Covid Disaster in America and the World

by Craig Calhoun (Tempe, Arizona)

The disaster in America points to hard truths about Covid that matter everywhere. Covid strikes rich countries as well as poor, powerful as well as weak. Vulnerability that does not map neatly onto old divisions of developed from underdeveloped or imperialist from post-colonial. Its impact is shaped by pre-existing social conditions and it is uneven inside each country as well as internationally. Politics readily compromises response and sometimes all but completely derails it.

Photo essay – Of Tea and Grit: Kolkata in the Time of COVID-19

by Nilanjana Deb (text) and Jishnu Basak (photos)

Until a vaccine is made cheaply and readily available for all, Kolkata – like all cities – will have to keep moving between phases of city-wide lockdown, limited lockdown within containment zones, and periodic easing of travel and other restrictions to enable businesses and institutions to continue to function.

The Virus in the Queues

by Beth Vale

In the queue, the language of ‘social distancing’ is loaded with meaning – illuminating the connections between physical distance and social disparity. Queues make visible the social distance between those who wait and (often far-removed) centres of authority.

Opus Magnum: How the Pandemic is Changing the World

by Göran Therborn

The pandemic has been, and is, an experience of suffering and loss for millions of people around the planet. For us, privileged survivors, it has been a life-engraving learning experience. It has shown us the historical impact of contingency, the planetary commons and its eradicable divisions, a sharpening of social and political alternatives, and an acceleration of the current dynamic of the world, towards inegalitarian deglobalization, and possibly to a geopolitical US-China war.