Abstract
19 March, 2020
I am sitting at home, working in relative isolation, probably like most readers of this. It feels odd to be putting out a regular issue of Social Studies of Science, when the effects of and reactions to COVID-19 are in the process of shutting down much of North America and Europe, as well as Iran, parts of China and many other places – with the rest of the world looking on and waiting.
With multiple health, medical, social and economic crises moving so fast, and affecting each other, Social Studies of Science is – like other journals in the humanities and social sciences – too slow a venue for genuinely useful articles on COVID-19 at this moment. And we STS researchers are, like many around us, trying to cope with new and old pressures. We are caring for children, parents, neighbours and others, while working in new circumstances or being concerned about the shortage of jobs, and while dealing with anxieties about the cities, countries and world in which we live.
Undoubtedly, COVID-19 will be an enormous topic for STS for many years to come, and I am confident that the STS community will have many useful and extremely insightful analyses of our situation, building on rich empirical research. Already, I think that most things we do in STS are directly or analogically relevant to COVID-19.
For example, we know to pay attention to the complex matter of counting. It’s clear that numbers from one jurisdiction to another aren’t comparable. How are ‘confirmed cases’ and the mounting deaths being counted in different places? Today, the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Italy passed the number in China – which is now reporting few new cases and deaths. But are the ways of counting comparable between Italy and China?
Even if counts aren’t fully comparable, we can see that the virus’s qualities are different across times and places, depending crucially on the actions of many humans and non-humans. Publics seem to want to know precisely what the virus is and how it behaves, such as when and how quickly it passes from person to person. But it may not have a clear profile. In crowded South Korea, where COVID-19 landed early, the number of confirmed cases has been growing slowly compared with, say, the United States, where it is currently nearly doubling every two days.
Different trajectories depend on radically different ways of caring, flows of knowledge and ignorance, and modes of political action. We in STS can contribute to understanding the virus and its different shapes, linking chance events, practices, materials, cultures and political economies. The whole field is relevant, and so I feel privileged to be supporting your work.
In the meantime, I am thinking of all my friends and colleagues around the world.