{"title":"The Entangled Emergencies of COVID-19","authors":"C. L. Decoteau","doi":"10.1177/07352751241247567","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"City of Chicago officials adopted a “racial equity” approach to mitigate the disproportionate racial impact of COVID-19, yet according to interviews with racially and socioeconomically marginalized Chicagoans, this approach failed to address core vulnerabilities associated with health, housing, mental health, and welfare. This article argues that COVID-19 represents and reifies the convergence of three sets of emergencies. First, federal and local governments governed through emergency, enacting temporally bounded governmental strategies that presumed scarcity, triaged care, and naturalized structural inequality by delinking the effects of racism from its causes. This response was spectacular and anticipatory—designed to safeguard the status quo until “normalcy” could be restored. This approach exacerbated two existing endemic emergencies: (1) the slow emergencies racially marginalized populations have faced for decades due to neoliberal restructuring and fragmented care infrastructure and (2) the sacrifice of lower-income frontline workers to premature death to safeguard the economy and protect the middle class.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sociological Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751241247567","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
City of Chicago officials adopted a “racial equity” approach to mitigate the disproportionate racial impact of COVID-19, yet according to interviews with racially and socioeconomically marginalized Chicagoans, this approach failed to address core vulnerabilities associated with health, housing, mental health, and welfare. This article argues that COVID-19 represents and reifies the convergence of three sets of emergencies. First, federal and local governments governed through emergency, enacting temporally bounded governmental strategies that presumed scarcity, triaged care, and naturalized structural inequality by delinking the effects of racism from its causes. This response was spectacular and anticipatory—designed to safeguard the status quo until “normalcy” could be restored. This approach exacerbated two existing endemic emergencies: (1) the slow emergencies racially marginalized populations have faced for decades due to neoliberal restructuring and fragmented care infrastructure and (2) the sacrifice of lower-income frontline workers to premature death to safeguard the economy and protect the middle class.
期刊介绍:
Published for the American Sociological Association, this important journal covers the full range of sociological theory - from ethnomethodology to world systems analysis, from commentaries on the classics to the latest cutting-edge ideas, and from re-examinations of neglected theorists to metatheoretical inquiries. Its themes and contributions are interdisciplinary, its orientation pluralistic, its pages open to commentary and debate. Renowned for publishing the best international research and scholarship, Sociological Theory is essential reading for sociologists and social theorists alike.