Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa

Culture, Healthcare and the State

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20003005
AutoresLeslie Bank (0000-0002-8506-7401, Walter Sisulu University), Vuyokazi Nelly Sharpley (0000-0001-7657-4033, Walter Sisulu University), Nelly Sharpley (Walter Sisulu University)
Año2022
Fecha de publicación2022-09-15
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaCovid and Custom in Rural South Africa (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780197659618.001.0001
OpenAlexW4320066328
Open LibraryOL38405327M
ISBN9780197659618
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas94

This book explores the impact of Covid-19, and the associated state lockdown, on rural lives in a former homeland in South Africa. The 2020 Disaster Management Act saw the state sweep through rural areas, targeting funerals and other customary practices as potential "super-spreader" events. This unprecedented clampdown produced widespread disruption, fear, and anxiety. The authors build on path-breaking work concerning local responses to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, and examine the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to understand the impact of the Covid crisis on these communities, and on rural Africa more broadly. To shed light on the role of custom and ritual in rural social change during the pandemic, Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa applies long-term historical and ethnographic research; theories of people's science, local knowledge, and the human economy; and fieldwork conducted in ten rural South African communities during lockdown. The volume highlights differences between developments in Southern Africa and elsewhere on the continent, while exploring how the former apartheid homeland--commonly, yet problematically, represented as former "labour reserves"--have since been reconstituted as new home-spaces. In short, it explains why rural people have been so angered by the state's assault on their cultural practices and institutions in the time of Covid

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) · Development economics · Economic growth · Ethnography · Geography · Homeland · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Rural area · Socioeconomics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Work (physics) · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Medicine · South African History and Culture · 2020 · COVID-19 (Disease) · COVID-19 Pandemic · Medical care · Social conditions