Negotiating the Pandemic

Abstract

This book centers on negotiations around cultural, governmental, and individual constructions of COVID-19. It considers how the coronavirus pandemic has been negotiated in different cultures and countries, with the fi nal part of the volume focusing on South Asia and Pakistan in particular. The chapters include autoethnographic accounts and ethnographic explorations that refl ect upon experiences of living with the pandemic and its implications for all areas of life. The book explicates people's dealings with COVID-19 at various levels, situates the spread of rumors, conspiracy theories, and new social rituals within micro-and/ or macro-contexts, and describes the interplay between the virus and various institutionalized forms of inequalities and structural vulnerabilities. Bringing together a variety of perspectives, the volume relates to the past, describes the Covidian present, and offers futuristic implications. It enlists distinct imaginaries based on current understandings of an extraordinary challenge that holds signifi cant importance for our human future.An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched (KU). KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 9781003187462. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org .

An autoethnography of a transformative odyssey: decolonizing anthropology, the hegemony of English, and the pursuit of plurilogies

“…The 1980s "crisis of representation" in anthropology encouraged autoethnography because it acknowledged the impossibility of complete objectivity in ethnographic research (Ali, 2022, Campbell, 2016. Now, researchers recognize subjective selfexperiences as first-hand data that contribute to nuanced understandings of sociocultural processes.…”