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Accepted Paper:
The production of sentinel posts to fight against COVID-19—an ethnographic investigation of volunteers at a Beijing residential community
Yishan Wang
(Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation offers preliminary thoughts regarding the roles of ordinary urban residents who volunteer at the frontline defence in a Beijing residential community. I suggest that their participation leads to the active production of the "sentinel posts" (Keck 2020) during the epidemic outbreak.
Paper long abstract:
It is widely accepted in China that the anti-COVID fighting depends on collective efforts of individuals of the whole country. However, Chinese people's active participation at the individual level in the COVID prevention and control is not self-evident. This presentation seeks to shed light on what ordinary urban residents can contribute to by volunteering at the frontline defence in a neighbourhood community (shequ). Drawing on my short-time participant experience working as a anti-epidemic volunteer and semi-structured interviews with six long-term volunteers at the neighborhood community where I live, I will offer some initial thoughts regarding the roles of anti-epidemic volunteers. I suggest that by performing jobs such as monitoring of incoming visitors, patrolling main entrances of xiaoqu, maintaining a visitor log and identifying potential 'virus carriers', their participation may produce what Keck (2020) has described as the sentinel post during the epidemic outbreak.