Short abstract:

In this study, I set out to retrace the unfolding of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Singapore through a twenty-one month ethnographic study about vaccine hesitancy. The larger issue I investigate the making of mistrust in health authorities, that I have come to see as a process of alienation.

Long abstract:

This article showcases how alienation can serve as a diagnostic tool to better understand public health governance crises. I revisit the conflicts surrounding the state-distributed COVID-19 vaccines in Singapore, a country that has achieved one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Between 2021 and 2022, the country gradually deployed a host of “Vaccination Differentiated Safe Management Measures” to encourage/coerce the population to get vaccinated. This ethnographic study provides insight into the everyday life experiences of this population, unfolds how ever-tightening movement restrictions shaped the relationship of the jabbed, the unjabbed, and public health governance. I argue that experiences of alienation lead people to undergo a ‘loss of presence’ in the sense that they question their relationship with the government, health authorities and the people around them. Alienation helps to see this conflict in a new light. Instead of framing this conflict as one of misinformation, public misunderstanding of science, or continuing to ridicule people with the antivaxxer label, we need to take people’s everyday health practices and decision seriously. I show the practices of medical authoritarianism in public health governance can lead to undesired outcomes and how alienation helps us to unveil the problematic relationships.