Societal Vulnerability and Resilience in the COVID-19 Crisis
Abstract
Despite that the possibility of a pandemic was seriously considered in professional circles, most governments were taken by surprise by the rapid diffusion of the SARS CoV-2, from first reports in China (December 2019) to the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the WHO (11th March 2020). The same was true for the majority of citizens, unfamiliar with the word pandemic and its meaning. The nightmare scenario of a collapse of the health services and its consequences led to the adoption of measures that impacted very heavily on peoples’ daily lives and required great efforts of adaptation with a high toll on the economic, social and cultural spheres. The paper focuses on some of the major vulnerabilities highlighted by the crisis, from the limited knowledge on the virus and the pandemic to the many uncertainties regarding the response of the human systems and their capacity to cope. Some positive short-term responses are identified, while long-term resilience remains doubtful, including the stability of democratic processes.
References
Alexievich, S. (2015). Voices from Chernobyl. London, United Kingdom: Dalkey Archive.
Archard, D. (2020, April 20). Trustworthiness and 'doing ethics'. [Blog post] Nuffield Council of Bioethics. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2SPN2Y2
De Marchi, B. (2015). Risk governance and the integration of scientific and local know-ledge. In Fra.Paleo, U. (Ed.), Risk governance: The articulation of hazard, politics and ecology (pp. 149-165). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
De Marchi, B. & Tessarin, N. (1991). Perception of a second-hand reality. In Segersthål, B. (Ed.), Chernobyl: A policy response study (pp. 117-132). Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag.
De Marchi, B., Funtowicz, S. & Ravetz, J.R. (1996). Seveso a paradoxical classic disaster. In Mitchell J.K. (Ed.), The long road to recovery: community responses to industrial disaster (pp. 86-120). Tokyo, Japan: United Nations University.
De Waal, A. (2020). New Pathogen, Old Politics. Boston Review, April 03. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2LlXAKj
Dynes, R.R. (1974). Organized behavior in disasters. Columbus (OH): Ohio State Univer-sity.
Dynes, R. (2006). Social capital: Dealing with community emergencies. Homeland Security Affairs 2, Article 5 (July). Retrieved from https://www.hsaj.org/articles/168
Dynes, R. & Tieney, K.J. (Eds.) (1994). Disasters, collective behaviour, and social organi-zation. Newark (DE): University of Delaware.
Fazackerley, A. (2020). Women’s research plummets over lockdown - but articles from men increase. The Guardian May, 12. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3cubXYM
Funtowicz, S. & Ravetz, J. R. (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25(7), 739-755.
Graff, G.M. (2020). Experts knew a pandemic was coming. here’s what they’re worried about next. Politico Magazine, May 5. Retrieved from https://politi.co/2yyp5xw
Guston, D. (2012). The pumpkin or the tiger? Michael Polanyi, Frederick Soddy, and an-ticipating emerging technologies. Minerva, 50(3), 363–379.
Hanage, W. (2020). I’m an epidemiologist. When I heard about Britain’s ‘herd immunity’ coronavirus plan, I thought it was satire. The Guardian, March 15. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3fKaFes
Hecker, S., Haklay, M., Bowser, A., Makuch, Z., Vogel, J. & Bonn, A. (Eds.). (2018). Citi-zen science: innovation in open science, society and policy. London, United Kingdom: UCL Press.
Holling, C.S. (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1-23.
Hulme, M. (2020, April 27). Do not reduce the future to Covid-19. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2y8I2Xd
Malavasi, G. (2019). Ecological crisis and democratic crisis in the history of Manfredo-nia. CEScontexto (forthcoming).
Mangone, E. (2018). From calamities to disasters: Pitirim Aleksandrovič Sorokin’s insights. Human Arenas, 1(1): 79–85.
Marston, C., Renedo, A., Miles, S. (2020). Community participation is crucial in a pandem-ic. The Lancet, May 4. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2Lkw53H
Mileti, D. (1999). Disasters by design: A reassessment of natural hazards in the United States (emergency preparedness / disaster management). Washington D.C.: Joseph Henry.
Minello, A. (2020). The pandemic and the female academic. Nature, April 17. Retrieved from https://go.nature.com/2L1Pjen
Perrow, Ch. (1999). Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies. Princeton: Prin-ceton University (first edition 1984).
Perry, R.W., Lindell, M.K. & Tierney, K.J. (eds.) (2001). Facing the unexpected: Disaster preparedness and response in the United States. Washington D.C.: Joseph Henry.
Pilkey, O. & Pilkey-Jarvis, L. (2007). Useless arithmetic: Why environmental scientists can’t predict the future. New York, NY: Columbia University.
Prainsack, B., Kritzinger, S. & Boomgaarden, H. (2020, May 16). from acute crisis to long-term coping? Further insights from the austrian corona panel project [Blog post] Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2Z603Rf
Prince, S.M. (1920). Catastrophe and social change. PhD Dissertation, Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, NY. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3dKnXpv
Quarantelli, E.L. (1987). Disaster studies: an analysis of the social historical factors affecting the development of research in the area. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 5(3), 285-310.
Quarantelli E. L. (Ed.) (1998). What is a disaster? A dozen perspectives on the question. New York, NY: Routledge.
Reisz, M. (2020). Pandemic response needs ‘wisdom’ of social sciences, scholars say. THE (Times of Higher Education), May 12. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3fIIOLl
Saltelli, A. & Funtowicz, S. (2015). Evidence-based policy at the end of the Cartesian dream. The case of mathematical modelling. In Guimarães Pereira, Â. & Funtowicz, S. (Eds.), Science philosophy and sustainability: The end of the Cartesian dream (pp. 147-162). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Sorokin, P. A. (2010). Man and society in calamity. Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction (orig. ed. 1942).
Taleb, N.N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. New York, N.Y: Random House.
Stirling, A. (2020, April 7). Modernity without its clothes: The pandemic crisis shines a light on futilities of control. [Blog post]. STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and En-vironmental Pathways to Sustainability). Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2YJTB24
Yong, E. (2020a). Our pandemic summer. The Atlantic, April 14. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2K8spBm
Yong. E. (2020b).Why the coronavirus is so confusing. The Atlantic, April 29. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2yRAkkf
Tallacchini, M. (2017). Medical technologies and EU law: The evolution of regulatory ap-proaches and governance. In Cremona M. (Ed.), New technologies and EU law (pp. 9-37). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University.
Waltner-Toews,D., Biggeri, A., De Marchi, B., Funtowicz, S., Giampietro, M., O’Connor, M., Ravetz, J.R., Saltelli, A. & Van der Sluijs, J.P. (2020, March 25).Post-normal pan-demics: Why COVID-19 requires a new approach to science. [guest blog post]. STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability). Re-trieved from https://bit.ly/3cqW8lP
Wucker, M. (2020). No, the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t an ‘unforeseen problem’. The coronavirus pandemic isn’t a ‘black swan.’ It’s a gray rhino, The Washington Post, March 17. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3cqW8lP
