Abstract
In recent years the process of globalization has experienced contestation and breakdown, with COVID-19 exacerbating the fracturing of international coordination and response to the pandemic. Nations have been left to their own strategic devices when assembling and implementing coronavirus policies at the national level. Utilizing the work of French social philosopher Michael Foucault on biopower, governmentality, and neoliberalism, this paper maps and compares the response by nation states to the threat of COVID-19. It argues that the state-driven approaches to the virus articulate around three themes. First, an orchestrated strategy that highlights the importance of social cohesion, where State-messaging and the institutions within civil society are deployed to promote self-discipline, while fostering the cultural massage “we’re all in this together”. Second, a State-centered hegemonic model that promotes socially restricted and repressive governmental action designed to reinforce preexisting social inequalities, regulate bodies through the management of populations, and quell descent. Finally, the third path is oriented toward a market logic that enhances State legitimacy. This approach supplants concerns for the medical implications of the virus’s spread by promoting a program of aggressive economic activity and capital accumulation. This critical comparative approach foretells of a new post-pandemic globalism, one spearheaded by protests surrounding racial injustice. These progressive voices represent a confluence of issues in their critique of State actions taken to combat COVID-19. The civil unrest associated with these movements highlights the tension within States as carceral arbiters of conduct and promoters of the social inequities imposed through market capitalism.
Presenters
Pat MahoneyAssociate Professor, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, Colorado, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus—Life after Pandemic: Towards a New Global Biopolitics?
KEYWORDS
COVID-19, Biopolitics, Governmentality, Neoliberalism, Nation State, Social Movements
