mid-April – May 4
In an effort to highlight the vital perspectives of medical anthropology and neighboring disciplines, as well as to help manage the volume of material being published online, the Society for Medical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Somatosphere are collaborating to publish a weekly compilation of COVID-19-related materials across text, audio, and video formats. Each issue of “Medical anthropology weekly: COVID-19” will consist of a list of pieces published roughly over the past week, grouped thematically and including keywords for easy searching. In this first issue, we’ve also included a list of ongoing series and resource sites. Each issue will also be published on the SMA, MAQ, and Somatosphere sites and distributed over multiple channels.
If you’d like to suggest a piece to be listed in an upcoming issue, please add it to this public spreadsheet. Please email your questions to medanthroweekly@gmail.com.
Series
- MAQ COVID-19 Responses | Medical Anthropology Quarterly
- Witnessing Corona | Medizinethnologie; Curare; Global South Studies Center Cologne; boasblogs
- Dispatches from the pandemic | Somatosphere
- The Age of COVID-19 | Association for Anthropology, Gerontology and the Life Course (AAGE)
- COVID-19 webinars | American Anthropological Association, Society for Medical Anthropology, Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies SIG
- Covid-19, Fieldsights | Cultural Anthropology
- Pandemic Diaries | American Ethnologist
- Pandemic Insights | Anthropology News
- COVID-19: Views from the Field | Platypus – The CASTAC Blog
- The Covid-19 Chronicles | Discover Society
- Consciously Quarantined | UCL Medical Anthropology
- Corona Chronicles: Voices from the Field | Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
- COVIDCalls | Scott Knowles | podcast
- Collecting COVID-19 | Haidy Geismar and Hannah Knox | UCL Centre for Digital Ethnography
- Thinking in a Pandemic | Boston Review
- Posts from the Pandemic | Critical Inquiry
- Stories from a Pandemic | The Nocturnists | podcast
Resources
- #coronavirussyllabus | Alondra Nelson, crowd-sourced | SSRC | syllabus
- COVID-19 Resources | American Anthropological Association
- COVID-19 Resources | Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies SIG
- Pandemic Perspectives: Responding to COVID-19 | Michael C. Ennis-McMillan and Kristin Hedges, eds. | Open Anthropology
- MAT Virtual Issue: Outbreaks, Epidemic, and Infectious Diseases | Cristina Moreno Lozano, ed. | Medicine Anthropology Theory
- Covid-19 and the Social Sciences | Social Science Research Council
- COVID-19 documents and briefings | Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform
- COVID-19 Resources for Sociologists | American Sociological Association
- COVID-19 Pandemic Resources | Consortium of Social Science Associations
- Structural Competency Resources | Structural Competency
- Feminist Resources on the Pandemic | Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy
- Public collection of COVID-19 Citations | Yale University Medical Library
- The Politics of COVID-19 | The Syllabus | reading lists
The social and human sciences and the pandemic
- Society After Pandemic | Alondra Nelson | SSRC Items | text | social science, anticipatory social research, knowledge, education
- Funding Anthropological Research in the Age of Covid-19 | Danilyn Rutherford | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | anthropology, ethnography, research
- What the Coronavirus Crisis Needs From Anthropology | Fadwa El Guindi | Pandemic Insights, Anthropology News | text | anthropology, knowledge
- Facing Covid-19: My Land of Neither Hope nor Despair | Veena Das | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | teaching, governance, experience, knowledge
- Biosocial Medical Anthropology in the Time of Covid-19. New Challenges and Opportunities | Sahra Gibbon, Lewis Daly, Aaron Parkhurst, Carrie Ryan, Gul Deniz Salali and Alex Tasker | Consciously Quarantined | text || embodiment, city, evolution, biosocial difference, embodied inequalities, zoonosis, One Health, the Anthropocene, aging
- STS approaches to COVID-19 | Jenny Reardon, Sabina Leonelli, Rebecca Hester, Arthur Daemmrich, Carlo Maduff, Saul Halfon | Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech | video/webinar | STS, knowledge, expertise, infrastructure
Politics of life and death
- A global health crisis? No, something far worse | Richard Horton | The Lancet | text | politics of life, biolegitimacy, public health, Anthropocene
- Staying at home on planet earth | Anand Pandian | The Hindu | text | home, climate crisis, Anthropocene
- New Pathogen, Old Politics | Alex de Waal | Boston Review | text | history, social medicine, global health
- Lonely Death in Pandemic Times | Harris Solomon and Mara Buchbinder | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology| text | death, trauma, isolation, United States, India
- Web Roundup: How War, Not a Pandemic, Became America’s New Normal | Stephanie Palazzo | Somatosphere | text | Cold War, public health, war, United States
- The Cruelty of War: Repairing COVID-19 Through Healing and Cure | Emily Yates-Doerr | MAQ-COVID 19 Responses | text | metaphor, war, structural violence, Guatemala, United States | Spanish translation
- “Bigas Hindi Dahas”: Covid-19 and State Violence | Thea Kersti Condes Tandog | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | everyday violence, necropolitics, governance, Philippines
- Suspension, Risk, Suspicion: Field dispatches from Pakistan under COVID-19 | Sonia Qadir | Platypus – The CASTAC Blog | text | politics, risk, security, fieldwork, Pakistan
- Crisis Redux, Viral Uncertainty, and Militarized Care: Coronavirus in the Aftermath of Bolivia’s Uncertain Coup | Caitlyn Dye | Platypus – The CASTAC Blog | text | crisis, politics, care, military, Bolivia | Spanish translation
Clinical experiences, interventions, and healthcare infrastructures
- “Extraordinary Medicines” | Yifeng Troy Cai | MAQ-COVID 19 Responses | text | medicine, treatment, hope, China
- As Telemedicine Surges, Will Community Health Suffer? | Jeremy Greene | Boston Review | text | history, community heath, telemedicine, disparities, United States
- COVID19 Frontline Experience | Byron Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Michael M.J. Fischer, Antonio Bullon, Michael Nathan, Catherine Peeler, Iman Roushdy Hammady, Sylvia Schuster | Friday Morning Seminar in Culture, Psychiatry & Global Mental Health, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School | video | clinical experience, United States
- COVID-19 in Hong Kong, Indonesia and the United States | Byron Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Michael M.J. Fischer, Alasdair Donald, Sandeep Nanwani, Priscilla Song, Joseph Walline | Friday Morning Seminar in Culture, Psychiatry & Global Mental Health, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School | video | clinical experience, public health, governance, United States, Hong Kong, Indonesia
- The Logic of ‘Advanced Deployment’ to Tackle COVID-19 in Taiwan | Yi-Cheng Wu | Consciously Quarantined | text | healthcare workers, border control, public health, Taiwan
- Austerity, Not COVID-19, Strains National Healthcare Systems | Megan Carney and Bayla Ostrach | Somatosphere | text | austerity, political economy of health care, Spain, Italy, Europe
- Africa, Laboratory Equipment and COVID-19 Response | Louise Bezuidenhout | Somatosphere | text | infrastructure, laboratory, Africa
Structural violence, racism, and social determinants of health
- The Black Plague | Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | The New Yorker | text | racism, disparities, structural violence, United States
- Black Skin, White Masks: Racism, Vulnerability & Refuting Black Pathology | Ruha Benjamin | Princeton University, Dept of African American Studies | lecture – video/transcript | racism, disparities, vulnerability, United States
- From HIV to COVID19: Anthropology, urgency, and the politics of engagement | Thurka Sangaramoorthy | Somatosphere | text | engaged anthropology, HIV/AIDS, racism, structural violence
- Listen to Black Women…please? | Chelsea Carter | Footnotes | text | racism, disparities, death
- It’s about racism, not race, when coronavirus hits communities of color hard | Clarence Gravlee | Tampa Bay Times | text | racism, disparities, social determinants, United States
- Structural Competency & COVID19 Webinar Part 1: Basic Needs and First Response | Helena Hansen, Cara McGuinness, Eloho Akpovi, Jayinee Basu, Seth Holmes, Kelly Knight, Jonathan Metzl | Structural Competency | webinar – video | structural violence, racism, disparities, vulnerability, harm reduction, homelessness, community mental health
- Structural Competency in the Time of COVID-19 Part 2: Medically Marginalized Populations | Helena Hansen, Cara McGuinness, Eloho Akpovi, Jayinee Basu, Seth Holmes, Kelly Knight, Jonathan Metzl | Structural Competency | webinar – video | structural violence, racism, racial disparities, vulnerability, disability, migrants, harm reduction, drug use, indigenous health
- COVID-19 and the Color Line | Colin Gordon, Walter Johnson, Jason Q. Purnell, and Jamala Rogers | Boston Review | text | racism, disparities, history, United States
- The Social Determinants Of Covid-19 And BAME Disproportionality | Nasar Meer, Kaveri Qureshi, Ben Kasstan and Sarah Hill | Discover Society | text | racism, disparities, social determinants, UK
- Are There More Covid-19 Deaths Than Expected In BAME Communities In England – What Does The Data Say? | Miqdad Asaria | Discover Society | text | racism, disparities, social determinants, UK
- Response to the COVID-19 pandemic in urban slums and rural populations in Latin America | Arachu Castro | UNDP in Latin America and the Caribbean | text | urban slums, rural areas, Latin America, Caribbean
- The Cultural Construction of the ‘Bizzare’. Disentangling Sinophobic Language in Media and Science During the COVID-19 Epidemic | Dana Mahr | Witnessing Corona Blog Series | text/photo | Sinophobia, stigmatization, exoticization, racism, social media
Public health and governance
- It’s not too late to go on offense against the coronavirus | Jim Yong Kim | The New Yorker | text | public health, testing
- What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop | Carlo Caduff | pre-publication | text | public health, evidence, policy
- Will financial innovation transform pandemic response? | Susan L Erikson and Leigh Johnson | The Lancet Infectious Diseases | text | financing, funding, public health, humanitarianism
- Thinking about the common good: COVID-19 and governance in Taiwan | Chia Yu Lien | MAQ-COVID 19 Responses | text | governance, care, Taiwan
- The Symbolic Power of Virus Testing | Kristin Hedges | Sapiens | text | public health, testing, HIV/AIDS, visibility
- The Bubble: A New Medical and Public Health Vocabulary For COVID-19 Times | Nayantara Sheoran Appleton | Somatosphere | text/photo | public health, history, terminology, New Zealand
- Why the WHO, often under fire, has a tough balance to strike in its efforts to address health emergencies | Andrew Lakoff | The Conversation | text | public health, governance, geopolitics
- Covid-19 and global health, seen from France: the end of a “great divide”? | Jean-Paul Gaudillière and Claire Beaudevin | Somatosphere | text | global health, Global South, globalization, political economy of health care, France
- Rapid Public Health Enlightenment (RPHE) to Curb the Continued Spread Of COVID-19 in Nigeria | S. Akinmayọwa Lawal and Jimoh Amzat | text | public health, Nigeria
- Hope and History in South Africa’s Pandemic | Fiona C. Ross | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | public health, HIV/AIDS, South Africa
- Singapore Nipped Things in the Bud – Germany Struggled With Delays | Kristina Großmann, Maribeth Erb, Nicole Weydmann, and Novia Tirta Rahayu Tijaja | #Witnessing Corona Blog Series | text/photo | governance, public health, comparison, Singapore, German
- COVID-19: Ongoing Global Responses and Social Impact Webinar | Jorge Benavides-Rawson, Isaac K. Nyamongo, and Suman Chakrabarty | AAA and Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies | webinar – video | public health, distancing, contact tracing, Costa Rica, India, Kenya
Expertise, uncertainty, skepticism, and epidemiological models
- Ground-Zero Empiricism | Lorraine Daston | Critical Inquiry: In the Moment | text | uncertainty, observation
- Pandemic Nowcasting: On the Blind Spots of Covering Covid-19 in Real Time | Lukas Engelmann | Edinburgh Infectious Diseases | video | modeling, statistics, forecasting, media
- Expertise, Coronavirus, and the New Normal | Charles Ebikeme | Think Global Health | text | global health, Global South, knowledge, expertise, diagnostics, South Africa, Uganda, Senegal
- Pandemicity, COVID-19 and the limits of public health ‘science’ | Eugene T Richardson | BMJ Global Health | text | modeling, forecasting, epidemiology, public health, global health, pandemicity, pathologies of power
- Visualizing Viruses | Michael Rossi | London Review of Books | text | history, visual representation, media
- In the time of COVID – ‘April is the cruellest month’ | David Clark | Discover Society | text | biopower, statistics, death
- They Sow the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind (Covid Doubt in St. Petersburg) | Xenia Cherkaev | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology| text | knowledge, skepticism, religion, Russia
Mental health and social health
- How people and policy can protect mental health during the lockdown | Nikolas Rose, Craig Morgan and Benedict Wilkinson | King’s College London | text | mental health, isolation, anxiety, social solidarity, mutual support, policy
- Mental health in the time of COVID | Nikolas Rose and Craig Morgan | WORLD: we got this podcast | audio | mental health, isolation, anxiety, social solidarity, mutual support, policy
- Inner Panic During the Pandemic | Jeanna Buriak | Pandemic Insights, Anthropology News | text | mental health, anxiety, frontline work
- Overcrowded and Understaffed: Coronavirus Has Exposed the Flaws in Our Mental Health System | Ed Kiely and Joannah Griffith | Novara Media | text | mental health, mutual aid, care, UK
- AMHIG Coronavirus Statement: This is *Not Fine. It’s OK If You’re *Not Fine | Anthropology and Mental Health Interest Group | text | mental health, academia, recommendations
Environment and the Anthropocene
- Silent Spring in Europe calls for a New Social Ecology | Tanja Bogusz and Frédéric Keck | Somatosphere | text | ecology, environment, history, risk, Europe
- Driving Home ‘Single-Use’: Plastic Politics In The Times Of The Covid-19 | Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael | Discover Society | text | pollution, waste, UK, United States
- Clean in Times of Covid-19: on Hygiene and Pollution | Mandy de Wilde, Weera Koopman and Annemarie Mol | Somatosphere | text/photo | environment, hygiene, pollution, waste, The Netherlands
- COVID-19: A Simulacrum of the Climate Crisis? | Hacer Gören | Consciously Quarantined | text | climate change, hyperobject, Turkey
Precarity, labor, and care
- We call workers ‘essential’ – but is that just referring to the work, not the people? | Zachary Jaggers | The Conversation | text | language, labor, value
- Covid-19: Appropriation of survival of garments workers | Nafisa Tanjeem | New Age Opinion | text | labor, economisation of survival narratives, media blackout, Bangladesh
- The Global City And Its Underside: Covid-19 In Moscow | Anni Kangas and Zarnigor Omonillaeva | Discover Society | text | labor, precarity, migration, mutual aid, Russia
- Impact of Covid-19 on Hijras, a Third-Gender Community in India | Ina Goel | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | lockdown, gender, India
- Virginia’s Story: How The COVID-19 Crisis Can Help Us Think About Older Adults Who Live In Perennial Abandonment | Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori | The Age of COVID-19, AAGE | text | aging, abandonment, Peru
Everyday life under quarantine and after
- As societies re-open in this pandemic, we need social solidarity to survive the summer | Seth Holmes | BMJ Opinion | text | social solidarity, distancing, vulnerability, structural violence
- How cafes, bars, gyms, barbershops and other ‘third places’ create our social fabric | Setha Low | The Conversation | text | sociality, third places
- ‘Social Distancing’ is more than standing 6 feet away | Kamala Russell | MAQ-COVID 19 Responses | text | distancing, proxemics, Oman
- Pandemic Change-up – Invisible Social Structure Revealed Webinar | Christine Avenarius, Inga Treitle, Nimmo Elmi, Lotta Bjorklund Larsen, Taapsi Ramchandani, Natalia Usme | AAA | webinar – video | social networks, Kenya, Sweden, Bolivia, India
- Parks In A Pandemic: A Glimpse Into The Future? | Anna Barker and Andrew Smith | Discover Society | text | public health, public spaces
- Communion in Quarantine: How Liturgical Christian Churches Celebrated Easter | Christopher Sheklian | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | distancing, sociality, religion, Armenian Apostolic Christianity
- When the Clock Starts Moving Again | Anna Brooke, Pelagie Couroyer, Elizabeth Fraser, Juan Mejía, and Jonathan Spencer | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | politics, the everyday, temporality, experience
- Corona Chronotopes | Anna Weichselbraun | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | media, temporality, chronotope, Italy
- Birthing under Investigation | Stephanie Schiavenato | Covid-19, Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology | text | birth, essential work, United States
- Fear and Hope in Corona Times (Bengali) | Anmona Priyodorshini | Thotkata: Bilingual Feminist Blog | text | fear, hope, aspiration, corruption, Bangladesh
- What Does Toilet Paper Teach Us about Our Defecation Habits? | Bicram Rijal | Somatosphere | text/photo | defecation, waste, panic buying, Nepal, North America
- Corona-Ninjas and Corona-Hyenas: COVID-19 Rhetoric in Poland | Izabella Main and Anna Witeska-Młynarczyk | #Witnessing Corona Blog Series | text/photo | labeling, popular discourse, social media, Poland
- Of Grandparents, Memories and the Pandemic | Tannistha Samanta | The Age of COVID-19, AAGE | text | aging, memory, India
- The Past 60-plus Days in China: Covid-19 Perspectives from a Wuhan-native | Li Honglin | Consciously Quarantined | text/photo | after quarantine, community, infodemic, China
Masks
- Face masks: what the Spanish flu can teach us about making them compulsory | Samuel Cohn | The Conversation | text | masking, safety, history
- Covid-19: Asymptomatic Infection And The Question Of Face Masks For How We Live This Pandemic | Marsha Rosengarten, Kari Lancaster, and Tim Rhodes | Discover Society | masking, uncertainty, public health, UK
- Masks and Emasculation: Why Some Men Refuse to Take Safety Precautions | Peter Glick | Scientific American | text | gender, masking, safety
- The Masked Man | Stephen E. Nash | Sapiens | text | masking, ritual, history, archaeology
Teaching and Learning
- What We Lose When We Go From the Classroom to Zoom | Karen Strassler |New York Times | text | higher education, distance learning
- Covid-19 Diaries: Early Impressions from an Online Questionnaire | Benjamin Daniels, Jishnu Das, Ali Hamza, and Beatrice Leydier | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | higher education, mental health, United States
- Analysis on the Influence of Epidemic on Education in China | Chunchen Xiao and Yi Li | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | primary and secondary education, higher education, China
- Covid-19 and Climate Change in the Lives of Students | Naveeda Khan | AE: Covid-19 and Student-Focused Concerns: Threats and Possibilities | text | higher education, youth, United States
- Coronavirus and Class Struggle, Education and Beyond: A Call to Action | Carli Rowell | Discover Society | text | primary and secondary education, class, UK