists need to organize. This edited volume does just that. And more needs to be done to sustain a sociology of pandemics, after the pandemic.