Category Index

2021, issue 46, Svetlana Hristova: For over three decades, our turbulent times became life as usual. All of a sudden it turned virulent, and human existence changed overnight. The fluid, ‘liquid’ modernity, to use Bauman’s metaphor [1], is now immobilized. Not only did the reasons to travel lose their importance in the face of threats to life, but the core of our culture – the idea of how to live together – is dramatically questioned today.

2021, issue 46, Blanka Nyklová & Petr Gibas: Dear ESA, We were thrilled to read the call for papers asking for reflections on what the Covid-19 pandemic means for sociology and global society. We – two sociologists-parents to a two-year old – decided immediately we need to write a piece.

2021, issue 46, Dr. Olga Kolokytha: The Covid-19 pandemic does not only have a profound impact on health and economy worldwide, but also severely affects the cultural sector, which is among the first and most severely hit. All arts organisations have suspended their operation, all cultural events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future – in early April 2020, the time of writing this text –   and hundreds of thousands of freelance artists and culture professionals have been left unemployed.

2021, issue 46, Christopher Mathieu: Sweden has tried as much as possible not to restrict daily life, work, and mobility. The famous Swedish phrase “freedom under responsibility” is the operative logic.

2021, issue 46, Alenka Barber-Kersovan and Volker Kirchberg: After the complete lockdown of public life, musical eco-systems as they existed before the Covid-19 crisis came to a sudden stop. Experiencing the musical scene as a rather static one and not prone to change, one might be surprised by the speedy, and sometimes desperate, action-taking, and the creativity of reactions with which different strands of musical life tried to adjust to the new conditions. They encompass all participants in musical life, musicians and their fans, orchestras and bands, musical organisations, and political bodies.

2021, issue 46, Kerman Calvo and Ester Bejarano: If someone had asked us during the first days of confinement about our plans to cope with the crisis, we doubt that ‘writing a paper about musicians’ would had been our quick answer. We felt very distracted at first, unable to do research work, frantically checking out our body temperatures while exploring the uncharted waters – at least for us – of online teaching.

2021, issue 46, Dr Valerie Visanich: As Covid-19 impacts mount, Bauman’s notion of liquidity has become ever more fitting to describe the cultural, economic, and social uncertainties experienced on a global scale in the current times [1]. The liquefaction is not only in the rapidity and mutability of a virus, but also in the uncertainty of the duration on the pandemic. Consequently, there are substantial shifts and disruptions in the everyday life of individuals, principally as employees attempt to shift their work practices online.

2021, issue 46, Sari Karttunen: In Finland, as elsewhere in Europe, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the arts and culture sector swiftly and severely. The economic situation of many artists and other cultural workers is precarious even in normal circumstances, and buffers against black swans such as the Coronavirus are lacking. The first victims in the Finnish cultural field were gig makers, freelancers, sole entrepreneurs, and other self-employed persons whose share is comparatively high in the arts and cultural occupations.

2021, issue 46, Christian Schramm and Paul-Fiete Kramer: As of 6th April 2020, most German borders are closed. Covid-19 has shut down almost the entire globe. In Germany, as in other countries, economic activities are reduced to an absolute minimum. But today, after pressure from the farmers’ association and even calls from the nationalist and anti-immigrant party AfD, the interior minister announces that temporary agricultural workers will be flown in from Eastern European countries to ensure the harvesting of fruits and vegetables of the season.

2021, issue 46, Elke Hemminger: The Corona pandemic hit Europe in early spring 2020 with a force and speed that found its societies and people largely unprepared. Apart from the lack of experience with a situation like this, there was also a lack of adequate verbal expressions for what was happening. People had to expand their vocabulary in order to understand the differences between an epidemic and a pandemic (including the legal, medical, and political implications), and they had to find new ways of describing the societal need to limit social contacts and reduce individual mobility.

2021, issue 46, Marc Hannappel, Viola Dombrowski, Oul Han, Lukas Schmelzeisen, Matthias Kullbach: On December 31st 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) office in Beijing is informed of several cases of pneumonia of unknown origin. In the following days, similar cases with the same symptoms are being reported to the WHO. From January 11th onwards, the increasing evidence suggest that this could be the outbreak of a novel disease.

2021, issue 46, Daniela Wetzelhütter and Sebastian Martin: The Coronavirus crisis unfolded with tremendous speed, especially in terms of its physical effects (illness), psychological effects (fear), and social effects (distancing). At about the same time, Coronavirus media hype spread around the world. Through both traditional and social media, people were rapidly informed about the range of the virus, the associated dangers, and possible protective measures. Simultaneously, a fake news “infodemic” was observed on a global scale.

2021, issue 46, Veronica Moretti and Anwesha Chakraborty: their lives [1]. Being familiar with a condition contributes to reinforcing our 'ontological security': a sense of continuity and order in events [2]. Giddens suggests that this sense of continuous narrative – what he calls biographical continuity – entails the stability of the self’s existence and confidence of its social interaction [3].

2021, issue 46, Gabriella Wulff: Before entering into a discussion of how the COVID-19 pandemic is changing social life across the world, I first want to make a clarification that I regard the question and the answer as twofold. First, the pandemic itself has changed our social life, in terms of an increased number of people in need of healthcare to a greater extent than a normal flu or cold, and we have also seen that the mortality rates are higher due to the spread of COVID-19.

2021, issue 46, Hannah Bradby: The rules of engagement have been queered by Covid-19. During March and April 2020, as Europeans adjust to the restrictions of living with a pandemic, old certainties are shifting under our feet.