The COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from Inside Microenvironments

Location: Rachel Carson Center, second floor, Conference Room, Leopoldstr. 11a, 80802 Munich, Germany

Speakers: Dr. Rita Brara Mukhopadhyay (visiting professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University, India), Dr. Ronie Parciack (senior lecturer, Department of East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel), Dr. Kanchan Mathur (honorary professor, Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur, India)

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly shone a light on a slew of macroenvironmental issues. The idea of this workshop is to delve a little deeper and look into how certain individuals and institutions were able to orient microenvironments to their advantage. While we fully understand the trauma of those who lost family, friends, and livelihoods, our attempt in this workshop is to delineate the ethics, politics, and survival strategies of actors who realigned their priorities with the possibilities for their own survival and the survival of others that the pandemic afforded.

The idea of the workshop is to discuss how in certain contexts institutions and individuals altered or recreated the use of specific microenvironments during the pandemic by positioning themselves as actors. Actors and institutions, from this perspective, selected aspects of the pandemic that could be made to serve the survival priorities of the affected. The attempts to orient and remake microenvironments varied from the altruistic fostering of human and nonhuman life at one end of the spectrum to disruptions of existing milieus or their reemergence at the other end.

The workshop will include three presentations based on fieldwork in India and will invite reflections from interested others on COVID-19. The presentations from India build on the theme of microenvironments and focus on three different sites: the milieu of Sikh places of worship (gurdwaras) and their associated volunteers in Delhi who repurposed the microenvironment of sacred spaces to organize relief; the reorganizing and resilience of protest milieus militating against the discriminatory law on citizenship in India that were banished from their protest site following the COVID-19 lockdown in India; and the disruptive impact of the closure of girls-only schools in rural Rajasthan which led to altered practices in its wake.

The talk will be followed by a small lunch. To participate with either a presentation or to join the discussion, please contact Dr. Rita Brara Mukhopadhyay at rita.mukhopadhyay@ashoka.edu.in.