COVID-19: Volume II: Social Consequences and Cultural Adaptations

The  SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the associated COVID-19 pandemic, is perhaps the  greatest threat to life, and lifestyles, the world has known in more  than a century. The scholarship included here provides critical insights  into the institutional responses, communal consequences, cultural  adaptations, and social politics that lie at the heart of this pandemic.  This volume maps out the ways in which the pandemic has impacted (most  often disproportionately) societies, the successes and failures of means  used to combat the virus, and the considerations and future  possibilities – both positive and negative –  that lie ahead. While the  pandemic has brought humanity together in some noteworthy ways, it has  also laid bare many of the systemic inequalities that lie at the  foundation of our global society. This volume is a significant step  toward better understanding these impacts.

The  work presented here represents a remarkable diversity and quality of  impassioned scholarship and is a timely and critical advance in  knowledge related to the pandemic. This volume and its companion, COVID-19: Volume I: Global Pandemic, Societal Responses, Ideological Solutions,  are the result of the collaboration of more than 50 of the leading  social scientists from across five continents. The breadth and depth of  the scholarship is matched only by the intellectual and global scope of  the contributors themselves. The insights presented here have much to  offer not just to an understanding of the ongoing world of COVID-19, but  also to helping us (re-) build, and better shape, the world beyond.