Abstract
Abstract The goal of this pilot study is to investigate expressions of the collective disquiet of people in the first months of Covid-19 pandemic, and to try to understand how they manage covert risk, especially with religion and magic. Four co-authors living in early hot spots of the pandemic speculate on the roles of science, religion, and magic, in the latest global catastrophe. They delve into the consolidation that should be occurring worldwide because of a common, viral enemy, but find little evidence for it. They draw parallels to biblical works, finding evidence of a connection between plague and “social strife.” They explore changes in the purviews of science, religion, and magic, and how and why they have changed, as three systems of covert risk management. They speculate on the coming wave of grief when the world populations finally decide that too many people have died, and they envision cultural changes on the other side of the pandemic, to lifestyles, travel, reverse urbanization, and living and working in smaller communities. Using an unusual approach named “crowd-sourced ethnography”, they conduct un-traditional ethnography and speculate on management of covert risk in their native countries.
Highlights
The Complex Relationship Between Different Forms of RiskWhen one of our co-authors asked several local Polish friends to interpret the following man’s actions, the consensus they voiced was – double protection.Crowd-Sourced Pandemic Ethnography 2020An unidentified man enters a nameless Polish grocery store
There are specific forms of risk that have been analyzed so extensively that they have their own evaluation methodologies, especially three forms: (1) pharmaceutical risk, whose analysis balances benefits of a drug with the risk of side effects, often in relation to cost, (2) environmental risk, whose own approach is most often reflected in environmental impact statements (EIS), and (3) workplace risk, or risk to the welfare of employees, contractors, and visitors, which is of great interest to unions and insurance companies
It is not surprising that the explanation for a pandemic at the level of global catastrophic risk is the creation of a new cosmological interpretation, which is conceived when people are under great stress and there is a poorly understood threat of death
Summary
When one of our co-authors asked several local Polish friends to interpret the following man’s actions, the consensus they voiced was – double protection. An unidentified man enters a nameless Polish grocery store He reaches to the right, applies hand sanitizer, and rubs his hands together. The man appears to reason that two methods of protection are better than one – one, scientific (the hand sanitizer) and the other, religious (crossing himself in a deep genuflection, before entering a grocery market). In these early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, one imagines the man thinking, I’ve done my part, God, the rest is up to you.
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