Coronavirus, infrastructures and the sociotechnical (dis)entanglements in Brazil

Abstract

The text provides an analysis of the disorganization of large sociotechnical networks and infrastructure in Brazil, due to the coronavirus epidemic. Special attention is paid to the entanglement of infrastructural networks, such as the health system and the electrical energy supply system in the country. The effects of COVID-19 in economic activities and in some key social dynamics cause disorganization in these and other sectors, in levels rarely seen, and in doing so provide evidence of how they are entangled. The concept of disentanglement is proposed, as a development of the widely employed concept of entanglement in the social sciences.