The Pandemic and our Place in the World
Written by Christopher Hobson

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The Pandemic and our Place in the World
https://www.e-ir.info/2021/03/03/the-pandemic-and-our-place-in-the-world/
CHRISTOPHER HOBSON, MAR 3 2021

An important truism within disaster studies is that all disasters are human-made. What this insight conveys is thathow people act – before, during, after – plays a crucial role in shaping how a disaster unfolds, even if the trigger isfrom nature. Accounts that cast ‘nature as the villain’ obscure how these events are the ‘product of particular socialand political environments’.1 A tsunami might be naturally occurring, but what prevention measures are in place
beforehand, whether evacuation occurs promptly and properly, how authorities and communities react, these are all
choices people make that help determine how destructive or damaging the tsunami will be. Likewise, the COVID-19
virus itself is beyond human control, but the way the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved has been greatly shaped by
the decisions that people have made in response to the virus. From individuals to governments to internationalorganisations, the choices people have made have been determinative in giving shape to the nature and extent of thepandemic. What follows is that understanding how the pandemic has unfolded means considering the social andsocietal components, how people have interpreted and responded to the virus, and through this, what impact thevirus has had on the social world and our place in it.
In Naomi Zack’s forthcoming book, The American Tragedy of COVID-19 Social and Political Crises of 2020 , she
describes the pandemic as a social disaster, by which she means that the ‘disaster is not simply a natural entity orevent, but the whole of that event and how it becomes integrated in human society’.2 Drawing on E.L. Quarantelli’swork,3 Zack emphasises that the uneven and complex experience with the pandemic, its immediacy, impact,significance, duration and related features are all strongly variable based on who you are, and where you are, both ina geographical sense and in a socio-economic sense. This complicates the task of finding wider societal meaning, as
the experience with the pandemic has been so disparate. Between different countries, but also within societies andcommunities, what the pandemic has meant has varied greatly. For some, it has been literally world shattering, at its
most immediate, death, but also serious impairment, and the loss of livelihood or employment; for others, it has beena source of stress and concern, whereas the immediate impact has been more one of discomfort; and for the lucky
ones, it has actually been a boon, with day-to-day inconvenience being offset by gains made by the changes
triggered by the pandemic. And so, the way each of us have experienced this liminal moment has been markedly
different; strongly shaped by who and where we are, physically and socio-economically. One consequence that
follows from this is that the way we are making sense and interpreting the pandemic is far from uniform, reflecting
these considerable differences.
In considering the ramifications of COVID-19, it is necessary to foreground the immediate cost in terms of loss of life,
as the death toll of the pandemic continues to grind towards 2.5 million people. Each death has meaning, andcumulatively these losses pull at the threads of our world. James Boyd White conveys this point beautifully,‘whenever anyone dies … a world of possibility dies with him or her, a web of relationships of caring and concern. A
part of the fabric of humanity and human community has been torn to bits.’4 As the deaths mount up, more
possibilities, memories and connections disappear from our world. After the pandemic passes, left in its wake will be
the damage it has caused, each death reshapes the lives of those who remain, and collectively these losses
reverberate through society. How these deaths are understood, whether responsibility for them is assigned, how they
are memorialised; these and other ways the pandemic becomes part of collective memory is an important feature of it
as a social disaster.
Viewing the pandemic as a social disaster incorporates more than the lives lost and those sickened by the virus. It

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The Pandemic and our Place in the World
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also means coming to terms with the way the disaster has reshaped people’s understanding of themselves and theirworld. As Zack explains, ‘this is what it means to say that disaster is socially constructed – certain changes in society
should be viewed as part of a disaster and not merely an effect of a disaster.’5 Disaster can challenge and change
people’s perspectives on life and the way they engage with each other, and with the world. Indeed, the manner inwhich a pandemic can do this is captured in a powerful account of the plague presented in Thucydides’History of thePeloponnesian War: ‘the spirit is crushed when something so sudden, unexpected and so completely unaccountablecomes along’.6 During more normal periods, we work with linear maps of life; as time marches forward, so do we,with some expectation that we can extrapolate the future from the present and past. For many, this was shaken or
broken by COVID-19. It is not just the present that we experience differently, it can lead to questioning andreinterpreting the past, with earlier decisions now looking radically different. It can paint the future in a different light,
with plans stalled and uncertainty over what comes next.
Put strongly, it is possible to say that the pandemic has triggered a kind of ontological chaos, in which people’s senseof self and their relation with the world has been thrown into turmoil. Many of the key markers that orientate our lives
and our places in the world have been impacted. In addition to life and health, COVID-19 has destroyed livelihoods,
led to loss of income and employment, separated people from family members and loved ones, altered how weinteract with others. Collectively, when the markers by which we orientate ourselves in the world are removed, andthe stories we tell about ourselves start to unravel, it can create a sense of disorientation and give rise to difficult
questions about meaning, purpose and place in the world.
This ontological chaos is paired with epistemological chaos, as people struggle to know what is true, what they canbelieve. This is partly due to the pandemic itself, during which reality has constantly gone beyond the bounds of what
was previously considered likely or possible. Shoshana Zuboff uses the idea of ‘epistemic chaos’ specifically todescribe the consequences of what she terms ‘surveillance capitalism’ interacting with the pandemic.7 She argues
that big tech through ‘profit-driven algorithmic amplification, dissemination and microtargeting of corrupt information’
have fractured our ability to understand and interpret the world. The consequences have been to ‘splinter sharedreality, poison social discourse, paralyze democratic politics and sometimes instigate violence and death’. Zuboff iscorrect to point to the distinctive and pernicious role played by social media, but the epistemic chaos unleashed by
the pandemic is a broader phenomenon. Many authorities and institutions shifted in pronouncements and policies,science and knowledge about COVID-19 has advanced in an incomplete and haphazard manner, risk
communication has been radically uneven in terms of accuracy and quality. When all of these things are combinedwith the forces Zuboff identifies, the result is growing uncertainty about what is true. Writing in the context of theAmerican experience with COVID, Rusty Ginn suggests that, ‘what about the stories we tell about our global
institutions, our shared values, and our own orthodoxies and authorities? Those stories are dying. They are dying
because the institutions built on those stories failed us all, and all at once.’8 Combined, these experiences generate asense of confusion and unease, with the discovery that in certain ways, reality is more malleable, and conditions
more changeable, than we had tended to think.
The kind of issues being discussed here, especially the ontological and epistemological chaos let loose by thepandemic, undoubtedly impacts us all as individuals. We are not immune from the fears and the confusion, thepersistent sense of uncertainty and unease, nor are we necessarily protected from the many impacts it has had ondaily life. In addition, we must consider how to incorporate and respond to the pandemic in our roles as scholars andteachers of world politics. The pandemic truly connects to most facets of life, and thus most fields of knowledge.
From security to ethics, statecraft to diplomacy, trade to finance, the pandemic has had far-reaching ramifications forthe parts of world politics we study. Coming to grips with the more immediate consequences, while identifying andworking through the many second and third order effects will be necessary in the years ahead. We are certainly living
in interesting times, as the saying goes, and the manner in which the pandemic has worked to speed up and clarify
existing issues and dynamics suggests that the world is likely to only get more interesting.
Returning to the idea of COVID-19 as a social disaster, the pandemic is a disaster that is one of our making, the way
it has developed is a reflection of the choices that have been made: individually, collectively, and by those charged
with running and administering our societies. By understanding such events as purely natural phenomena, humanagency is ignored, both in reference to creating and preventing vulnerabilities. The shape and direction of theE-International Relations

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The Pandemic and our Place in the WorldWritten by Christopher Hobson

pandemic is greatly influenced by our individual and collective choices. A particularly acute example of this is how
vaccines are now being rolled out. According to the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, the distribution ofCOVID-19 vaccines has been ‘wildly uneven and unfair’, noting that 10 countries have administered 75% of all
vaccinations, and that 130 countries have yet to receive any vaccine doses.9 What this means is that when and how
this pandemic will end will differ greatly based on who and where you are in the world. This is emblematic of the moregeneral point about COVID-19 being a social disaster, a perspective that reminds us of the role of human behaviours
and decisions continue to play in the direction and nature of the pandemic, and how it will continue to develop going
forward.
The social world feels like a snow globe that has been shaken, and as the snowflakes slowly settle, it will be easierfor us to recognise that contained reality. For now, though, it is difficult to see clearly. While recognising this, itremains important and necessary that we try to come to grips with this ontological and epistemological chaos throughour research and teaching, to look for ways to make sense of what the pandemic means for us and our world. Writing
in 1975, Hannah Arendt suggested that ‘we may very well stand at one of those decisive turning points of history
which separate whole eras from each other. For contemporaries entangled, as we are, in the inexorable demands ofdaily life, the dividing lines between eras may be hardly visible when they are crossed; only after people stumble overthem do the lines grow into walls which irretrievably shut off the past.’10
Across history there certainly have been many false starts and incomplete transitions, such as when Arendt madethis observation. Nonetheless, the general point holds, and there are many signs that the pandemic may truly be one
such turning point. We will not know until Minerva’s owl has taken flight, but as those shades of grey become more
pronounced in the evening sky, it is worthwhile reflecting on what this all might mean, and what part we can play inresponding to the ontological and epistemological turmoil the pandemic has let loose on the world.
1Ted Steinberg, Acts of god: the unnatural history of natural disaster in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000), 118.
2Naomi Zack, The American Tragedy of COVID-19 Social and Political Crises of 2020 (Rowman & LittlefieldPublishers, forthcoming 2021).
3E. L. Quarantelli, ‘What Is Disaster? The Need for Clarification in Definition and Conceptualization in Research,’
University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Article #177, 1985, pp. 41-73.
4James Boyd White, Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3.
5Zack, The American Tragedy of COVID-19 Social and Political Crises of 2020.
6Thucydides, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, book 2.
7Shoshana Zuboff, The Coup We Are Not Talking About, New York Times, 29 January 2021:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/facebook-surveillance-society-technology.html.
8Rusty Ginn, ‘First the People’, Epsilon Theory, 14 April 2020: https://www.epsilontheory.com/first-the-people/.
9‘“Wildly unfair”: UN says 130 countries have not received a single Covid vaccine dose’, The Guardian, 18 February2021:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/18/wildly-unfair-un-says-130-countries-have-not-received-asingle-covid-vaccine-dose.
10Hannah Arendt, ‘Home to Roost’ in Responsibility and Judgement (New York: Shocken Books, 2003), 259.
References
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. Responsibility and Judgment. Shocken Books.

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The Pandemic and our Place in the World
Written by Christopher Hobson

Associated Press. 2021. ”Wildly unfair’: UN says 130 countries have not received a single Covid vaccine dose.’TheGuardian. 18 February.
Ginn, Rusty. 2020. ‘First the People’. Epsilon Theory. 14 April. https://www.epsilontheory.com/first-the-people/Quarantelli, Enrico Louis. 1985. ‘What Is Disaster? The Need for Clarification in Definition and Conceptualization inResearch.’ University of Delaware Disaster Research Center.
Steinberg, Ted. 2000. Acts of god: the unnatural history of natural disaster in America. Oxford University Press.
Thucydides. 2013. The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. Cambridge University Press.
White, James Boyd. 2006. Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force. Princeton University Press.
Zack, Naomi. 2021. The American Tragedy of COVID-19. Rowman & Littlefield.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2021. ‘The Coup We Are Not Talking About.’ New York Times. 29 January.

About the author:Christopher Hobson is a senior lecturer in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He is
also visiting associate professor in the College of Global Liberal Arts, Ritsumeikan University.

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