The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Freedom-Security Tension: Calibrating their Fragile Relationship
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i35.7080Schlagworte:
Covid-19, Lockdown, Self-regulation, Liberal governmentality, Freedom-securityAbstract
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.
Literaturhinweise
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,” Wash-ingtonpost.com. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/27/milans-medieval-response-plague-holds-lessons-today/ (accessed June 2, 2022).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, COVID-19 Government Financ-ing Support Programmes for Businesses 2021 Update. Paris: OECD, 2021. https://www.oecd.org/finance/COVID-19-Government-Financing-Support-Programmes-for-Businesses-2021-Update.pdf (accessed August 27, 2022).
New York State, “Reopening New York. Implementing CDC Guidance,” Governor.ny.gov. https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/NYS_CDCGuidance_Summary.pdf (accessed July 26, 2022).
Painter, Marcus and Tian Qiu, “Political Beliefs affect Compliance with Government Man-dates,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 185 (2021), 1-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3569098
Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time [1944]. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.
Pullan, Samuel, and Mrinalini Dey, “Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination in the time of COVID-19: A Google Trends analysis,” Vaccine 39:14 (2021), 1877-1881. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.03.019
Pennycook, Gordon, Jonathon McPhetres, Bence Bago, and David G. Rand, “Beliefs About COVID-19 in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Novel Test of Po-litical Polarization and Motivated Reasoning,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 48:5 (2021), 750-765. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211023652
Sadarangani, Manish, Arnaud Marchant, and Tobias R. Kollmann, “Immunological mech-anisms of vaccine-induced protection against COVID-19 in humans,” Nature Reviews Immunology 21:8 (2021), 475-484. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-021-00578-z
São Paulo State Government, “Retomada consciente. Plano São Paulo [Conscious resume. São Paulo Plan],” Saopaulo.sp.gov.br. https://www.saopaulo.sp.gov.br/planosp/ (ac-cessed July 27, 2022).
Smith, Alexander, “Covid omicron variant linked to vaccine inequality, experts say,” CNBC.com. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/covid-omicron-variant-linked-to-vaccine-inequality-experts-say.html (accessed August 5, 2022).
Sylvia IV, J. J. “The Biopolitics of Social Distancing,” Social Media + Society 6:2 (2020), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120947661
Telenti, Amalio, Ann Arvin, Lawrence Corey, Davide Corti, Michael S. Diamond, Adolfo García-Sastre, Robert F. Garry, Edward C. Holmes, Phillip S. Pang, and Herbert W. Vir-gin, “After the pandemic: perspectives on the future trajectory of COVID-19,” Nature 596 (2021), 495-504. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03792-w
United Nations News, “COVID vaccines: Widening inequality and millions vulnerable,” News.un.ag. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1100192 (accessed August 5, 2022).
University of Pennsylvania Press, “A Silent Embrace of ‘The Middle Ages’ Under COVID-19,” Pennpress.org. https://www.pennpress.org/blog/a-silent-embrace-of-the-middle-ages-under-covid-19/ (accessed June 2, 2022).
Wagner, Anne, Aleskandra Matulewska, and Sarah Marusek, “Pandemica Panoptica: Bio-political Management of Viral Spread in the Age of Covid-19,”International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 35 (2021), 1081-1117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09821-1
Williams, Timothy P., and Kristen Pontalti, Responding to the Mental Health and Psychosocial Impact of Covid-19 on Children and Families (Child Protection Learning Brief #2). UNICEF, 2020. https://www.unicef.org/media/83951/file/MHPSS-UNICEF-Learning-brief.pdf (accessed June 17, 2022).
Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: What Right-wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage, 2015.
Wondreys, Jakub and Mudde, Cas, “Victims of the Pandemic? European Far-Right Parties and COVID-19,” Nationalities Papers 50:1 (2020), 86-103. https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.93
World Health Organization, World Bank, Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF, International Mone-tary Fund, and World Trade Organization, Accelerating COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment: Removing Obstacles to Increase Coverage Levels and Protect Those at High Risk (2022). Wash-ington: WHO. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/accelerating-covid-19-vaccine-deployment (accessed August 20, 2022).
World Health Organization, “#HealthyAtHome - Mental health,” WHO.int. https://www.who.int/campaigns/connecting-the-world-to-combat-coronavirus/healthyathome/healthyathome---mental-health (accessed June 15, 2022).
Downloads
Veröffentlicht
Zitationsvorschlag
Ausgabe
Rubrik
Lizenz
Copyright (c) 2023 The Author
Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International.
Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.
