Health emergency in Asia and Africa: societal implications, narratives on media, political issues.
HEALTH
Community [Reserved project] - Original editing language: English
from the Project Proposal
Abstract
The project aims at conducting a wide interdisciplinary study from the perspective of Human Sciences on the consequences and the transformations generated by the recent health emergency in some countries of Asia and Africa.
Three disciplinary areas of investigation have been identified:
- Societal implications, with three main topics, i.e.
- minority, on the consequences of the crisis on minorities, refugees, day labourers , tribal communities, etc.;
- resilience, the non-institutional initiatives brought about by associations, NGOs, social activists, etc.;
- sustainability, as a characteristic of the non-institutional interventions put in place, and a medium-term objective for the post-emergency vision. - Narratives on media
It analyses various cultural products, from videos to blogs, performing arts, body language, etc., aiming at identifying the narratives and (the often repressed or censored) counter-narratives that emerged during the crisis. - Political issues
It investigates the different interventions with respect to the institutional set-up of each country, and the quality of the processes that have led to the issuing of the measures themselves, in order to get relevant data on the political management of the emergency.
The study will be articulated along two main axes:
- a research within each of the selected countries,
- a comparative study, with a view to distinguishing between measures, behaviours, processes that are culture-specific and those that suggest similarities.
It is expected that the project will mark a significant progress both in relation to the (still scarce) analyses on the current pandemic, and to the theoretical contributions in disciplinary fields such as narratology, applied political sciences, religious studies, minority studies.
For the these reasons, and within the limits of its specificity, it may thus represent a reference investigation, that could contribute to further research also in adjoining disciplinary fields.