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23/03/20
 
About this blog
„Witnessing Corona“ is inviting contributions of max 2000 words that address questions of: – Social solidarity and moral blaming – Living a life in social and/or physical isolation – Unequal biosocial and/or psychological vulnerabilities – Political-economic implications for healthcare infrastructures – Historically contingent forms, possibilities, and risks of governmental intervention – And a host of […]
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Sydney Howe
13/07/20
Emerging from Lockdown
“Moral pioneering” in Everyday Practices for Women in Europe and North America
As Europe and North America begin to ease lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, this essay looks broadly at how people, especially women, assess and justify risk and the morality of social contact, and the actions they take as a result. In other words, how do women act as “moral pioneers” (Rapp 1988) while navigating […]
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Catherine J. Letcher Lazo
06/07/20
Mixed Messages
COVID-19, a Cartoon Heroine, and Violence Against Women in Mexico
One of the gendered impacts of COVID-19 is the surge of violence against women and girls (VAWG) in many parts of the world as a result of lockdowns and stay-in-place orders (UN Women 2020). Using Mexico as a case study, I will address possible causes for the rise of VAWG during the current pandemic, and […]
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Gareth Haysom
29/06/20
When “Slow Violence” Collides with Visceral Hunger
COVID-19 and the Current and Future Food System of Cape Town, South Africa
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated both the unsustainability and the fragility of our current food system, across multiple scales. COVID-19 has proven to be the litmus test for the current industrialized food system, one that has, in certain circles, been championed as being the only way in which society can ensure adequate global food supply […]
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Oleg Zurmühlen
26/06/20
Whose Space is this?
A Multispecies Auto-Ethnography of Viral-Human Negotiations in the Contact Zone
Just as this intimidating encounter of an orang-utan in the city SARS-CoV-2 reshapes the spatial and temporal organization of (public) social space. Source: Orangutan by Taylor Herring (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).   “Like faces pressed against a window, they leer at me menacingly: their very nearness is what menaces” (Timothy Morton 2013).   Co-existing with SARS-CoV-2 […]
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Anna Ixy Noever
24/06/20
„In Isolation“
Dokumentation über die Zeit nach dem COVID-19 Lockdown
Die Idee zu dem Film „In Isolation“ ist während der Zeit nach dem Corona-Lockdown im März 2020 entstanden. Die damit verbundene kollektive Isolation, die uns alle in Österreich in Distanz zueinander und zur Außenwelt setzte, hat mich so in ihren Bann gezogen, dass ich von heute auf morgen begann, dieses Projekt umzusetzen. Die Zeitspanne von […]
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Annamaria Fantauzzi
19/06/20
Pandemic, Democratic Death, and Antifragility in Contemporary Italy
A Personal Reflection
This article aims to reflect on how dying and the perception of death in the COVID-19 pandemic have changed in Piedmont (Italy). It explores how the relatives have been deprived of the possibility of accompanying the corpses and practicing the funeral ritual of the deceased; and how a new form of ‘death education’ has become […]
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Anna Lisa RamellaMartin Zillinger
05/06/20
Future-making on Hold
Pandemic Audio Diaries from two Rift Valley Lakes in Kenya
In this post, we share the accounts of our research partners from Lake Baringo and Lake Naivasha in the Kenyan Rift Valley on how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic impacts their lives and livelihoods. In mobile research with mobile people, mobile media have for long taken an important stance in terms of communicating in and with “the […]
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Alice Colombo
03/06/20
Government, Church, and the Community of Believers
Managing the Coronavirus in Ethiopia during Easter Time
When the coronavirus enters Ethiopia The first time I heard somebody talking about the coronavirus in Ethiopia was in my car, in Addis Ababa, at the beginning of February 2020, as I was giving a lift to some of my Ethiopian colleagues from one side of the city to the other. Chatting during the journey, […]
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Geger Riyanto
01/06/20
COVID-19 Secrecy in Indonesia
Between Economy and the Government’s Empty Pride
Angela Merkel’s remark on 11 March 2020 that up to 70 percent of Germany’s population could contract COVID-19 was brutal. Being highlighted in various Indonesian news outlets, I can imagine how her words baffled their audience. Still, as someone who has to witness how secretive government gestures worsened the COVID-19-induced uncertainty in Indonesia, I strangely […]
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Jacob Nerenberg
27/05/20
Blocking the Pandemic
Regional Boundary Controls in Indonesia’s Far East
Indonesia, whose population of 267 million inhabits a vast archipelago, has not been spared the challenge of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The difficulty of managing the disease has been compounded by limited public health and health care capacity, and high mobility of people and goods within the country and across its borders. A noteworthy feature of […]
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