Crisis-ready responsible selves: National productions of the pandemic

Abstract

National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national ‘solidarity lite’ while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it.

World Health Organization myth busters and indigenous perceptions of COVID-19: Quechua and Shipibo communities

“…The fact that we did not find any group, gender, or indigenous language proficiency effects shows that, unlike some differences found with respect to other statements, the information from the government that reached most of the participants in both communities focused on deaths and the quarantine, but not on healing or treatment. If we add to this that most participants stated that they received most of the information about COVID in both languages, and the socially dominant language seems to be present for some of them in several social domains, our results suggest that members of indigenous communities, who already suffer from limited access to healthcare facilities (( Orgad and Hegde, 2022 ) Hernandez-Vazquez et al, 2022), are at a serious disadvantage in regards to having access to health information in a pandemic situation.…”

“…Additionally, the surge of the pandemic was exacerbated by the features already inherent to racial capitalism and neoliberal attempts in creating solutions for minoritized communities rather than in collaboration with them: to the degree that the relevant information was becoming available, the medium adopted for its transmission often discounted the cultural values of the intended audiences (as in ( Nunes, 2020 ) Nunes, 2020 , a.o.). In this process, and often in disregard for the Indigenous healthcare education practices as well as the biomedical knowledge practiced by the Indigenous societies, when the information finally became available for Indigenous communities, its medium resulted in infantilizing discourses (e.g., cartoons) while, simultaneously, often ignoring the gross lack of access to general adequate healthcare (see the discussion in ( Orgad and Hegde, 2022 ) Orgad and Hedge 2022). For example ( Hernández-Vásquez et al, 2020 ), Hernandez-Vazquez et al (2022) demonstrate that of the total communities in their study of Peru (n = 1043), only 46% were within 1 h from the nearest clinic, and 15.44% were more than 8h away.…”

Family Life in the Time of COVID

“…However, we also argue that the particular approach of the UK government reinforced the construction of the home as the site of safety and refuge for individuals and families, and outside the home, and importantly outside 'others', as risky. As outlined, personal responsibility was foregrounded in social distancing guidelines: Government officials often emphasized the role of individuals in making appropriate 'choices' in responding to various public health measures as key to combatting the pandemic (Williams 2021; Orgad and Hegde 2022). Such an approach can encourage victim blaming, whereby those infected with COVID-19 are characterized as responsible for their own infection and illness .…”

Beyond Words: Tapping the Potential of Digital Diaries While Exploring Young Adults’ Experiences on Apps

“…This aesthetic care also had typically and stereotypically feminine readings. There is a strong link between female care for aesthetics and beauty and self-care in terms of health and well-being [41], expressed in the idea of the "self-care imperative" [42]. Other studies have reinforced the idea that "quality of care" is a woman's task, including that of young adults [43,44].…”