The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Freedom-Security Tension: Calibrating their Fragile Relationship

Authors

  • Pablo Martín Méndez National University of Lanús

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i35.7080

Keywords:

Covid-19, Lockdown, Self-regulation, Liberal governmentality, Freedom-security

Abstract

Grounded in a will to adapt to dangers, and espouse both responsibility and resilience, voluntary measures have largely replaced one of the oldest public health strategies, quarantine. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, elicited a broad sweep of tactics from the archive of public health armoury. On a general level, this review essay addresses the common measures rolled out by various authorities against the pandemic - the lock-downs, reopening process, financial support and vaccination. By relating these measures to 1) the “plague-stricken town”, deployed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe by the Polizeistaat; 2) the “self-regulation strategy” that emerged with liberal ideas at the end of the eighteenth century; and 3) the “minimum security” programmed by neoliberal governmentality in the second half of the twentieth century, it is suggested that tensions between freedom and security during, and after, the pandemic can be better understood. To end, the essay noticed that the pandemic has enforced tensions in the administration and calibration of individual wishes and collective wellbeing, creating a fragile “freedom-security relationship” and new problem space for self-regulation.

Author Biography

Pablo Martín Méndez, National University of Lanús

Pablo Martín Méndez is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical
Research Council of Argentina, director of the Ethics Research Centre of National University of Lanús and Professor of Political Science and Ethics at the same University. He studied Political Science at University of Buenos Aires and received his PhD in Philosophy from National University of Lanús. His researches focus on liberal and neoliberal governmentality, examining economic, political and ethical discourse. He is currently a supervisor of research on Argentine neoliberalism and its links with Austrian, German and North American neoliberalism between the 1960s and 1990s.

References

Amit, Moran, Heli Kimhi, Tarif Bader, Jacob Chen, Elon Glassberg, and Avi Benov, “Mass-surveillance technologies to fight coronavirus spread: the case of Israel,” Nature Medicine 26 (2020), 1167-1169. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0927-z

BBC News, “Covid: Huge protests across Europe over new restrictions,” BBC.com. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59363256 (accessed September 3, 2022).

Brown, Wendy, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism. The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Buenos Aires City Government, “Plan integral de puesta en marcha de la Ciudad [Com-prehensive start-up plan for the City],” Buenosaires.gob.ar. https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/sites/gcaba/files/plan_integral_de_puesta_en_marcha_de_la_ciudad.pdf (accessed July 25, 2022).

Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect. Studies in Gov-ernmentality. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1991.

Caduff, Carlo, “What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 34:4 (2020), 467-487. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12599

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “Reopening Massachusetts,” Mass.gov. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/reopening-massachusetts (accessed July 26, 2022).

Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli, Michael Lokshin, and Iván Torre, Opening-up Trajectories and Econom-ic Recovery: Lessons after the First Wave of the COVID-19. Pandemic Policy Research Working Paper No. 9480. Washington D.C.: World Bank, 2020. https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-9480 (accessed August 12, 2022).

Kalil, Isabela, Sofía C. Silveira, Weslei Pinheiro, Álex Kalil, João V. Pereira, Wiverson Aza-rias, and Ana B. Amparo, “Politics of fear in Brazil: Far-right conspiracy theories on COVID-19,” Global Discourse 11:3 (2021), 409-425. https://doi.org/10.1332/204378921X16193452552605

Farias, Jessica, and Ronaldo Pilati, “COVID-19 as an undesirable political issue: Conspira-cy beliefs and intolerance of uncertainty predict adhesion to prevention measures,” Curr Psychol 42 (2023), 209-219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01416-0

Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, trans. Graham Burchell, ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmil-lan UK, 2008.

Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 1975, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Allen Lane, 1995.

Foucault, Michel, “The Political Technology of Individuals” [1982], in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton, 145-162. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Gerbaudo, Paolo, “The Pandemic Crowd: Protest in the Time of COVID-19,” Journal of In-ternational Affairs 73:2 (2020), 61-76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26939966

International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook: A Long and Difficult Ascent. Wash-ington, DC: IMF (October 2020). https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/09/30/world-economic-outlook-october-2020

Lemke, Thomas, “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique,” Rethinking Marxism 14:3 (2002), 49-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242288

Lopez, Leo, Louis H. Hart, and Mitchell H. Katz, “Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Related to COVID-19,” JAMA 325:8 (2021), 719-720. https://doi:10.1001/jama.2020.26443

López Ruiz, Osvaldo, Pablo M. Méndez, and Brauner Cruz Junior, “A relação liberdade-governo em tempos de pandemia no Brasil e na Argentina,” Cadernos Gestão Pública e Ci-dadania 26:85 (2021), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.12660/cgpc.v26n85.83187

Lovelace, Berkeley Jr., “WHO: Countries that rush to lift restrictions risk ‘severe and pro-longed’ damage to economy,” CNBC.com. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/who-says-countries-that-rush-to-lift-coronavirus-containment-risk-more-severe-and-prolonged-damage-to-economy.html (accessed July 30, 2022).

Mayor of London, “A roadmap to the safe and full reopening of London’s economy,” Lon-don.gov.uk. https://www.london.gov.uk/publications/roadmap-safe-and-full-reopening-londons-economy (accessed July 26, 2022).

McAteer, John, Inci Yildirim, and Ann Chahroudi, “The VACCINES Act: Deciphering Vac-cine Hesitancy in the Time of COVID-19,” Clinical Infectious Disease 71:15 (202), 703¬-705. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa433

Morales, Daniel R., and Sarah N. Ali, “COVID-19 and disparities affecting ethnic minori-ties,” The Lancet 397:10286 (2021), 1684-1685. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(21)00949-1

Mudde, Cas, The Far Right Today. Cambridge UK, Medford MA: Polity, 2019.

Mudde, Cas, “The Study of Populist Radical Right Parties: Towards a Fourth Wave”. C-REX Working Paper Series 1 (2016), 1-23. https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/

Mulhall, John, “Milan’s medieval response to the plague holds lessons for today,”