The complexity of multiple trauma understandings across disciplines – the Covid-19 pandemic as a ‘case’

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12965808
AutoresSigrid Stjernswärd (0000-0002-7152-9206, Lund University), Marie Meier (0000-0002-9572-4284, Lund University), Karen O’donnell (0000-0001-6070-8949), Christine Wamsler (0000-0003-4511-1532, Lund University), Marja Åkerström (0000-0001-5289-6775, Lund University), Glasdam (0000-0002-0893-3054, Lund University)
Año2023
Volumen14
Número1
Páginas1-14
Fecha de publicación2023-05-16
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNordic Journal of Social Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1892-2783 • E-ISSN: 1892-2783
EditorialScandinavian University Press (PUBLISHER • NO)
DOI10.18261/njsr.14.1.4
OpenAlexW4386228210
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas65

Trauma is a highly topical subject of growing relevance in different contexts and scientific traditions that deal with societal challenges and transformation. At the same time, knowledge on different understandings of trauma is still scarce and scattered across disciplines. Against this background, we present and discuss the complexity of trauma understandings from five selected disciplinary perspectives and its significance at individual, group, and societal level, using COVID-19 as an illustrative case. The article shows how trauma is understood from multiple perspectives by referring to different conditions and phenomena. At the same time, there are certain similarities across all disciplinary angles. Trauma refers to first-hand individual or collective experiences of a crisis and/or a sense of external and internal disruption. Trauma often has severe consequences, but it simultaneously entails the possibility of transformation. The latter does not only relate to the individual, it can also involve groups, systems, and society at large. The COVID-19 case illuminates the complexity of trauma understandings and associated transformation, pointing to trauma as a floating signifier, which is largely open to different attributions of meaning depending on discipline and perspective. We conclude with a call for more integrated and nuanced inter- and transdisciplinary understandings of trauma to account for the concept’s complexity and its significance at individual, collective, intergenerational, and global levels

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Disease · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Outbreak · Pandemic · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 · Sociology · Disaster Response and Management · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma · Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research · Psychology · Virology