‘Unhome’ sweet home

Socio-spatialities and affective atmospheres of COVID-19: A visual essay

“…These caveats notwithstanding, this essay is a small contribution to the growing body of insights into others’ experiences in both Australia and other countries. This literature has begun to show how everyday experiences during the continuing COVID crisis were suffused with multisensory and affective feelings as human bodies came together with other humans, things, place and space and rhythms of time, and embodiment and habit were subjected to constant disruption (Lupton and Lewis, 2022; Sigley, 2020; Elswit, 2021; Thorpe et al, 2021; Mosteanu, 2021; Clark and Lupton, 2021; Thompson et al, 2020; Young, 2021; Moretti and Maturo, 2021).…”

Sociomaterialities of health, risk and care during COVID-19: Experiences of Australians living with a medical condition

“…Another project employed autoethnography to identify the role played by digital health technologies together with home-based objects and spaces in the author's therapeutic landscapes and mobilities as she lived through lockdown conditions in the UK ( Thompson, 2021 ). A study involving young adult Italians' experiences during lockdown adopted a narrative interview technique facilitated by Skype to focus on how ‘new normalities’ of domestic and work habits were configured while they were confined predominantly to the home ( Moretti and Maturo, 2021 ). The roles played by people's relationships with their home gardens ( Giraud et al, 2021 ) and domestic animals ( Young et al, 2020 ) in contributing to their feelings of wellbeing, safety and comfort during COVID have further been identified in qualitative studies.…”

“…The value of a case study approach drawing on people's narratives of their experiences is that it allows for a detailed focus on the sociomaterial and biographical conditions of lived experience. Similar to the narrative interview study by Moretto and Mauro (2021) on Italians' experiences of lockdown, our approach adopts a version of narrative inquiry which is not only about illness experiences but also seeks to surface conceptualisations of risk, stay-at-home restrictions and vulnerability. Indeed, given that our focus was people's experiences of the COVID crisis, their narratives could also be characterised as ‘outbreak’ or ‘pandemic’ narratives ( Davis and Lohm, 2020 ; Wald, 2008 ) as well as illness narratives.…”

“…This observation illustrates how the reconfiguration of a once ‘safe’ and familiar social space that were once experienced as comforting, inclusive and promoting a sense of belonging, can be transformed or reconfigured, evoking a different set of feelings such as fear, distress and discomfort (cf. Brownlie and Spandler, 2018 ; Moretti and Maturo, 2021 ).…”

Creating memory of COVID-19: The actions of museums and archives in Spain

“…The pandemic has affected numerous forms of social behaviour (Sélim, 2020), including several academic dynamics (Shelley-Egan, 2020), forms of domestic life, digital communication (Myles et al, 2021), the way we celebrate festivals and intangible heritage (Roigé et al, 2021b) and personal relationships. During COVID-19, everyday life has been altered: initially, we were forced to stay at home, which became both a refuge and a kind of prison (Moretti and Matturo, 2021), and then, we were faced with a ‘new normality’, characterised by ‘new’ social elements and habits. This everyday life has generated new memory narratives and new objects (masks, disinfectants, posters, protective plastics, etc.)…”