A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society

Elgar Research Agendas

Edited by Steve Matthewman, Professor in Sociology, the School of Social Sciences | Te Puna Mārama, University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau, Aotearoa New Zealand

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com.

With contributions from leading experts in the fields of anthropology, communications, disaster studies, economics, epidemiology, Indigenous studies, philosophy and sociology, this expansive book offers a diverse range of social science perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic, providing critical insights into what a research agenda for COVID-19 and society resembles across different fields of study.

‘Social science at its best. This important book takes huge steps towards helping us reimagine the social world, highlighting and thinking through the strengths but also the weakness of social, political and cultural bonds revealed by the pandemic. Strongly grounded in empirical research but also theoretically compelling, this book will stimulate a range of new insights into how we can navigate our way towards radically altered horizons.’
– Robert van Krieken, The University of Sydney, Australia

‘A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society provides impressive critical analyses and innovative research reflections on the complex social consequences of the SARS-CoV 2 pandemic. The volume has compelling contributions from social scientists from a range of disciplinary fields, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy and political economy, and provides incisive analyses of reactions to the pandemic in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and the US.

Chapters address the research difficulties and challenges posed by the pandemic, including the range of measures and policies introduced to protect public health, and outline some of the innovative digital research methods designed and employed in response. In addition to insightful analyses of the diverse national policy responses to the pandemic, the volume contains considerations of the relevance of disaster research and management as well as contributions on great power behaviour and vaccine diplomacy and concerns about inequalities, forms of discrimination, and compulsion in relation to COVID passports and other measures.

A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society also provides analyses of the pandemic and its consequences in relation to indigeneity, gender and the pandemic amplification of the care crisis, the interconnection of humans to other animals, plants, and non-organic things, as well as in respect of the multiple disruptions to everyday life, and not least the ways in which the necessity for forms of governmental intervention and increased investment in and support for the public sphere has served to confirm the limitations of the neoliberal policy paradigm.

A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society deserves to be widely read and will prove to be a very valuable resource for researchers across the social sciences.'
– Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth, England

‘Steve Matthewman is unquestionably one of the world's leading sociologists of catastrophe and disaster. In this collection, he has unerringly marshalled a series of revelatory perspectives that will be essential for understanding COVID-19 and “the new normal”. There is not one weak spot among them. This is a landmark contribution to the field.’
– Chris Rojek, City, University of London, UK