Skip to main content
NCBI home page
Wiley - PMC COVID-19 Collection logoLink to Wiley - PMC COVID-19 Collection
. 2022 Dec 15;38(6):19–22. doi: 10.1111/1467-8322.12771

Covid, climate and comparison: A possibility for predictive analogy

Veronica Davidov ✉
PMCID: PMC9878207  PMID: 36718352

Abstract

This article explores how public responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic could potentially help us understand the responses to the climate crisis and its environmental catastrophes. Public responses to the pandemic, in turn, also potentially help us understand the responses to the climate crisis and its environmental catastrophes. How do these compare through our epistemological lenses? Can the various Covid‐19 responses function as a projection of future responses to the destabilizing climate change we are beginning to experience? Outlined are two broad conceptual overlaps: risk and epistemic dissensus. Could this become the basis of a predictive analogy to help inform anthropological research into future dimensions of climate change?

 

Biography

Veronica Davidov is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth University. She is an environmental and visual anthropologist who studies human‐nature relations, with a particular interest in natural resources and climate change. Her email is vdavidov@monmouth.edu.

References

  1. Allgaier, J. 2019. Science and environmental communication on YouTube: Strategically distorted communications in online videos on climate change and climate engineering. Frontiers in Communication, 25 July.
  2. Bryant, C. 2002. Does Australia need a more effective policy of science communication? International Journal of Parasitology 33(4): 357–361. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Caduff, C. 2014. On the verge of death: Visions of biological vulnerability. Annual Review of Anthropology 43(1): 105–121. [Google Scholar]
  4. Dimka, J. et al. 2022. Pandemics, past and present: The role of biological anthropology in interdisciplinary pandemic studies. Yearbook of Biological Anthropology 178(S74): 256–291. [Google Scholar]
  5. Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  6. Fine, J.C. & Love-Nichols J. 2021. We are (not) the virus: Competing online discourses of human-environment interaction in the era of COVID-19. Environmental Communication, 14 October.
  7. Gettleman, A. et al. 2020. Climate impacts of COVID-19 induced emission changes. Geophysical Research Letters 48(3). [Google Scholar]
  8. Graham, J. et al. 2008. The geologic time spiral: A path to the past (ver. 1.1): U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 58, poster, 1 sheet.
  9. Hobson, K. & Niemeyer S. 2013. ‘What skeptics believe’: The effects of information and deliberation on climate change skepticism. Public Understanding of Science 22(4): 396–412. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Howarth, C. et al. 2020. Building a social mandate for climate action: Lessons from COVID-19. Environmental Resource Economics 76: 1107–1115. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Keck, F. 2020. Avian reservoirs: Virus hunters and birdwatchers in Chinese sentinel posts. Durham: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]
  12. Kirsch, S. 2022. Future perfect: From the pandemic to the Paris Climate Agreement. Anthropological Theory, (online first). [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
  13. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. Totemism (trans. Needham R.). Boston: Beacon. [Google Scholar]
  14. Manzanedo R.D. & Manning P. 2020. COVID-19: Lessons for the climate change emergency. Science of the Total Environment 742: art. 140563. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
  15. Moran, E.F. 1993. Deforestation and land use in the Brazilian Amazon. Human Ecology 21(1): 1–21. [Google Scholar]
  16. Perkins, K. et al. 2021. COVID-19 pandemic lessons to facilitate future engagement in the global climate crisis. Journal of Cleaner Production 290: art. 125178. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
  17. Rahmstorf, U. 2004. The climate sceptics. In Weather catastrophes and climate change: Is there still hope for us? (ed.) Munich Re. Munich: Munich Re. [Google Scholar]
  18. Samimian-Darash, L. 2013. Governing future potential biothreats. Current Anthropology 54(1): 1–22. [Google Scholar]
  19. Samimian-Darash, L. 2022. Governing the future through scenaristic and simulative modalities of imagination. Anthropological Theory 22(4): 393–416. [Google Scholar]
  20. Scheper-Hughes, N. & Lock M.M. 1987. The mindful body: A prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1(1): 6–41. [Google Scholar]
  21. Sobo, E. 1999. Editorial: Cultural models and HIV/AIDS: New anthropological views. Anthropology & Medicine 6(1): 5–12. [Google Scholar]
  22. Swanson, H.A. 2013. Caught in comparisons: Japanese salmon in an uneven world. PhD thesis, University of California Santa Cruz.
  23. Swanson, H.A. 2018. Landscapes, by comparison: Practices of enacting salmon in Hokkaido, Japan. In The world multiple: The quotidian politics of knowing and generating engaged worlds (eds) Omura K. et al. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  24. Whitington, J. 2013. Fingerprint, bellwether, model event: Climate change as speculative anthropology. Anthropological Theory 13(4): 308–328. [Google Scholar]
  25. Wise, J. 2020. How the coronavirus could take over your body (before you ever feel it). New York Intelligencer, 18 March.
  26. Young, N. et al. 2021. Is the Anthropause a useful symbol and metaphor for raising environmental awareness and promoting reform? Environmental Conservation 48(4): 274–277. [Google Scholar]

Articles from Anthropology Today are provided here courtesy of Wiley

RESOURCES