In the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic situation, physical interaction and public performances became difficult, while use of digital media for public and private purposes was extended and intensified. This affected citizens’ right of assembly and led to new forms of collective sociality. This article analyses how social intimacy was re-arranged during lockdown through a thick description of mediated performances circulating on Italy’s Day of Liberation from Nazi fascism. It examines how a politicised commemoration of resistance echoed fears and desires relating to the virus and enabled the production of subjectivities in a transnational techno-social environment. Combining Lauren Berlant’s concept of intimate publics with theories of media, social movements, mediation and national identity, it offers an analytical framework detailing three layers of social intimacy: spatial/corporeal materiality, biography and mediation.
{"title":"Physically Distant – Socially Intimate","authors":"Marion Hamm","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270312","url":null,"abstract":"In the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic situation, physical interaction and public performances became difficult, while use of digital media for public and private purposes was extended and intensified. This affected citizens’ right of assembly and led to new forms of collective sociality. This article analyses how social intimacy was re-arranged during lockdown through a thick description of mediated performances circulating on Italy’s Day of Liberation from Nazi fascism. It examines how a politicised commemoration of resistance echoed fears and desires relating to the virus and enabled the production of subjectivities in a transnational techno-social environment. Combining Lauren Berlant’s concept of intimate publics with theories of media, social movements, mediation and national identity, it offers an analytical framework detailing three layers of social intimacy: spatial/corporeal materiality, biography and mediation.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46459270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Intimacy with God is at the heart of Islamic practice through prayer. Intimacy with fellow congregants became central to the worship practices promoted by religious leaders during the holy month of Ramadan even when social distancing was required because of the pandemic. This was, by and large, an economic matter. Clerics and mosques rely significantly on the income generated through collective worship, especially during Ramadan. This article provides an account of people’s sense of intimacy with God and fellow congregants during Ramadan and how it contributed to the spread of the coronavirus in Pakistan.
{"title":"Intimacy with God and Coronavirus in Pakistan","authors":"Nadeem Malik","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270316","url":null,"abstract":"Intimacy with God is at the heart of Islamic practice through prayer. Intimacy with fellow congregants became central to the worship practices promoted by religious leaders during the holy month of Ramadan even when social distancing was required because of the pandemic. This was, by and large, an economic matter. Clerics and mosques rely significantly on the income generated through collective worship, especially during Ramadan. This article provides an account of people’s sense of intimacy with God and fellow congregants during Ramadan and how it contributed to the spread of the coronavirus in Pakistan.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44396641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we highlight how COVID-19 has transformed, is transforming and may transform into the future human intimacies at several different social levels: between couples, within and between families, between citizens and states, among nations, and between people and their deities. We conclude by highlighting an uncertain future for intimacies that may entail the radical transformation of societies characterised by conversely new and liberating forms of socio-economic organisation or enslavement, especially to new spatio-temporal configurations engendered by the pandemic.
{"title":"Social Intimacy","authors":"A. Dawson, Simone Dennis","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270301","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we highlight how COVID-19 has transformed, is transforming and may transform into the future human intimacies at several different social levels: between couples, within and between families, between citizens and states, among nations, and between people and their deities. We conclude by highlighting an uncertain future for intimacies that may entail the radical transformation of societies characterised by conversely new and liberating forms of socio-economic organisation or enslavement, especially to new spatio-temporal configurations engendered by the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43880416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, based on my ethnographic experience of Ho Chi Minh City’s lockdown, I argue that COVID-19 acted as an accelerator of intimacies, allowing people to negotiate alternative forms of sociality both within and outside the domestic space. On the one hand, by confining people at home it brought to light social and housing inequalities in urban Vietnam. On the other, it forced people to find imaginative ways to cope with social-distancing protocols. Since mobility during lockdown was limited, the normatively private space of the house became an incubator for social life, affording people – even those outside the circle of close friends and relatives – the opportunity to be alone together, sharing their temporary stuckness to challenge normative patterns of intimacy and sexuality.
{"title":"Alone Together","authors":"Vanthanh Nguyen","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270303","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, based on my ethnographic experience of Ho Chi Minh City’s lockdown, I argue that COVID-19 acted as an accelerator of intimacies, allowing people to negotiate alternative forms of sociality both within and outside the domestic space. On the one hand, by confining people at home it brought to light social and housing inequalities in urban Vietnam. On the other, it forced people to find imaginative ways to cope with social-distancing protocols. Since mobility during lockdown was limited, the normatively private space of the house became an incubator for social life, affording people – even those outside the circle of close friends and relatives – the opportunity to be alone together, sharing their temporary stuckness to challenge normative patterns of intimacy and sexuality.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41320083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anthropologists examining the relationship between physician and patient in Western biomedicine have observed an inherent power discrepancy between the physician, assumed to hold scientific knowledge, and the patient, the recipient of this knowledge. COVID-19 presents a unique challenge to that dynamic, as physicians, scientists and medical experts possess limited understanding of the pathophysiology, interventions and treatment of the disease. Drawing on my experience as a resident physician on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, I contend that the absence of knowledge surrounding COVID-19 fosters a new form of intimacy between physician and patient through greater emphasis on subjective patient experience, increased transparency between physician and patient, and an expanding physician role beyond management of the physical disease state.
{"title":"Unexpected Intimacies","authors":"Kelly Colas","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270203","url":null,"abstract":"Anthropologists examining the relationship between physician and patient in Western biomedicine have observed an inherent power discrepancy between the physician, assumed to hold scientific knowledge, and the patient, the recipient of this knowledge. COVID-19 presents a unique challenge to that dynamic, as physicians, scientists and medical experts possess limited understanding of the pathophysiology, interventions and treatment of the disease. Drawing on my experience as a resident physician on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, I contend that the absence of knowledge surrounding COVID-19 fosters a new form of intimacy between physician and patient through greater emphasis on subjective patient experience, increased transparency between physician and patient, and an expanding physician role beyond management of the physical disease state.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44738225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed the way we imagine and experience our bodily boundaries. While previously we may have believed our body to be discrete and bounded by our skin, the latest medical advice has awakened us to the porous nature of our bodies. The virus, we have learnt, may enter our body through our mouths, nose and eyeballs via the surfaces that we touch and through the air that we breathe. In this article, I employ auto-ethnographic reflections and recent media coverage to argue that this new corporeal intimacy has both produced and revealed new and latent experiences of disgust and violence.
{"title":"Porous Bodies","authors":"C. Sear","doi":"10.3167/aia.2020.270211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270211","url":null,"abstract":"The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed the way we imagine and experience our bodily boundaries. While previously we may have believed our body to be discrete and bounded by our skin, the latest medical advice has awakened us to the porous nature of our bodies. The virus, we have learnt, may enter our body through our mouths, nose and eyeballs via the surfaces that we touch and through the air that we breathe. In this article, I employ auto-ethnographic reflections and recent media coverage to argue that this new corporeal intimacy has both produced and revealed new and latent experiences of disgust and violence.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46527220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}