'Social distancing' during COVID-19: the metaphors and politics of pandemic response in India

被引:31
|
作者
Rahman, Sabina Yasmin [1 ,2 ]
机构
[1] Mahatma Gandhi Acad Human Dev, Social Work, Mokokchung, Nagaland, India
[2] Tata Inst Social Sci, Sch Social Work, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
来源
HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW | 2020年 / 29卷 / 02期
关键词
Social distancing; exclusion; somatic society; pandemic; public health; India;
D O I
10.1080/14461242.2020.1790404
中图分类号
R19 [保健组织与事业(卫生事业管理)];
学科分类号
摘要
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health authorities in India presented a contradictory picture between their role in assisting the state to mitigate the global crisis and dealing coercively with the needs of its diverse populations. Conventionally, public health is viewed as an evidence-based profession that is above politics. Yet national responses to COVID-19 in India reveal the embeddedness of health and illnesses in the larger politics of the state. Although it is still early to assess the full spectrum of damage caused by lack of central-level planning, this article argues against COVID-19 being viewed as a 'great leveller'. Rather, it suggests that we inhabit somatic societies that regularly employ the vocabulary of pathology/disease to determine social health. Moreover, the Indian experience illustrates how, even during a pandemic, 'social distancing' is not an apolitical notion. It becomes a measure for the state to co-opt scientific interventions of risk mitigation and relay them to people as a metaphor for exclusion: thereby exacerbating deeper structural inequities around which access to health and well-being of the population is organised.
引用
收藏
页码:131 / 139
页数:9
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