COVID-19 and spatio-temporal disjuncture in the experience of danger.

Abstract

© 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists. institution. The virus, and the social measures of collective confinement or individual isolation, have submerged us into a process of radical transformation that challenges what until now has been the coherence of our daily reality. In others words, ‘switches [our human] worlds’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 176): attitudes, behaviours and relations have been metamorphosed, and well‐established values have been threatened, while routines have been altered and certain beliefs even questioned. That the virus will be in all places and in none at the same time allows strong mechanisms to emerge to stop its spread in the absence of a vaccine. A ‘hygienicised’ and ‘biosecure’ reality is gradually being established with the help of governments, health institutions and international organisations. It is a ‘microbiopolitics’ that highlights the diversity of cultural responses, but also ‘the fact that dissent over how to live with microorganisms reflects disagreement about how humans ought to live with one another’ (Paxson 2008: 16). In that sense, the virus is thus becoming a tailor‐made cultural product.