Tag Archives: Risk

Archiving the COVID-19 pandemic in Mass Observation and Middletown

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The second and third articles from this project have just been published in History of the Human Sciences (Volume 36, Issue 2; see https://doi.org/10.1177/09526951231152139 and https://doi.org/10.1177/09526951231170574). They should be open access. Here are the abstracts:

Archiving the COVID-19 pandemic in Mass Observation and Middletown

The COVID-19 pandemic generated debates about how pandemics should be known. There was much discussion of what role the human sciences could play in knowing – and governing – the pandemic. In this article, we focus on attempts to know the pandemic through diaries, other biographical writing, and related forms like mass photography. In particular, we focus on the archiving of such forms by Mass Observation in the UK and the Everyday Life in Middletown (EDLM) project in the USA, and initial analyses of such material by scholars from across the human sciences. Our main argument is that archiving the pandemic was informed by, and needs viewing through, the history of the human sciences – including the distinctive histories and human sciences of Mass Observation and Middletown. The article finishes by introducing a Special Section that engages with archiving the pandemic in two senses: the archiving of diaries and related forms by Mass Observation and the EDLM project, and the archiving of initial encounters between researchers and this material by History of the Human Sciences. The Special Section seeks to know the pandemic from the human sciences in the present and to archive knowing the pandemic from the human sciences for the future.

Seeing like an epidemiologist? Mobilising people against COVID-19

Diaries and other materials in the Mass Observation Archive have been characterised as intersubjective and dialogic. They have been used to study top-down and bottom-up processes, including how ordinary people respond to sociological constructs and, more broadly, the footprint of social science in the 20th century. In this article, we use the Archive’s COVID-19 collections to study how attempts to govern the pandemic by mobilising ordinary people to see like an epidemiologist played out in the United Kingdom during 2020. People were asked to think in terms of populations and groups; rates, trends, and distributions; the capacity of public services; and complex systems of causation. How did they respond? How did they use the statistics, charts, maps, concepts, identities, and roles they were given? We find evidence of engagement with science plural; confident and comfortable engagement with epidemiological terms and concepts; sceptical and reluctant engagement with epidemiological subject positions; use of both scientific and moral literacy to negotiate regulations and guidance; and use of scientific literacy to compare and judge government performance. Governing the pandemic through scientific literacy was partially successful, but in some unexpected ways.

Beyond compliance: Good citizenship during the COVID-19 pandemic

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I’ve spent 2022 writing up three papers Clive and I discussed during 2021. The first of these has just been published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (see http://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12587). The article should be open access. Here is the abstract:

In the UK, discussion of good citizenship during the COVID-19 pandemic largely focused on compliance and non-compliance with government rules. In this article, we offer an alternative point of focus. Pandemic governance proceeded not only through rules/morality, but also through freedom/ethics. Good citizenship, therefore, involved practical reasoning in response to situations. We demonstrate this using diaries and other forms of writing collected by Mass Observation during the first six months of the pandemic. Responses to government rules and guidance varied by situation. Many people found governance through freedom/ethics confusing and burdensome. Faced by ethical dilemmas, they managed risks and responsibilities by deliberating, weighing justifications, and sometimes falling back on rules of thumb or heuristics. Discussion of good citizenship during future emergencies would benefit from a greater focus on situations, dilemmas, and justifications.

How do people respond to public health measures? Ordinary ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Clive and I wrote this on 22 December. We agreed to post it in January, when people would be back on Twitter, so that is what I’m doing. The post summarises a full-length paper we submitted for review in mid-December.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been presented as a biopolitical event that extends and transforms neoliberal modes of surveilling and governing the conditions of life and death. Consistent with such a view, debates about the efficacy of public health strategies during the pandemic – non-pharmaceutical policy interventions aimed at changing behaviours e.g. rules or guidelines on handwashing, wearing face coverings, social distancing, self-isolating – have often focused on the problem of compliance: whether people are complying, and will continue to comply, with rules and guidelines.

One starting point for this post was a concern that such framings obscure how people might navigate public issues using practical reasoning; how people might respond to the pandemic less with compliance or resistance, and more by enacting their ordinary capacities for ethical action. Our thinking, here, is informed by writing on the anthropology of ethics by people like Michael Lambek, Veena Das, and Didier Fassin, and especially the idea of ordinary ethics. In this field, the ethical refers to those dimensions of action in which dilemmas, cares, and predicaments are experienced as problems of how to exercise freedom in accountable and responsible ways. The ethical arises, therefore, not only in extraordinary, dramatic moments requiring explicit, deliberative judgement, but also in practices of everyday life, which are scenes of negotiation, riven by dilemmas, doubts, threats, and vulnerabilities.

To trace the forms of practical reasoning used by people responding to public health measures during the pandemic, we analysed a sample of biographical writing – diaries, letters, and other forms – collected by the Mass Observation Archive (MOA) from thousands of residents of the United Kingdom. Here is an example extract from the beginning of one diary, kept on 12th May 2020:

Today my husband and I are arguing about whether he can play golf or not. The government advice is that they can play in pairs but he has also been told he is still shielding […] He does not feel that going to play golf on his own and having no contact with anyone is going to increase his risk […] I want him to be able to enjoy his sport but I feel worried about the risks. It felt easier when no-one could play golf or travel or work. Now there is so much to navigate and so much to decide. My mum is already talking about me visiting them again. But it is 200 miles by train […] and that exposes me to a whole lot of risk. ‘But what is our exit plan?’ my husband asks. I am somehow expected to know, to somehow be the grown up in all of this. He seems to expect me to set the rules for him and yet he doesn’t really want that. I no longer know what to say to him about it all. ‘Yes it is unfair that you cannot go out and yes it is unfair that your asthma means you may not recover if you get the virus and yes I’d feel very guilty if I was to bring the virus home.’

In this extract, ‘compliance’ is rendered conditional on maintaining personal relationships. The diarist felt under pressure to manage both risks to herself on public transport and responsibilities to her mother (demanding a visit). She felt responsible for protecting her shielding husband and guilty for numerous things, from stopping him enjoying his sport in the present, to potentially bringing the virus home in the future. Her concerns included not only managing her own and family members’ exposure to risk from interactions in public spaces, but also how she or they might be a risk to others.

In general, we analysed sources in the MOA for grammars of responsibility: the ways that people discuss publically circulated moral codes; reason about whether and how to follow rules and recommendations; reason about what is justifiable and practicable; and give content and meaning to public discourses in ways that align with existing concerns and commitments. In doing so, we found a discourse of uncertainty. Many people were confused about government rules and guidance. This opened up space for reflection on what might count as binding for particular individuals in particular situations. We also found that prescriptions and guidance generated a series of dilemmas for many people. The right thing to do was therefore rendered subject to forms of judgement regarding the balancing of multiple demands and values.

Pandemic response, we conclude, was not simply a question of compliance or non-compliance. It was experienced ethically. Abstract regulations had to be interpreted, given content, and made meaningful in practical terms and in terms of what matters. These conclusions help to advance understandings of how people responded to public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also, more generally, how ordinary people engage with public issues.

Call for papers (RGS-IBG 2021): Governing the Covid-19 pandemic

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Call for papers, RGS-IBG Annual Conference, online paper session(s).

Governing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Convenors: Nick Clarke (University of Southampton) and Clive Barnett (University of Exeter).

Much public debate during the Covid-19 pandemic has focused on the problem of compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions. Key questions in this debate have included: what are the rules, are they tight enough, are people complying with them, and, if not, why not? These questions reduce the problem of governing pandemic response to a narrow moral focus on rule specification and rule following. However, governing the conduct of people during the pandemic has operated through a range of strategies beyond formal rules. The rationalities and technologies have been numerous and varied, from lockdown regulations and associated penalties, to public health messaging and guidance, to financial support and incentives, to appeals that people use ‘common sense’ in assessing risks and making ethical judgements. Furthermore, in responding to guidance, norms, recommendations, and risks associated with the virus, people have innovated their own practices to manage their own behaviour and responsibilities. They have participated critically in debates on public health issues around the categorisation and treatment of vulnerable groups. They have developed new routines and practices of hygiene, parenting, caring for family and friends, neighbouring, work, shopping, travel, media consumption/production, and so on.

We invite abstracts for an online paper session focused on the general topic of ‘governing the Covid-19 pandemic’, including any of the specific topics listed below. Depending on the response, it may be possible to convene two sessions: one focused on attempts by governments to shape the conduct of citizens and residents; and a second focused on attempts by people to manage their own risks and responsibilities. Potential topics for papers include:

  • Following the science.
  • Regulations, guidance, and messaging.
  • Compliance/non-compliance.
  • Government support and the capacity of individuals and groups.
  • Liberty, common sense, and ethical dilemmas.
  • Ordinary discourses of disadvantage, privilege, and responsibility.
  • The uses of scientific literacy (by government, scientists, news media, ordinary people).
  • Understandings and practices of good citizenship during the pandemic.

Please send expressions of interest, including author names and affiliations, and paper titles and abstracts (250 words max.) to n.clarke@soton.ac.uk and c.barnett@exeter.ac.uk by 26 February.