Introduction: Towards a sociology of pandemics

Abstract

With SARS-CoV-2 a new coronavirus is spreading around the world that challenges governments and triggers unprecedented social responses. Worldwide people have had to manage the experience of an uncertain new threat under very different conditions. A growing body of research and theoretical approaches tries to make sense of the social responses to the pandemic. This monograph issue contributes to the research on the first wave of the pandemic from the perspective of the sociology of risk and uncertainty. This includes a number of key topics such as care workers’ experiences in the Netherlands, stigmatisation and Othering in India, the multidimensionality of social inequalities in the experience of confinement in Argentina, mourning practices in Iran, discourses of legitimacy in Sweden, distrust in government in Hong Kong, risk communication in the UK, and fake news in social media. This introduction sets these contributions in the broader context of key debates in the sociology of risk and uncertainty such as rational, in-between and non-rational approaches to risk in everyday life, the Othering of social groups, the multidimensionality of risk and inequality, the debate about methodological cosmopolitanism, the discursive construction of legitimacy, the significance of (dis)trust for public engagement with risk, shortcomings in risk communication, and framing of fake news and conspiracy theories. The monograph concludes with reflections on perspectives for social learning, the importance of the society–nature–technology nexus for the understanding of the crisis, and finally, with envisioning possible pathways towards a new normal.