Social Analysis and the COVID-19 Crisis
This book is a collective journal of the COVID-19 pandemic. With first-hand accounts of the pandemic as it unfolded, it explores the social and the political through the lens of the outbreak. Featuring contributors located in India, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Bulgaria, the book presents us with simultaneous multiple histories of our time.
The volume documents the beginning of social distancing and lockdown measures adopted by countries around the word and analyses how these bore upon prevailing social conditions in specific locations. It presents the authors personal observations in a lucid conversational style as they reflect on themes such as the reorganization of political debates and issues, the experience of the marginalized, theodicy, government policy responses, and shifts into digital space under lockdown, all of these under an overarching narrative of the healthcare and economic crisis facing the world.
A unique and engaging contribution, this book will be useful to students and researchers of sociology, public health, political economy, public policy, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to general readers interested in pandemic literature.
Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the Open University, UK. His recent publications include Digital India and the Poor: Policy, Technology and Society (2020) and What Is AI?: A Conversation between an AI Engineer and a Humanities Researcher (co-authored with Peter H. Tu, 2020).
Richard Allen is Emeritus Professor of English at The Open University, UK. With Harish Trivedi, he wrote and edited Literature and Nation: Britain and India 18001990 (2000), and with Suman Gupta and others, he co-authored Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education (2015).
Maitrayee Basu is Lecturer in Communications and Media at the University of the Arts (UAL), London, UK. Her current research is in the field of digital media cultures, digital identities and political contestations, and digital research methods.
Fabio Akcelrud Duro is Professor of Literary Theory at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. He is the author of Modernism and Coherence (2008), Teoria (literria) americana (2011), Fragmentos Reunidos (2015), and Metodologia de Pesquisa em Literatura (2020), among others.
Ayan-Yue Gupta has a BA (Hons) in art history and philosophy from the University of Leeds and an MA in fine art from the Slade UCL and is currently a PhD sociology student at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published a co-authored paper in Policy Studies.
Milena Katsarska is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture Studies at the Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Recent publications include the co-authored volume Usurping Suicide: The Political Resonances of Individual Deaths (2017).
Sebastian Schuller graduated in comparative literature from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and currently holds a PhD scholarship of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes while working on materialist literary theory in the age of globalization. Schuller has edited an anthology on the rise of the Alt-Right in Germany, Die Zeit der Monster (2018).
John Seed taught for many years at the University of Roehampton. His publications on 18th- and 19th-century British social history include Dissenting Histories: Religious Division and the Politics of Memory in Eighteenth-Century England (2008) and The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, co-edited with Ian Haywood (2012). He is also the author of Marx: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010).
Peter H. Tu earned his doctorate in 1995 from Oxford Universitys Engineering Science department. In 1997, he joined the General Electric Research Center, where he is currently GEs chief scientist for artificial intelligence. Tu has 50 issued patents and over 75 peer-reviewed publications.
Social Analysis and the COVID-19 Crisis
A Collective Journal
Suman Gupta, Richard Allen, Maitrayee Basu, Fabio Akcelrud Duro, Ayan-Yue Gupta, Milena Katsarska, Sebastian Schuller, John Seed, and Peter H. Tu
First published 2021
by Routledge
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2021 Suman Gupta, Richard Allen, Maitrayee Basu, Fabio Akcelrud Duro, Ayan-Yue Gupta, Milena Katsarska, Sebastian Schuller, John Seed, and Peter H. Tu
The right of Suman Gupta, Richard Allen, Maitrayee Basu, Fabio Akcelrud Duro, Ayan-Yue Gupta, Milena Katsarska, Sebastian Schuller, John Seed, and Peter H. Tu to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gupta, Suman, 1966 author.
Title: Social analysis and the COVID-19 crisis : a collective journal / Suman Gupta [and eight others].
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020028262 (print) | LCCN 2020028263 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: COVID-19 (Disease)Social aspects. | EpidemicsSocial aspects. | QuarantineSocial aspects.
Classification: LCC RA644.C67 G87 2021 (print) | LCC RA644.C67 (ebook) | DDC 362.1962/414dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028262
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028263
ISBN: 978-0-367-63505-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-63661-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12015-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Richard Allen is Emeritus Professor of English at The Open University, UK. He was Dean of Arts from 2000 to 2007 and served as an assessor for the UK National Quality Assurance Agency from 2008 to 2016. His career thus combined teaching and research, institutional policy and innovation, management, and quality assurance. His academic interests regularly involve collaboration; with Harish Trivedi, he wrote and edited Literature and Nation: Britain and India 18001990 (2000), and with Suman Gupta and others, he led a research project, the findings published as Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education (2015).
