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COVID time: Temporal imaginaries and pandemic materialities

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Bibliographic Details
Title: COVID time: Temporal imaginaries and pandemic materialities
Authors: Butler, E, Lupton, D
Source: Sociology of Health & Illness. 47
Publisher Information: Wiley, 2024.
Publication Year: 2024
Subject Terms: Male, Adult, anzsrc-for: 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, Coronaviruses, anzsrc-for: 4401 Anthropology, 4401 Anthropology, anzsrc-for: 4206 Public Health, Interviews as Topic, Clinical Research, COVID‐19, temporal imaginaries, Humans, anzsrc-for: 44 Human Society, sociomaterial, Pandemics, time, anzsrc-for: 4410 Sociology, Qualitative Research, 44 Human Society, Aged, anzsrc-for: 42 Health Sciences, SARS-CoV-2, Australia, 42 Health Sciences, COVID-19, 4410 Sociology, pandemic materialities, Middle Aged, Coronaviruses Disparities and At-Risk Populations, anzsrc-for: 1608 Sociology, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Infectious Diseases, crisis, 4206 Public Health, Imagination, Female, anzsrc-for: 1117 Public Health and Health Services
Description: Since the advent of the COVID‐19 pandemic, several ways of understanding time have emerged: what we may call ‘COVID time’. Based on 40 qualitative online interviews in 2022 with Australians living across the continent, this article examines how people situated themselves and COVID‐19 in historical time. It further explores how material aspects, place and space (or “pandemic materialities”) factored into lived experiences and temporal imaginaries. We focus on how time‐related concepts such as synchronisation and the definition of crises and events are interrelated in the participants’ understandings of COVID as either over or a continuing crisis. The sociomaterial dimensions that served to alert people to risk and encourage them to engage in preventive action are identified as ways in which COVID time was experienced, remembered, understood and imagined. While some respondents claimed that the present moment was ‘post‐COVID’, for others, the pandemic was far from over in 2022 and indeed stretched into the future. We use a sociomaterial lens to show how respondents portray the ‘temporal technologies’ and ‘objectifications’ of the event of COVID‐19—the tangible materialisations of its temporal status as either relegated to the past or continuing as a mode of present and future crisis.
Document Type: Article
Language: English
ISSN: 1467-9566
0141-9889
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13857
Access URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39476331
Rights: Wiley Online Library User Agreement
Accession Number: edsair.doi.dedup.....de51caf6f5dcc919aec708a7bc736082
Database: OpenAIRE
Description
Abstract:Since the advent of the COVID‐19 pandemic, several ways of understanding time have emerged: what we may call ‘COVID time’. Based on 40 qualitative online interviews in 2022 with Australians living across the continent, this article examines how people situated themselves and COVID‐19 in historical time. It further explores how material aspects, place and space (or “pandemic materialities”) factored into lived experiences and temporal imaginaries. We focus on how time‐related concepts such as synchronisation and the definition of crises and events are interrelated in the participants’ understandings of COVID as either over or a continuing crisis. The sociomaterial dimensions that served to alert people to risk and encourage them to engage in preventive action are identified as ways in which COVID time was experienced, remembered, understood and imagined. While some respondents claimed that the present moment was ‘post‐COVID’, for others, the pandemic was far from over in 2022 and indeed stretched into the future. We use a sociomaterial lens to show how respondents portray the ‘temporal technologies’ and ‘objectifications’ of the event of COVID‐19—the tangible materialisations of its temporal status as either relegated to the past or continuing as a mode of present and future crisis.
ISSN:14679566
01419889
DOI:10.1111/1467-9566.13857