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Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan

Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglemen...

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Autor principal: Ali, Inayat
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8120273/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33996992
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.648149
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author Ali, Inayat
author_facet Ali, Inayat
author_sort Ali, Inayat
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description Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglements among religion, science, and politics around COVID-19. Building on my current ethnographic research on COVID-19 using purposive sampling and interview guide in Pakistan, and borrowing from various anthropological concepts such as “social drama,” proposed by Victor Turner, and ritual, I have developed a concept that I call rituals of containment. With this concept, I extend my previous argument regarding “symbolic ownership” to show a visible “body politics” by demonstrating how religion, science, and politics around COVID-19 are entangled at individual and government levels. This has become observable through the rituals of the Pakistani government of containment to deal with COVID-19. Such entanglements are visible in the case of strategies to tackle infected “viral bodies,” as the government has enacted its authority: (1) to bury what I am terming the dead viral body without its beloved ones present; (2) to return or not to return this body to family members in a coffin; (3) or to provide the grieving family with a symbolic empty coffin. These Covidian politics have led to the question: Who in actuality owns the body? In conclusion, I argue that the problem lies in the discriminatory and contradictory rituals of containment of the government, not in using scientific evidence and guidelines.
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spelling pubmed-81202732021-05-15 Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan Ali, Inayat Front Sociol Sociology Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglements among religion, science, and politics around COVID-19. Building on my current ethnographic research on COVID-19 using purposive sampling and interview guide in Pakistan, and borrowing from various anthropological concepts such as “social drama,” proposed by Victor Turner, and ritual, I have developed a concept that I call rituals of containment. With this concept, I extend my previous argument regarding “symbolic ownership” to show a visible “body politics” by demonstrating how religion, science, and politics around COVID-19 are entangled at individual and government levels. This has become observable through the rituals of the Pakistani government of containment to deal with COVID-19. Such entanglements are visible in the case of strategies to tackle infected “viral bodies,” as the government has enacted its authority: (1) to bury what I am terming the dead viral body without its beloved ones present; (2) to return or not to return this body to family members in a coffin; (3) or to provide the grieving family with a symbolic empty coffin. These Covidian politics have led to the question: Who in actuality owns the body? In conclusion, I argue that the problem lies in the discriminatory and contradictory rituals of containment of the government, not in using scientific evidence and guidelines. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8120273/ /pubmed/33996992 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.648149 Text en Copyright © 2021 Ali. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Ali, Inayat
Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title_full Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title_fullStr Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title_full_unstemmed Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title_short Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan
title_sort rituals of containment: many pandemics, body politics, and social dramas during covid-19 in pakistan
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8120273/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33996992
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.648149
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