Abstract Society in the Time of Plague

Postmodern Openings, 2022

The current global crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has already become a challenge for individual national economies, as well as the global world system as a whole. The eminent English historian Toynbee (1987) wrote that the viability of a civilization depends on the extent to which its elite (“the creative minority”) can mobilize its intellectual, moral, and physical strength to respond adequately to the challenges. Therefore, challenges are necessary for humanity since without them one would deal with spiritual and intellectual stagnation. Indeed, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. This aphorism becomes especially relevant in present times when the world is concerned with what the “post-covid” world will be, what transformations the values and worldview of individuals will undergo. The coronavirus pandemic acts in this case as a catalyst and accelerator for change and forces one to pay attention to them. As Toffler (1971) once pointed out, “The inhabitants of ...

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

Digithum

Over the last decade, the social agenda has been shaped by a continuous chain of potentially forthcoming future emergencies. Imagined, projected, and expected emergencies and crises have affected political and scientific agendas and redefined the pre-planning for risks at a local, national, and global level. Whilst most of these emergencies took place largely on an imaginary stage and never materialised – at least not with significant effects on global society – the COVID-19 pandemic finally made real the imaginary that had been expected and projected for over a decade. This article claims that within the context of an emergency in the making and the consequent social, economic, political, and material crises, sociology and social analysis need to assume new responsibilities by providing answers and perspective to those social developments that are direct and indirect results of the social and material conditions of a society of emergency. In a world in which the reality of emergenc...

Phronimon, 2020

The coronavirus outbreak is currently scrutinised by professional philosophers from different traditions and geographical areas. By focusing on several contributions from European academic philosophers, this article assesses whether such philosophical works manifest and reproduce, consciously or unconsciously, neocolonial and Eurocentric understandings of the Covid-19 pandemic. Particular attention will be given to Agamben's and Žižek's interpretations to show the role played in their analysis by reductionist and regressive constructions of the social world. I will then draw on several contributions from African and Africana philosophers (Gqola, Asante, More, West and Outlaw), to set up a theoretical space in which the social experiencing of the coronavirus outbreak, as well as the self-understanding of academic philosophers, could be positively reconceptualised. This act of resignification has its aim in promoting adequate forms of institutional analysis and professional engagement, and it points to the emancipatory task philosophy embodies in the global South.

Philosophical Practice, vol 15.2-3, 2020

This article aims to describe phenomenologically a most recent practical philosophical experience, which is still going on, as – at the moment (April 2020) – is continuing the pandemic of a new strain of the coronavirus disease named Covid-19. A health and social crisis of vast complexity, able to upset our lives and our beliefs, therefore so deeply significant to make us share a few reflections on our conditions as human beings, and the conditions of the world we live in. Moreover, despite its being a work in progress, this philosophical conversation may allow us to trace a sort of orienteering pathway which can be helpful during this extra-ordinary experience, as well as a powerful remedy against our malaise. An experience which is, spatially and temporally, both local and global, and brings out questions and matters that for us as human beings are equally actual and eternal.

International Social Sciences Review, 2023

A paradigm is also known as worldview, a description of the world indicates ways to find answers to any given phenomena. Crisis occurs in the social system when a paradigm can’t provide us with ways of producing knowledge due to some anomalies. The Covid-19 pandemic is one such anomaly, that neither ended nor has completely disappeared from our social world, posing a serious epistemic challenge to our research paradigms, be it scientific or social. Ontology, a (philosophical) inquiry of the ‘nature of the reality’ has itself changed due to the pandemic as the virtual and real worlds collide and the distinction between the two realities become ambiguous. Epistemology, a branch of philosophy that determines “how and what realities can be known?” is determined by ontological assumptions. It must be noted that the methodology, which is the philosophical justification of employing particular types of research methods and techniques, is based on the philosophical branches of ontology and epistemology. A catastrophe like the Covid-19 pandemic is predetermined, given that pandemic and devastating catastrophes are the watershed moments of human history. Hence, the paper argues for a new paradigm to understand the changing social realities while recognizing the limitations of the existing (research) paradigms to seek answers to the challenges posed by the pandemic. The recognition of the limitations in the existing research paradigms is necessary toward formulation of a new paradigm for newer ways of understanding and knowing changed social realities.

Book Chapter, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown policies in the years 2020 and 2021 have exerted economic, social, and psychic implications for most people. The reception by social scientists is almost exclusively a negative one; in this essay, a contrasting, more positive perspective is developed, based on the philosophy of Aristotelian Ethics. The idea is developed that this coronavirus pandemic interrupts and distorts the work-consumption-treadmill, enabling people to live out those talents and capabilities that make people human, lifting them beyond the stage of an animal with only basic needs. This societal development continues under the influence of the energy crisis and the rising inflation in the year 2022.

Current Sociology

This conclusion revisits the COVID-19 pandemic from the broader perspective of a changing global world. It raises questions regarding the opportunities for global learning under conditions of global divisions and competition and includes learning from the Other, governing within a changing public sphere, and challenging national cultural practices. Moreover, it exemplifies how the society–nature–technology nexus has become crucial for understanding and reconstructing the dynamics of the coronavirus crisis such as the assemblages of geographical conditions, technological means and the governing of ignorance, the occurrence of hotspots as well as living under lockdown conditions. It finishes with some preliminary suggestions how reoccurring pandemics might contribute to long-term changes in human attitudes and behaviour towards the environment and a technologically shaped lifeworld.

Środkowoeuropejskie Studia Polityczne, 2021

The article is devoted to the analysis of changes in society during and after the coronavirus pandemic. The general features of epidemics and pandemics in the human history have been considered, the similarity of the main forms and methods of fighting against pandemics accumulated by society in different periods of history has been shown. Some trends in the development of modern society have been outlined and described, which could be seen even before the COVID-19 pandemic that has become their catalyst and intensified their manifestation. In other words, it has become the impetus for their further development. In particular, the transformation of society into an information and knowledge society; reorientation of the economy and business in the context of COVID-19; the changing role of the labor force and the labor market; character in social connections and communications; the phenomenon of social responsibility of citizens, business and the state in a pandemic; changes in the nat...

COVID 19 pandemic is a top priority for researcher"s community of the world. An alarm raised by world class institutions has engendered collective effort to mitigate the emergency besides raising the existential fears among nation states. And why not, expert declarations are destined to raise alarm, as societies are conditioned to take expert alarms seriously. We don"t negate the seriousness of the pandemic, rather we argue that why at least equally important emergencies confronted by world are not emergencies of the first order? why same intensity of effort has not emerged over the other important issues like global hunger, terrorism, armed conflicts and more fatal diseases like cardiovascular(being number one killer disease) and environmental deterioration threatening society existentially. We explore "sociology of knowledge" and "social construction of reality" approach to address the above questions. We adopt a synthetic approach, to integrate findings from covid 19 and tenets of social construction of reality to arrive at a sociological explanation of the pandemic. This study also raises certain research questions to be explored, hence incubates potential research efforts in social sciences in general and sociology in particular.