COVID Societies

COVID Societies presents a compelling and accessible overview of sociocultural theories that help us make sense of the COVID crisis. The book provides insights into everyday life around the world as people battled with the pandemic and explores the historical, social, cultural and political contexts of these responses.

Deborah Lupton is SHARP Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning sociology, communication and cultural studies. She is located in the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre and leads both the Vitalities Lab and the UNSW Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and holds an Honorary Doctor of Social Science degree awarded by the University of Copenhagen.

Introduction: COVID societies 1. COVID in context: histories and narratives of health, risk and contagion 2. The macropolitics of COVID: a political economy perspective 3. The biopolitics of COVID: Foucauldian approaches 4. Risk and COVID: risk society and risk cultures 5. Queering COVID: insights from gender and queer theory 6. More-than-human COVID worlds: sociomaterial perspectives Conclusion: reflections on COVID futures