COVID‐19 and the Meaning of Crisis

Abstract

Crisis is a concept that has a long history; it has come to denote moments of rupture and to foreground life and death decisions necessary for its resolution. The recent deployment of the concept in broad social, economic and political spheres has not only given rise to an industry of crisis management but has also established it as a framework through which to conceive, survive and reconstruct the world. The politics of crisis and the power of crisis narratives determine who is responsible for the crisis, who are its victims, who are its casualties and, inevitably, what policies need to be adopted and, later, institutionalized, in order to ‘fix’ the crisis and its outcomes. This article examines the politics of crisis narratives and situates the contributions to this Debate within larger debates on crisis under capitalism. These contributions employ the COVID‐19 experience as a lens to examine how moments of crisis allow economic and political elites to displace the blame for the crisis and its structural causes away from themselves and to institute policies which maintain the status quo, limit the scope for alternatives to emerge, and foreclose debates on fundamental questions of power relations which, inevitably, reproduce the conditions for future crises.

Short- and Long-Term Predicted and Witnessed Consequences of Digital Surveillance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review

“…Recent publications have underscored the urgency of attending to questions of human rights related to digital surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the case of marginalized groups. Abdelrahman [ 243 ], for instance, describes the impacts of digital surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable groups, including African minority populations in China who had surveillance cameras installed outside their homes by the state. Marshall explores the potential implications of increased digital surveillance during the pandemic for queer sex workers, as enhanced surveillance through closed-circuit television cameras and facial recognition reduced their ability to work anonymously and increased their risk of being criminalized [ 244 ].…”

The Political Economy of ‘Failure’ in The World Bank‐funded Bisri Dam in Lebanon

“…Infrastructure crises, breakdown and collapse feature so heavily in the everyday life, popular discourses and scholarly framings of Lebanon that the term ‘crisis’ has become a ‘super‐concept’, so self‐evident, self‐referential and self‐explanatory that it is often accepted a priori rather than examined (Abdelrahman, 2022; Roitman, 2014). As a result, ‘failure’ is taken as a given, with little attention paid to the political economy of failure and for whom it may be generative.…”

Lessons from the stigma of COVID-19 survivors: A Marxist criticism appraisal

“…Firstly, capitalism increases the risk of spreading infectious diseases and stigma. Capitalism spreads the disease by impoverishing migrant health and blaming them, where territorial, political, judicial and economic expulsions are their means ( 43 ). Siu’s study ( 44 ) of social and cultural values found that the vulnerability of some groups to stigma is reinforced under the capitalist ideology.…”