Understanding the COVID-19 Pandemic Sociologically. Book Review: Lupton D. (2022) COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis. Abingdon: Routledge
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2023.4.2393Keywords:
COVID societies, syndemic, pandemic, biopolitics, Deborah LuptonAbstract
The article reviews the book “COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis” by Deborah Lupton. The author of the book seeks to identify appropriate sociocultural frameworks and concepts to understand the changes provoked by the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world has changed a lot since January 2020, Lupton notes, and the COVID crisis has “reshaped” all areas of social and daily life. Understanding these new processes calls for a complex analysis which involves examining relevant academic and popular discourse surrounding the pandemic, the macropolitical study, and then, through the late modern social reflection, researching everyday ideas and practices that adapt to new global conditions. Based on this, it is possible to continue studying daily life in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the author draws on the theories of ‘bare life’ by Agamben and its interpretation by Esposito, Foucault’s concept of biopower, Mbembe’s notion of ‘necropolitics’, Deleuze’s deconstructionism, Beck’s idea of risk society, and Douglas’s ideas of cultural boundaries. Lupton skillfully demonstrates how these approaches can be used to analyze the pandemic, which, in her opinion, allows to analyze the interconnected social, political, and economic contexts of the COVID-19 pandemic based on methodological pluralism.
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