About this Research Topic

Background

Do the massive disruptions and transformations of the pandemic allow us to explore how to remake our shared economic, social, cultural and political life to be fairer, healthier, more inclusive and sustainable in the future? How could COVID-19 be a starting point to facilitate rethinking social relations and values? The massive investment in research that created effective safe vaccines in record time shows us what is possible with international cooperation. So far, however global distribution of the vaccine reflects and reinscribes inequalities rather that undoing them. Across the global north social problems that had been intractable were quickly addressed drawing on statutory resources, with undocumented migrants offered healthcare access and homeless people accommodated. Lockdowns reduced carbon emissions dramatically for a limited time period; as virtual communication has become the norm in most work places, the reduction in business travel could become more permanent.

The harms of public health measures upon social, economic, cultural and political life have begun to be documented: from the sharp increase in women’s deaths from intimate partner violence to the harsh restrictions to individual freedoms legalized as public health measures. The pandemic public health measures have brought about increases in loneliness and mental distress, while unemployment has hit some sectors and some groups hard. Young people have lost out on educational as well as social opportunities which may be difficult to regain.

This research topic seeks to turn an optimistic sociological imagination towards the future: imagining positive social developments is an achievable step towards making them happen. Sociological approaches are particularly well placed to offer understandings built on evidence from across a range of sectors of stratified societies, taking account of socio-economic, cultural and political influences. How can the political slogan ‘build back better’ address current and urgent inequities? Can the pandemic city be reimagined to allow social life to persist in the face of novel micro-organisms’ arrival among us? How can equity be lodged at the heart of all of societal initiatives, both nationally and globally?

This research topic welcomes contributions that draw upon empirical material, offer theoretical analyses and novel methodological approaches to sketching a post-pandemic society.

Keywords: socio-economic change, post-pandemic, inequities, societal initiatives, inclusiveness, sustainability, public health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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