Overview
Uses unique empirical data from interviews obtained throughout the pandemic
Analyses seminal themes caused buy the pandemic such as hope for a better world and fear of death
Speaks to a well-established body of theoretical scholarship on social change
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book explores how meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically during the period of the April 2020 lockdowns, may be derived from shared lived experience among participants, residing in diverse geographical regions. This study conducted 46 in-depth interviews with Greek participants residing in 13 district countries and 23 cities around the globe and argues that meaning making of the pandemic derives from shared lived experiences of radical change and everyday transformations, fearful as well as well as hopeful perceptions of crisis and trauma emerging through loss of life before the pandemic.
Reviews
- Angie Voela, Reader in Social Sciences, UEL, London, UK
"A pandemic, by definition, is an experience shared across the world. Might a diaspora experience it differently, then, given their shared ties and identity? This fascinating study explores how Greeks in some thirteen different countries coped with the COVID threat and restrictions. They find it wasn’t geography that mattered the most to this diaspora – nor class or employment status – as much as individual personal circumstances, such as motherhood or age. Raw human emotions made us pitifully equal as we tried to give meaning to what was happening. Senses of isolation, loneliness, and abandonment came to the fore as around the world we were forced to learn a new way of living. These sensitive accounts of ‘change, crisis and trauma’ are here to be remembered and passed on and they help us to put the recent past in context".
- Prof Kevin Featherstone, Professor in European Politics, Hellenic Observatory, LSE, London, UK
"This book will stand as an intriguing record of ‘lived experience’ during the pandemic seen through a psychosocial lens. It distils this by a focus on trauma and resilience. In particular, it shows how our relationships to identity, to time, rhythm and continuity of being are disrupted, and consequently, the ways we suffer, omnipotently seek to defend ourselves, or open up to loss, strive for reinvention and forge a new orientation for new conditions".
- Chris Nicholson, Head of Department, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Athanasia Chalari is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, LSE, UK. Her area of expertise associates with the sociology of the individual and she has previously conducted research on this topic as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo and the University of Toronto. She has published numerous studies on the Greek crisis and modern society and has presented her work in international media.
Eirini Efsevia Koutantou has recently completed her PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, UK. Her area of expertise associates with the psychoanalytic investigation of subjectivity. She has taught psychoanalysis and research methods at the University of Essex and is a Trainee Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Psycho-Social Approaches to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Book Subtitle: Change, Crisis and Trauma
Authors: Athanasia Chalari, Eirini Efsevia Koutantou
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07831-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-07830-9Published: 25 November 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-07831-6Published: 24 November 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 136
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Sociology, general, Medical Sociology, Psychosocial Studies