Join us for a presentation and live Q&A with anthropologist Hugh Gusterson (SAR’s 1991 Weatherhead fellow) exploring the cultural context and ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am teaching a class on the anthropology of covid and, as a public anthropologist and an anthropologist of science, have been trying to make cultural sense of the pandemic. Why have some countries done much better than others at keeping the number of infections and deaths low? Given that the virus is invisible and has little effect on many it infects, how do we “imagine the real” risk it represents, at least to some? Why do some adapt easily to mask-wearing while others bitterly oppose it? What has the virus revealed about the propensity for magical thinking in advanced industrial societies? And how should we understand the abject failure of universities — institutions devoted to wisdom and understanding — to manage the virus on campus?” – Hugh Gusterson
