Keywords
COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2
postmodernity
Abstract
Critical events of a dangerous progression, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may become the turning points in the functioning of entire societies. Such events obviously foster changes. They disrupt the sense of ontological security, generate fears and enforce change in the organization of social relations, also in a creative and positive manner. In addition to these effects, they also induce many others. They are a magnifier enabling you to see how modern societies are functioning. Therefore, a pandemic allows to see and describe more clearly the characteristics of postmodern human communities. Some of these characteristics (e.g. group functioning) are essentially constant and unchangeable for humans as a species. In turn, some features are very specific, characteristic for a given time, type of events and nature of participating communities. In this text, based on the desk-research methodology and non-systematic participant observation, I indicate the unchanging characteristics of human communities that emerge in the moments of crisis. I also present the specific features of postmodern communities that have been highlighted by the pandemic. I try to indicate the effects of the pandemic on social relations in the future.
References
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2003. Wasted Lives. Modernity and Its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity.
Butt, Khalid Manzoor and Sarah Sajid. 2018. “Chinese Economy under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.” Journal of Political Studies 25(1): 169-178.
Camus, Albert. 2012. The Plague. New York: Vintage.
Erikson, Erik Homburger. 1968. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Le Bon, Gustav. 2019. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Lulu.com
Gao, Hainv, Yao Hangping, Yang Shigui and Li Lanjuan. 2016. “From SARS to MERS: evidence and speculation.” Frontiers of Medicine 10: 377–382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-016-0466-7
Greatorex , Zoe F., Olson , Sarah H., Singhalath, Sinpakone, Silithammavong, Soubanh, Khammavong, Kongsy, Amanda E. Fine et al. 2016. “Wildlife Trade and Human Health in Lao PDR: An Assessment of the Zoonotic Disease Risk in Markets.” PloS one 11(3), e0150666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150666
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and self-identity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kogan, Nicole E., Isabelle Bolon, Ray, Nicolas, Alcoba, Gabriel, Fernandez-Marquez, Jose L., Müller, Martin M., Mohanty, Sharada P., Ruiz de Castañeda, Rafael. 2019. “Wet Markets and Food Safety: TripAdvisor for Improved Global Digital Surveillance.” JMIR Public Health Surveill 5(2):e11477. DOI: 10.2196/11477
Maslow, Abraham. 1970. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row.
Mead, Margaret. 1970. Culture and commitment: A study of the generation gap. Greenwich: Doubleday.
Peng, Xizhe. 1987. “Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China’s Provinces.” Population and Development Review 13 (4): 639–670.
Rotter, Jullian B. 1966. “Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.” Psychological Monograph 80(1): 1-28.
Rotter, Jullian B. 1990. “Internal versus external control of reinforcement: A case history of a variable.” American Psychologist 45(4): 489–93.
Selye, Hans. 1978. Stress Without Distress. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Seligman, Martin E. P. 1975. Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.
Sharp, Paul M., Hahn, Beatrice H. 2011. “Origins of HIV and the AIDS pandemic.” Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine 1(1): a006841. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a006841
Sontag, Susan. 1979. Illness as Metaphor. New York: First Vintage Books Edition.
Sontag, Susan. 1989. AIDS and its Metaphors. New York: Allen Lane. http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/34349.htm Retrieved March 25, 2020.
Xu, Jiabao, Zhao, Shizhe., Teng, Tieshan., Abdalla, Abualgasim Elgaili, Zhu, Wan, Xie, Longxiang, Wang, Yunlong, and Guo, Xiangqian. 2020. “Systematic Comparison of Two Animal-to-Human Transmitted Human Coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV.” Viruses 12(2): 244. https://doi.org/10.3390/v12020244
License
Manuscript authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions for any copyrighted materials included within manuscripts. The authors must provide permission letters, when appropriate, to the Society Register Editors.
In addition, all published papers in Society Register are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License.
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern CC BY-NC 4.0 as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.