‘COVID societies’ is a well-written book by Deborah Lupton. Lupton is a sociologist who has diversely contributed to the field of health and social policy. She is a Professor in the faculty of arts, design, and architecture, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She had done a lot of research in the field of sociology of health and illness and produced amazing writings in this field. COVID society is a book in which she theorized the crisis of coronavirus from the sociological lens. The book is the application of certain sociological theories that help to provide a lens and a different perceptive to see the crisis. She sketched a tremendous theoretical framework that included macro politics, micropolitics, biopolitics, necro-politics, risk society, and more than a human approach to enhance the rudimentary understanding of the disease. The book gradually explores the different implications of COVID from economic to political, from social to cultural, and from administrative to regulatory.
In the first chapter, she tried to portray the historical sketch of disease and how it had been perceived by different societies at different times. She also elaborated on the concept of disease before the enlightenment and after the enlightenment – in the pre-enlightenment period diseases were assimilated with supernatural forces and the post-enlightenment was about the creation of ideas about the human body, anatomy, and biological discoveries that gave a unique way to see the world. Spanning from the humoral model of disease of the Greeks to Sontag’s metaphor of illness, she gave a cardinal perception of the disease. She also elucidated the relation of disease with social reformation and deformation for this she took the example of the decline of feudalism when the bubonic plague spread in Europe. She depicted a short history of different epidemics and viruses – including Kaposi sarcoma and AIDS. Moving on, there was a detailed relationship between plague and literature that had continuously warned us about the future of viruses like the coming plague by Hot Zane, outbreak (1995 movie), and Contagion (2011 movie). The fundamental proposition was that we might have containment against disease but still, there was a rapid perpetuation of disease after 2000, which warned us about the subsequent times. And corona had shaken the edifices of disillusionment of the modern world that had previously been accepted. A glimpse on corona – where does it come from? What is the origin? What kind of virus it is? What was the response of different countries? How few different countries were prepared?
Moving towards macro-politics, it gave an understanding of how the crisis had affected the socioeconomic inequalities, low-income countries, and population. It raised some very essential questions: what are the effects of globalization on the medicine dominancy? What would be the future of a capitalist-based health system? What are the repercussions of the neoliberal order on the health system? While talking about the macro-political perspective, we cannot miss the critique of Marx and perhaps the critique that emerged in the 1970s which saw everything from the lens of the Marxian paradigm. A conception of “big pharma” and profit-maximizing are the basic things that are the pin-point of the critique of the political economy perspective. An appealing point in the book was when it delineated the critique on the political economy perspective by stating that Marxist-based critique is always entrapped in the matters of power and authority, this is how the approach neglected the very basic point of alleviation and solution. From the political economy perspective, she posited the argument of Merrill Singer that described the socio-demographic effect on disease. The extension of the argument was the practical examples of how marginalized communities, sects, disparities, and backwardness affected the determination of disease – in short, the socio-demographic factor played an enormous role in the determination of disease. On the macro level, it included how some countries were in a sense of denial, less prepared, and were in true application of laissez-faire, especially in the case of the UK.
Bio-politics, although a very complex approach but Lupton gave a very precise essay on it, an approach derived from the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. It was about the regulation of social groups and populations and it would be done through the administration. It is all about managing, disciplining, and governing the bodies this concept of “care of the self” has also been deduced from the technologies of self by Foucault. The book divided the paradigm into the work of two dominant figures Giorgio Agamben and Robert Esposito. It described the negative assertion of Agamben including his controversial comment about COVID, the concept of bare life, and his perception of the totalitarian regime. It elaborated the concept of immunity of Esposito in bio-politics which was more affirmative than Agamben’s ideas. State agencies and expert knowledge can be used for the betterment of individuals but she demonstrated the threat to freedom when the discipline would be raised. A glimpse of the marginalized community, racism, and radicalization in other words necro-politics were also a tremendous argument in the book.
The last section encompassed three approaches; Risk society, queering COVID, and more than human approach. Risk society refers to rising uncertainty and haphazardness due to immense global expansion and incalculability of danger at every step because of the late modern world. Fundamentally, the approach formed from the work of Foucault (later, Ulrich Beck), and it was named “governmentality”. It demonstrated how modernity, globalization, and individualization had generated a tremendous number of risks in society. The work of Mary Douglas contributed to giving a lens to see the crisis from another side. Douglas focused on risk and its dimensions – what is the risk? Who are risky people? Why are they so? In short, she worked on social stigmatization especially taking the case of HIV/ADIS. In the case of COVID, we can see the reaction of Trump and how he mentioned the virus as a Chinese virus. Questions about the environment were also part of the approach. All in all, it raised the question: why is there extreme ecological disorder in the modern world? Queering COVID gave a perception that how different genders were stigmatized, marginalized, and somehow blamed in the crisis, especially in the case of gay couples and LGBT. On the broader aspect, we can see how they were alienated in a sense and depressed by societal constraints. Socioeconomic factors cannot be neglected while talking about this matter. In last, it described the more than a human approach that included the relationship of humans with non-humans, the effect of the interaction of humans with animals, ecological system effecting (Rudolf Virchow’s approach), and connection in everyday life (Deleuzean approach).
The book raised many questions about the system and the way the contemporary system perpetuated functions. Lupton tried with a great effort to give answers to the questions and yet, she did very well. The book contained very good approaches to understanding the crisis and gave brief details of the modern health system along with its policies. While talking about the solution, she proposed some very interesting points from individual care to global cooperation, from social conditions to economic problems, and from the problem of individuation to community welfare. The causes of zoonotic diseases and their expansion in this age, environmental complications, globalization, and effects of mass traveling – the book attempted to illustrate every point.
Though it provided good approaches certain deficiencies were there for instance she didn’t tell how to combat the consequential problems of modernity. The book described that the transitional phase of globalization caused extreme problems like individualism, fear of new pandemics, the threat of a syndemic, and reflexive modernization. But where is the solution? What can be done to tackle these problems? A problem with the book was its scatteredness for example she repeated many points in many places that may trouble the reader like she extensively repeated the point of necro-politics, LGBQ, and racism. The issue of marginalization, backwardness, disaffection, and the matter of disadvantaged groups was also repeated many times. The book presented the image of Foucault in bio-politics as highly positive even in the matter of discipline but Byung Chal Han posited the other side of Foucault – in his book Transparency Society – that highly criticized the way discipline was internalized in society.
