Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy: Narrative Analyses of the Covid-19 Pandemic

The stories we tell of our own lives and those of others help us make sense of the world and establish meaningful social connections across space and time. Pandemic stories similarly can shed light on the emotions, relationships, values, and actions that arise in times of crisis and disruption.

This book examines how COVID-19 narratives function as models of sense-making, how they connect public and private life, and what they make possible in social worlds. It emphasizes the little heard stories of those struggling with the pandemic’s effects, featuring stories from across the world found in literature, social research, media, public health, and science. In doing so, it provides insight into the inequitable social burdens associated with the COVID-19 crisis.

Designed to demonstrate the richly nuanced insights that narrative inquiry can produce to understand COVID-19, Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy explores the way in which pandemic narratives are used to create the shared collective memory and cultural legacy of the pandemic. The volume expands the critical frameworks through which emerging COVID-19 narratives - experiential, literary, scientific and their hybrids - can be known, examined, and understood.

With contributions from scholars working in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, the United Kingdom, and Europe, the volume furthers dialogue on the pandemic across geographical, cultural, and social diversity and considers how COVID-19 intersects with privilege and inequity in diverse social circumstances. It problematizes perspectives on the pandemic that reduce it to a global monolith or unhelpful North-South comparisons. It reframes the narrative that centered technocratic expert knowledge and a mobilizing emphasis on fear and sacrifice while discounting other values and ramifications.

This volume uses narrative to provide forms of evidence, self-reflection, and shared understanding for building more equitable and just post-COVID-19 futures.

Silvia Camporesi is a bioethicist with a longstanding interest in technologies and health, and an interdisciplinary background in biotechnology, ethics, and philosophy of medicine. Camporesi is Professor of Bioethics and Sports Integrity & Ethics in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at KU Leuven, in Belgium. She was formerly a Reader in Bioethics and Society at King’s College London. Since 2017, Camporesi has been on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. Camporesi is also passionate about bioethics communications and writes regularly for a variety of media outlets, including AEON, the International Public Policy Observatory, and the Conversation.

Sanny Mulubale is a Commonwealth scholar, Senior Lecturer, and Programmes Convener of civic education and research method courses at the University of Zambia. He is serving as the MIET Africa health coordinator in Zambia and is researcher and supervisor of post graduate students affiliated with a number of universities in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the UK. He ran the UEL Global Challenge Research Fund HIV research project in Zambia in 2018-2019. He has been working as a consultant for several health-related projects funded by such institutions as the NIH, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Public Health England and KwaAfrica. He has keen interest in issues around identity, citizenship, global politics, and the governmentalization of health. Mulubale is an author and reviewer who has done work for several journals such as BMC Public Health, Social Science and Medicine as well as Educational Research Association of Zambia. He has written over 25 peer reviewed publications in both local and international journals.

Mark D. M. Davis is Professor of Medical Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts at Monash University. His research focusses on the immune self, pandemics, and superbugs to help build more inclusive and effective social public health. Davis is a member of the Association for Narrative Research and Practice where he coordinated research seminars in 2022 on the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.