Societies, Sensitivities and COVID-19: sociological diagnoses and projections in "difficult times"

Abstract

The book under review is part of a long tradition of studies that emphasize the relationship between bodies/emotions and society. The idea of "difficult times" refers to the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption produced by the social confinement-isolation of sociabilities in different regions of the world. Within this framework, the various chapters of the book form a common diagnosis of planetary scope. The medical recommendations and health policies implemented maintained, at a general level, a repertoire inaugurated during the pandemics of the Middle Ages. In contrast, information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networks played a decisive role. In this direction, the "reflux" of broad medical-biological narratives compiled in this book, as militarized as emotionalized, and the emotional ecologies described, trace projections on the future of our societies, on the confidence and uncertainty of the coming "hard times" and on the relevance of a sociological agenda committed to scientific knowledge and social reality.