Pandemic Exposures: Economy and Society in the Time of Coronavirus, a collection of essays on the COVID-19 pandemic and its reverberations, edited by James D. Wolfensohn Professor Didier Fassin and Visiting Professor Marion Fourcade (2019-20), has been published by HAU Books and distributed by The University of Chicago Press, with an open-access PDF made available by the publisher.
The book, which contains over twenty essays authored by Members and Visitors in the School of Social Science, was developed while the School was in the middle of its theme year on “Economy and Society.” When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Fassin and Fourcade invited their Institute colleagues to contribute essays on the way the virus had exposed, accelerated, or transformed existing social trends and divisions around the globe.
This resulted in a series of illuminating studies spanning six continents and multiple disciplines, covering economics, politics, morality, knowledge, and everyday life during the pandemic. The book benefited from the international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative nature of the Institute, and was developed during seminars, workshops, and informal conversations through IAS.
The editors also provided their own essays to the project: Fassin’s “The Moral Economy of Life in the Pandemic” and Fourcade’s “The Great Online Migration: COVID and the Platformization of American Public Schools,” both continuations of their work on the politics of life and morality in digital economies, respectively.
