Vol. 1 Num. 1

This category will index the articles in the ISSN 2701-4924 of the German National Library

To be born and to give birth in times of COVID-19: an announced tragedy?

On 5 April 2020, the risk group guidelines for COVID-19 underwent the first change in Brazil. Among the people at greatest risk of contagion would also be high risk pregnant and puerperal women: pregnant women with diabetes, hypertension, and chronic diseases - because of their commodities – and women who have recently given birth. At the end of the same week, the Ministry of Health (Brazil) changed again the guidelines and included all pregnant women as a risk group, as well as women who had an abortion recently.

By Rosamaria Carneiro|2021-02-05T18:17:09+01:00July 24th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

COVID-19: A new old acquaintance of the Brazilian indigenous people

It seems strange to say that a disease that is just beginning to be discovered is a long-standing family member of some populations that live on this planet. However, this is the case concerning the experience that is beginning to be lived by Brazilian indigenous peoples with COVID-19. This is the case because viruses and bacteria have been allied for centuries with the greed of economic exploitation, acting together with this in the death of indigenous populations. Whooping cough, smallpox, chickenpox, measles, malaria, bubonic plague, typhus, diphtheria, conjunctivitis, and flu are diseases whose pathological agents exterminated or substantially reduced people who had no immune barrier to the ills brought with the supposed civilization. Microorganisms change, but the massacres remain.

By Artionka Capiberibe|2021-02-05T18:18:02+01:00July 27th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

Black women and the coronavirus pandemic

On March 11th, the World Health Organization (WHO) decreed the new coronavirus pandemic. Eleven days later, the first victim of Covid-19 died in Brazil: she was a black 63 years old woman, a domestic worker, hypertensive, diabetic. She used to work at Leblon and live in Miguel Pereira, in Rio de Janeiro. Marcelo Crivella, the mayor (Republicans), decreed the quarantine for the entire carioca population on the same day, and it would begin on the following Tuesday, March 24th. At that time, there was information that the Brazilian reported contagion cases were still "imported," and travelers should quarantine. Still, Cleonice Gonçalves was cooking at her employer's house. The employer returned from Italy, bringing in the luggage much more than pleasant trip memories. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. The situation repeats in several news reports, to the point that many believe that the Covid-19 was just a "disease of rich people, who traveled abroad."

By Viviane Gonçalves Freitas|2021-02-05T18:18:43+01:00July 31st, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

COVID-19 in Brazilian prisons: criminal selectivity and production of disposable bodies

The impact of the pandemic on the Brazilian prison system is vast and reveals the lack of homogeneity in the system, considering the way it deals with the management of prison units. We bring attention to the unconstitutionality of how state secretariats and the federal government deal with the management of the lives of people deprived of freedom, mostly poor and black. The scarcity of information about people affected by the virus, both those deprived of liberty and public employees responsible for their care, and the carelessness on treating the relatives of prisoners reflect the lack of ethics aimed at valuing people. Most families cannot obtain information about the state of health of their relatives or whether they have been affected by the virus-related illness. I published an article1 on the prison situation in Brazil today on the UFRJ News Portal. We have the third-largest prison population in the world2 in unhealthy conditions, overcrowding, inadequate water supply, precarious diet, shortage of health personnel, and presence of diseases, such as tuberculosis, measles, syphilis, HIV, meningitis, potentiate the contamination by COVID-19, which assumes characteristics of a massacre.

By Kátia Sento Sé Mello|2021-02-05T18:19:40+01:00August 3rd, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

The deadly impact of covid-19 on the Brazilian economy and demography

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Brazil with some delay, but with disproportionate force, due to the inability of the public power to come up with an effective response to contain the spread of the coronavirus. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, on March 1st the world reached 88,600 infected people and 3,000 deaths, while Brazil had only 2 cases and the first death occurred on March 17th. On April 2nd, the world reached 1 million cases, and 53 thousand deaths and Brazil reached 7.9 thousand cases (0.8% of the global total) and 299 deaths (0.6% of the total). On April 15th, the world reached 2 million cases and 135 thousand deaths and Brazil presented 28.3 thousand cases (1.4% of the global total) and 1.7 thousand deaths (1.3% of the total). Eleven days later, on April 26th, the world reached 3 million cases and 207 thousand deaths, while Brazil reached 61.9 thousand cases (2.1% of the global total) and 4.2 thousand deaths (2% of the total).

By José Eustáquio Diniz Alves|2021-02-05T18:20:21+01:00August 7th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

Social production in times of pandemic

If it is not new that, in the news, science, economics and politics editorials get mixed up - when discussing the exploration of oil fields or the release of transgenic seeds, for example - during a pandemic the way our life in society depends and is intertwined to non-human elements becomes even clearer. However, how has social theory understood the role of such a powerful agent, like COVID-19, in the production and alteration of our modern forms of societies? And what is its contribution to thinking and acting in the contemporary world?

COVID-19: pandemic scales and anthropology scales

Outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic are terms of the technical universe of epidemiology for the temporal, geographical, and quantitative classification of an infectious disease. They are fundamental to management and control processes, defining levels of attention, and action protocols. In the case of Covid-19, for example, when a large number of people in the city of Wuhan, China, started to have a serious and unknown respiratory infection in a short time, the alarm for the beginning of an outbreak went off. The presence of a new variety of the Corona-type virus was quickly identified and, in a short time, similar cases also appeared in other cities and regions of the country and abroad. It was the beginning of the epidemic. Still, as the numbers of the disease continued to rise in more countries and continents, covering almost the entire globe, WHO decreed what is considered the worst-case scenario, the pandemic.

By Jean Segata|2021-02-05T18:22:05+01:00August 14th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

Capitalism’s Blind Microbiology

In the prior times of capitalism, technology optimism and pollution naturalization expressed the elites' tolerance for the undesirable industrial effects: to ensure business continuity, technology was supposed to solve the problems created by technology, argued some experts. Meanwhile, environmental problems affected the poor around the factories. Today, the naturalization of the epidemic and technological optimism in the health's management crisis are the words of authoritarian neoliberalism and social-Darwinism. They express what the anthropologist Eric Fassin called "xenophobia at any expense” in Europe. In its Brazilian version, "racism at any expense", and suggests the priority of business over the health of the most unprotected, mostly black and poor.

By Henri Acselrad|2021-02-05T18:22:41+01:00August 17th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

Funerals during the COVID-19 pandemic

On March 25th, 2020, the Ministry of Health published a handbook that defines guidelines on the "Dead body management in the context of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)". This handbook provides technical recommendations to avoid contamination of both health professionals, who handle these bodies directly, and relatives during burials. Nonetheless, what do these guidelines mean regarding funerals on the relatives' perspective? What are the impacts of coronavirus on death rituals?

By Andreia Vicente da Silva|2021-02-05T18:24:13+01:00August 21st, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

Digital inequalities and education: brief pandemic concerns

If there is an almost immediate finding to be made – although little care is taken when it comes to the situation – it is that the COVID-19 pandemic has considerable consequences for all spheres of social life. In this sense, our proposal is, from the sum of our research experiences on technology and education, to draw lines of analysis that help to understand some of the developments of the processes of virtualization of education in basic and higher education. We start from a perspective that does not demonize or believe in catastrophic visions concerning technology, but that proposes to think about its many uses and the many contexts in which it is inserted, to better understand the challenges that these uses contain.

By Carolina Parreiras and Renata Mourão Macedo|2021-02-05T18:25:26+01:00August 24th, 2020|Vol. 1 Num. 1|

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This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.
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