Theories and Politics of COVID-19

This issue brings theoretically driven analyses to bear on the COVID-19 pandemic, a development which shines a singularly revealing light on some of the most significant political, cultural, and social trends of the 21st century. Leading off with three explicitly theoretical treatments of the pandemic, this issue directs several complementary theoretical lenses at the early stages of the pandemic as it unfolded in the US and Europe. The initial contributions grapple explicitly with the ways in which social conflicts, social solidarities, and social traumas have been refracted—and in many cases magnified—by the pandemic in terms of moral cultures and forms of communication. The focus then shifts to how risk governance during the pandemic operates in different levels and domains of the social architecture as conceptualized in theoretical treatments of social actorhood pioneered by James Coleman. In the second part of the issue, the theme of politic. The upsurge of politically distinctive protests in the United States related to pandemic restrictions—as well as social and racial inequalities rendered visible by the pandemic—is the subject of the first piece. The final article explores the historical specificity of the many popular mobilizations in relation to the pandemic across the globe and across the political spectrum. In this article, we see how the popular mobilizations vary not only in terms of their political orientation, but in their general orientation toward information and authority—increasingly crucial issues in a world facing a trust deficit.