Post-Covid: what is cultural theory useful for?

Couldry, Nick ORCID: 0000-0001-8233-3287 (2022) Post-Covid: what is cultural theory useful for? International Journal of Cultural Studies, 25 (3-4). 253 - 259. ISSN 1460-356X

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Abstract

This short piece explores what cultural theory should learn from the experience of the global pandemic. It argues that the main lesson should not be about how the crisis of the pandemic has been interpreted culturally, but about the deep social and economic inequalities which were foregrounded through the experience of ‘getting by’ in the pandemic, which positioned people in very different ways. So dramatic have been those inequalities, that any inherited notion of culture as something shared need to be definitively abandoned. This had already been anticipated in Ulf Hannerz’s deconstruction of holistic notions of culture three decades ago, but it needs now to be acted on, as we seek to confront honestly the growing inequalities which make the normal order of everyday life possible.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ics
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2021 17:03
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 02:41
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/112224

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