- 期刊
The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Great Unintended Social Experiment
摘要
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought changes that for the most part were unexpected, unanticipated. The changes were not only confined to the health domain, but affected the economic, political, social and psychological spheres as well. It affected not only the public sphere, but the private as well, and in sociological terms it affects not only structure but also agency, offering a 'natural' social experiment which could not have been conducted otherwise. This is because the nature of an experiment is such that the existing conditions which hold either in the natural or social world are altered in order to find out how nature would behave in those altered conditions. In the case of Covid-19 pandemic, it has caused changes in the social arrangements that have already been in place and held for some time. It also reveals fault-lines previously hidden by statistics, graphic charts etc. and reveals the social reality for what it is. The pandemic also seems to have the effect of reversing the previous trend of increasing social interaction, both domestically and globally, and to some extent affects globalisation. The core essence of what makes the modern world work, i.e., an intensified social interaction and exchange brought about by economic and technological development in the age of globalisation, is now under threat, and might alter the nature of society in the post-covid era.