Don Kalb, University of Bergen
At some point in late January I told my family over WhatsApp with the Marxist bluster they usually enjoy from me that if Covid was to come to the West it would be the end of capitalism. Wuhan was already in lockdown and a red alert was sounding for many other places in China, followed by South Korea and Iran.
Gavin Smith, University of Toronto
“One of the many perils lies in normalizing the ‘batshit crazy’ presently underway.”
—Wallace, Liebman, Chavez & Wallace 2020: 5
The COVID-19 pandemic has stripped the veneer off capitalist society whether in its softer social democratic version or its bare-faced pseudo Darwinian version. Both the cause and the cure are down to the way capitals, now thoroughly integrated into states, have driven the direction of technology to produce this perfect storm. The staggering failures at the curing end are not just glaringly obvious in the present crisis; you’d have to be especially starry-eyed not to see that the wheels and most of the chassis had been stripped off public health well before now. But at the causative end “the normalizing [of] the batshit crazy presently underway,” risks being lost in the chatter.
Continue readingSophia Hornbacher-Schönleber, University of Cambridge
COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in Indonesia. The government ignored the crisis for too long, relying on a dubious religious discourse of divine protection. When it finally reacted, its response was unsystematic and favored economic stability over health and welfare measures. Although the government has neither imposed a strict lockdown nor the state of emergency, it is clamping down on critics during the crisis.
Continue readingSharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University & University of Bergen
Several weeks into the global pandemic, the gravity of the COVID-19-triggered economic crisis in the United States is coming into focus. As of this writing, some 22 million people were put out of work, one in four small businesses face permanent closure, and a third of renters were unable to pay rent in the month of April.
Ramesh Sunam, Waseda University, Tokyo
Suraj (name changed), arrived a year ago from Nepal to study at a Japanese language institute in Nagoya, Japan. He was working part-time at a convenient shop to make a living. Unfortunately, Suraj’s situation has changed in the last two months following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In March, he faced a reduction in his working hours by 30 percent. At the outset of this month, his employer asked him to stay home until they call him back for work. Apparently, he lost his job, at least temporarily, through no fault of his own. When I spoke to him, he seemed deeply worried about his annual tuition fees of some US$ 8,000 due soon as well as about covering his living expenses. He cannot source the tuition fees from his own family living in Nepal because his family is already in debt due to the loan taken out for funding his journey to Japan. It cost him about US$ 13,000 to enter Japan on a student visa. During 16-18 hours days filled with studies and work, he struggled hard to make a living and pay tuition fees and to send money home to repay his travel and visa debt. The unexpected crisis has added another layer of vulnerability to his struggles. Since he has made lots of sacrifices to study in Japan, he is not in a position to go back home without completing studies and saving enough from precarious labor to repay his debts. He is also well aware about the situation in his own country, which is relatively unprepared for testing and treating COVID-19 cases.
Continue readingAt the end of February, the center of Italian capital encountered an unexpected problem. Not an unforeseeable one, but one that was not previously thought possible in the highly integrated European tertiary hub of Lombardy. Some weeks of contradictory official announcements passed by. Local and central governments, experts, and politicians first closed the few institutions that remained under public control after several years of privatization of public services, such as schools and libraries, and then came up with city marketing campaigns such as #MilanoNonSiFerma or #BergamoNonSiFerma (Milan/Bergamo doesn’t stop) intended to push everyone to keep the service sector and the productive economy up and running. Finally, at the end of the first week of March, the government frantically urged everyone in Italy to enact so-called social distancing and isolation at home.
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A prolonged wait at the pharmacy, a long queue before entering a supermarket. Experiences like this, today increasingly common, can help us to see how the spreading of Coronavirus is transforming our society. Yet, more precisely, the global pandemic, and the measures put in place by the Italian government to attempt to counteract it, are in fact merely exacerbating tendencies that have already existed for a while. Recent decades, dominated by the politics of fear, have left their mark. This can be seen in the current fear of physical contact, or in the suspicious looks that guard over the “security distance” between people. Undoubtedly, such an anxiety of control strengthens the powers dominating our lives, and it is worth remembering that once governmental measures such as these are taken they become part of the arsenal of political possibility. Yet, other images have emerged as well, ones with profoundly different connotations. People on the street smile at each other, music is played from balconies, and a sense of solidarity surrounds not only doctors and nurses, but also factory workers on strike to defend the health security offered via their working conditions.
Continue readingMario Schmidt, University of Cologne
Mototaxi drivers wearing face masks, supermarkets obliging customers to wash their hands before entering, hawkers selling indigenous vegetables as prophylactics against COVID-19, and strangers running away from me shouting “Corona, Corona, Corona” only to smile and break out in laughter—these are all strategies that inhabitants of Pipeline, one of Nairobi’s (and sub-Saharan Africa’s) most congested estates, and my home since June 2019, employ to deal with the looming pandemic and, supposedly, prevent the spread of the virus.
Continue readingMariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool
The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The main academic workers’ trade union, University College Union (UCU), has been on strike for 22 days in total over two periods since November 2019 with demands to end casualization, increase pay, and abolish gender and minority pay gaps. Yet, the strike also coincided with the outbreak of coronavirus, which has pushed universities around the world into online teaching. In light of these unfolding development, this article reviews increasingly established injustices in UK higher education and shows the links between casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour.
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