This online seminar is the second of two panel sessions.  The first session was held on Monday 25 May 2020.

Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/98326898505

The COVID19 pandemic is transforming social relations. The virus’ immediate threat to health and life reveals human vulnerabilities in new ways. Meanwhile, is it our social responses that are changing the social order. Physical distancing is sparking profound shifts within the family, friendships, all forms of work and care, governmental and expert authority, society-nature metabolism, collective power and much more.

Social theorists have so far emphasised pandemic society’s heightened interdependencies and inequalities, as well as new forms of connectivity, value and cooperation. Crucially, social action will shape how we get through this crisis. Nothing about pandemic social organisation, or its long run impacts, is inevitable.

How is the pandemic changing society? What kinds of sociological thinking can help us come to terms with the changes before us? What kinds of post-pandemic social organisation appear possible now?

This open online seminar will run as two panel discussions bringing together sociologists at the ANU to reflect on the emerging social relations of the pandemic.

Chair:

Professor Catherine Waldby

Panellists

Seminar one:

Jenny Davis – social psychology of zoom

Maria Hynes – cooperative labour

Paul Jones – paranoid conspiracies

Rob Ackland - misinformation

Melinda Cooper – bailout and ecosystemic crisis

Seminar two:

Helen Keane – health sociology, alcohol and harm

James Chouinard – pedagogy

Beck Pearse – social ecology of labour

Gavin Smith – surveillance and technology

Adrian MacKenzie – models

Baptiste Brossard - politics of the interaction order