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Accepted Paper:
On Epidemiological Consciousness and Coronavirus: Envisioning Risk, Responsibility, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in New Zealand, the UK, and Social Anthropology
Nicholas Long
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
Sharyn Davies
(Monash University)
Susanna Trnka
(University of Auckland)
Nayantara Sheoran Appleton
(Victoria University of Wellington)
Nikita Simpson
(SOAS)
Eleanor Holroyd
Laumua Tunufa'i
(Auckland University of Technology)
Antje Deckert
(Auckland University of Technology)
Edmond Fehoko
(Auckland University of Technology)
Naseem Jivraj
(LSE)
Nelly Martin-Anatias
(Auckland University of Technology)
Rogena Sterling
(University of Waikato)
Paper long abstract:
Epidemiological consciousness profoundly shapes the way one lives through a pandemic. Pandemics make modellers of us all. Different ideas about one’s vulnerability to a pathogen and how it is spread within different spaces and by different types of body affect how one experiences transitions into and out of lockdown, how one behaves during a pandemic, and how one evaluates the behaviours of others. Divergent epidemiological consciousnesses can generate household conflict and lead friendships to drift apart. Conversely, alignments in epidemiological consciousness can underpin new forms of solidarity. While other factors (such as legal consciousness, or conceptions of the public good) are also important, documenting and accounting for emergent forms of epidemiological consciousness is central to understanding sociality, moral experience, and political subjectivity during a pandemic.
This paper demonstrates the constitutive importance of epidemiological consciousness by drawing on survey and interview work with New Zealanders during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplemented with comparative findings from the UK. We show epidemiological consciousness regarding Covid-19 to be shaped by several longstanding factors, including personal and familial medical histories, historic memoires of disease-related traumas, cultural and political ideas about health, and unconscious biases regarding ‘polluting’ bodies arising from structural racism. It also results from disparate policy responses: the centrality of ‘social bubbles’ to New Zealand’s Covid-19 strategy led New Zealand respondents to view exclusive social contact as safer than socially distanced outdoor encounters. In the UK, which prioritised a less limited shutdown of ‘the economy’, scientific advisers (and our respondents) suggested the opposite.
Much as divergent epidemiological consciousnesses have shaped our respondents’ practices and judgements, they have also shaped our own. We therefore conclude by exploring how reflexivity regarding anthropologists’ own epidemiological consciousnesses can best be incorporated into ‘critical medical anthropology’ when living through a pandemic.
Other co-authors: Pounamu Jade Aikman, Megan Laws, Michael Roguski
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Accepted Paper:
Nicholas Long (London School of Economics and Political Science) Sharyn Davies (Monash University) Susanna Trnka (University of Auckland) Nayantara Sheoran Appleton (Victoria University of Wellington) Nikita Simpson (SOAS) Eleanor Holroyd Laumua Tunufa'i (Auckland University of Technology) Antje Deckert (Auckland University of Technology) Edmond Fehoko (Auckland University of Technology) Naseem Jivraj (LSE) Nelly Martin-Anatias (Auckland University of Technology) Rogena Sterling (University of Waikato)
Paper long abstract:
Epidemiological consciousness profoundly shapes the way one lives through a pandemic. Pandemics make modellers of us all. Different ideas about one’s vulnerability to a pathogen and how it is spread within different spaces and by different types of body affect how one experiences transitions into and out of lockdown, how one behaves during a pandemic, and how one evaluates the behaviours of others. Divergent epidemiological consciousnesses can generate household conflict and lead friendships to drift apart. Conversely, alignments in epidemiological consciousness can underpin new forms of solidarity. While other factors (such as legal consciousness, or conceptions of the public good) are also important, documenting and accounting for emergent forms of epidemiological consciousness is central to understanding sociality, moral experience, and political subjectivity during a pandemic.
This paper demonstrates the constitutive importance of epidemiological consciousness by drawing on survey and interview work with New Zealanders during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplemented with comparative findings from the UK. We show epidemiological consciousness regarding Covid-19 to be shaped by several longstanding factors, including personal and familial medical histories, historic memoires of disease-related traumas, cultural and political ideas about health, and unconscious biases regarding ‘polluting’ bodies arising from structural racism. It also results from disparate policy responses: the centrality of ‘social bubbles’ to New Zealand’s Covid-19 strategy led New Zealand respondents to view exclusive social contact as safer than socially distanced outdoor encounters. In the UK, which prioritised a less limited shutdown of ‘the economy’, scientific advisers (and our respondents) suggested the opposite.
Much as divergent epidemiological consciousnesses have shaped our respondents’ practices and judgements, they have also shaped our own. We therefore conclude by exploring how reflexivity regarding anthropologists’ own epidemiological consciousnesses can best be incorporated into ‘critical medical anthropology’ when living through a pandemic.
Other co-authors: Pounamu Jade Aikman, Megan Laws, Michael Roguski
On being prepared
Session 1 Thursday 27 August, 2020, -