Dancing with death. A historical perspective on coping with Covid‐19

Abstract

In this paper, we address the question on how societies coped with pandemic crises, how they tried to control or adapt to the disease, or even managed to overcome the death trap in history. On the basis of historical research, we describe how societies in the western world accommodated to or exited hardship and restrictive measures over the course of the last four centuries. In particular, we are interested in how historically embedded citizens' resources were directed towards living with and to a certain extent accepting the virus. Such an approach of “applied history” to the management of crises and public hazards, we believe, helps address today's pressing question of what adaptive strategies can be adopted to return to a normalized life, including living with socially acceptable medical, hygienic and other pandemic‐related measures.

Swedish exceptionalism and the Sars‐CoV2 pandemic crisis: Representations of crisis and national identity in the public sphere

“…It is mostly in historical studies, however, that scholarly attention is given to societal interpretations of crisis (Quarantelli et al, 2017). A recent example is de Graaf et al (2021), who studied how historically embedded resources of citizens were mobilized to live with and to a certain extent accepting the Sars‐CoV2 virus. Overall, the social science literature on crisis has been mostly focused on the perspective of the decision‐makers in societies, and little scholarly attention seems to have been given to interpretations of crisis found in the public sphere.…”

Risk, hazards and crisis: Covid‐19 and beyond

“…The crisis had both many phases and faces, in ever so many countries around the globe. In RHCPP, we have seen discussions on its creeping nature (Boin et al, 2020 ), its disproportionate impact on vulnerable minorities (Gadson, 2020 ), the widely different governance responses to similar threats (Pollock & Steen, 2021 ; Simonsen, 2022 ; Thomas & Terry, 2022 ; Zahariadis et al, 2021 ) the viability of all‐hazards, and total defense approaches (Penta et al, 2021 ; Pollock & Steen, 2021 ), the obstacles of learning from pandemic response inquiries (Eriksson et al, 2022 ), the influence of risk perception and trust on support for government interventions and restrictions (Ahluwalia et al, 2021 ; Sledge & Thomas, 2021 ; Yeom et al, 2021 ) and its particular but not so unique nature in historical perspective (De Graaf et al, 2021 ). In line with our recent review on methods and approaches in crisis and disaster research, they represent a mix of single and comparative case studies based on secondary data, conceptual discussions and survey research on primary data.…”