Coronavirus and the role of social science
By Noushin Siddika Fariha
For many years the role of social science has been taken amiss, so in this crucial moment of COVID 19. The COVID situation is not just a biological condition rather it has brought a social and humanitarian crisis. Since the crisis is not one dimensional, it is to deal with different appropriate approaches. Not only natural science can solve this situation but also it is high time to acknowledge the role of social science to accelerate the healing process of the mass population and its society for the betterment of the world. Here with natural science, science related to physical world like physics, chemistry and biology are referred.
Starting with Anthony Fowler’s recent Bloomberg op-ed, “Curing Coronavirus Isn’t a Job for Social Scientists” Just with the title of the article most of the people will nod with accordant. Indeed social science can’t cure corona virus diseases but it can help with the illness .Those who practice this discipline know diseases and illness are not the same. Renowned anthropologist Arthur Kleinman conceptualized diseases as a natural phenomenon and illness as a cultural construction (Klienman 1989). Race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ideology can be influential in conceptualizing health and health seeking process. Religious belief, financial condition, geographical location can also impact a lot on it. For example in Bangladesh when the proclamation of temporary disclosure of mosques was announced a lot of people resisted against it and a lot of them still gathered for a Jamaat. Social distancing as an elementary prevention of corona virus was introduced by natural science. The people who gathered for Jamaat put their trust on religion over science. Here a state’s nolens volens won’t work rather it can cause a substandard social situation leading to a political massacre. Social science here works by helping to cope and adopt. Social science can predict and prevent or mitigate of the possibility of such exceptionable circumstance. In countries like Bangladesh where a lot of people seek health services from folk healers, shamans, Ayurveda won’t suddenly lead to the natural science. In this situation we don’t know the number of people who seek these kind of health services and how to convince them to put conviction on natural science. If we could put a little more importance on the study of anthropology and if we could have the data in our hand it would be far easier to reach them and have a face to face negotiation. We never did this, hence now we put our laughing reaction on viral post on social media where people been recorded saying we eat betel leaves so we won’t be affected by corona virus. We are actually laughing on our own failure .With natural science we can beat the disease but if we are to uproot the illness we have to hang on social science too.
Going back to social media. Most of the post these days shared on Facebook are showing the irritation and hatred about being locked down and quarantined. This quarantine has clearly created an opportunity for us to stay close to our family which we barely can manage in these days of timelessness. Logically we were to be happy, then why this frustration and a feeling of being “locked down”? There can be several reasons. We are being intolerant (social resistance), more individualistic (result of capitalism) or maybe it indicates the changing pattern of family structure and or that a huge number of youth no longer like living with their families. This rapidly changing pattern of family requires quite an attention from the urban management and policy making groups. COVID may bring a physical condition to them who come down with it but it is causing other physiological and psychological issues to them who cooped themselves in these four walls. Particularly the children and the senior citizens are mostly at risk of physical hazard and youth mostly are in endangerment of psychological crisis. Proper execution of knowledge produced by public health and psychology can help a lot to cope with the post COVID situation. While looking forward for a cure of the disease we must not forget even if we survive, with a frail body and an ill psychological or suicidal generation we can go no long. Sociologists could propose reflections on how to live with few social ties, on different solitudes, on spread of the experiences of prudent sociality that we observe, arguing the needs of relationship and care of people with disabilities (Remo Siza, 2020)
When it comes to the believer of natural science we are looking forward for the vaccine. Yuval Noah Harari in one of his recent articles says global solidarity right now is the most important mechanism to overcome corona virus. But the vaccine politics is not giving the picture of solidarity. Vaccine by its nature is very political. It has become a race among the countries to invent corona vaccine first to achieve the super power and set the esteem high enough to the global supremacy. Inventing a vaccine is not going to be mere a biological invention for humankind, somewhat it’s going to be a matter of domestic politics and profit. Making a proper distribution of vaccine will take a planned foreign policy which later is going to give a new shape to the current global political situation. Here the role of political science comes. Political scientists gather empirical data, administrative surveys, manage interviews, dig in to historical archives, observe protests, thus they explain a specific event and give a sustainable remedy to it. Harari on his same article says we will be standing on a new world once we overcome the crisis. So certainly this is not the time for taking a whimsical political decision. What political decision we take now is going to shape our future so it must be approved by experts for the wellbeing of the world.
Historical archives perform a very important role in time of an emergency. We are not having a pandemic for the first time. If we are to find the history of pandemic in Bangladesh it’s hard to find. But these historical documents could show us the social and political response and local mechanism to subsist in time of a pandemic. It wouldn’t come as a shock if we could use our past experience about pandemic .Since we never put importance on apolitical study of history we don’t have our own recovering mechanism and we are blindly following the core(developed) countries . Therefor we are staying somewhere in a gray area between life and living cause we certainly couldn’t choose if we are to implicate strong lockdown to save life or unhitch it to save the economy. We did neither of these as a result there have been a high mortality rate as well an economic breakdown. And to recover from this economic breakdown it’s again the study of economics where we got to lean back.
When we are talking about lock down, quarantine, social distancing these words are barely understandable. We don’t believe what we don’t understand. A lot of people are referring COVID as a rumor because they don’t understand it .When we implicate some rule like lock down or quarantine we have to make it understandable to local people. If we could introduce them in their dialect it could be easier for them to understand and obey it. We couldn’t, because as usual we hardly acknowledge the role of linguistic. It is the role of social scientists to go close the people and make them understand a scientific phenomena in a simpler manner.
There are thousands examples of suffering a loss simply because of denying the importance and putting improper implication of social science. According to Fiars Jaber (2020) “The roles of critical social sciences are to analyze and suggest alternative public policies to mitigate the impact of the state of emergency, which focus on public health issues, water, social and economic policies. Also it’s important to study the social behavior, mass fear impact, the change in social norms.” We have to keep in mind that state and its population right now is in its most fragile and insecure situation. We have to make our every step with great consciousness and follow expert advice if we are to regain our absolute strength.
Going back to fowler, “The rush to publish results in this pandemic isn’t doing the public any favors. In the end, it might hurt the efforts of researchers, too.” Well, no matter what, a researcher will never stop working .Again a lot of people may do a nod of consent with Fowler, but those who practice social science will certainly disagree. The papers being published amid this COVID situation are the records of actual crises we are going through. A paper or a journal today being written by a researcher is the actual document and record of the pandemic we seriously lacked every last time. These are the history being written. A social scientist gathers his data from the very root level and ensures its validity very carefully. These researches bring real picture into light and present to the mass population. COVID 19 is not just a biological crisis, it’s a socio political emergency .To uproot this crisis, natural science and social science need to work altogether. Else it’s going to be very hard to diminish this severe crisis of humankind.
The writer is a student of the Department of Anthropology at University of Dhaka
