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Pandemic Passages an Anthropological Account of Life and Liminality During COVID-19

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Pandemic Passages an Anthropological Account of Life and Liminality During COVID-19 Pandemic Passages An Anthropological Account of Life and Liminality during COVID-19 Genevieve Bell ABSTRACT: The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020, and the world has been diff erent ever since. Recalling the work of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep, this article explores how their ideas about rituals and rites of passage can be used to make sense of the pandemic. In particular, it seeks to show how using the structure of rituals of separation and incorporation and liminality can unpack and highlight chang- ing ideas about temporality, embodiment and relationships. KEYWORDS: Arnold van Gennep, ethnographic biography, liminality, pandemic experience, rites of passage, rituals, Victor Turner ‘I cannot tell if I should be worried about COVID-19’, Statistics will tell one kind of story of this pan- I text to one of my dearest friends. She is in Portland, demic – the number infected, the number who have Oregon; I am in Canberra, Australia. It is 21 February died, the fatality rates, the R factor, the number of 2020, Australia already has confi rmed infections, and ventilators, intensive care beds, the percentage of we have shut our borders to Chinese visitors; the re- the world’s population in lockdown. Yet there are porting of an outbreak in the Kirkland nursing home, other kinds of more personal and intimate stories, near Sea le, is still days away. We have both been too. A er all, whilst this has been a truly global pan- obsessively reading the news for weeks, discussing demic, it has been experienced visually, collectively, epidemiology and data, and outbreaks and hygiene, physically, personally in almost real time – the local though equally we chat about the 2020 American immediacies and the global feedback loop. It has re- primary season and who might be the democratic arranged billions of lives and livelihoods, shu ering front-runner. We have a plan to meet at South by businesses, schools, temples, shops, even whole cities Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, in mid-March and, in some places, countries. And it is still going. to showcase our work on narrative story-telling and Everyone will have a story about how the COVID- next-generation technical systems. A week later, I text 19 pandemic arrived into their consciousness and again: ‘Tidied up the pantry and put in some longer- then into their lives. My story unfolds primarily across term food. Not enough yet. But slowly working on two countries – the United States and Australia – and it. Thinking about the 14 days of self-quarantining. many mediums; I can trace my growing awareness That I can probably manage. 90 days is right out’. On and actions through text chats, e-mails, my credit 1 March, she texts me: ‘Costco is out of toilet paper!’ card records and my changing locations, and the in- We marvel at the fact that Costco can run out of toilet structions I was giving to my staff and students as we paper. On 6 March, the City of Austin cancels SXSW, shu ered our physical institute and we all became and I cancel my plane tickets. remote and diasporic. Anthropology in Action, 28, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 79–84 © The Author(s) ISSN 0967-201X (Print) ISSN 1752-2285 (Online) doi:10.3167/aia.2021.280115 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons A ribution Noncommercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (h ps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). For uses beyond those covered in the license contact Berghahn Books. AiA | Genevieve Bell A er nearly 30 years living in the United States, 20 okay with a doing a big public event Sunday? Re of those working as an anthropologist in and around virus etc. as I have just cancelled a bunch of US Silicon Valley, I returned home to Australia to direct travel’. He replies: ‘Ha, I’m not scared of much, and a new innovation institute at the Australian National certainly not [of] COVID; I think I am more scared of University. The 3A Institute’s mission is to establish a running out of toilet paper’. It is a remarkable game new branch of engineering to help shape the future and a remarkable moment – so many people in an safely, sustainably and responsibly. This represents iconic ground to watch women play cricket. As we a diff erent kind of innovation for the university; we walk back into the city, we marvel at how much the are articulating a framework for a new fi eld, itera- sporting world has changed, and how lucky we are tively testing it in collaboration with a broad set of to see it, and just how good the Australian women’s stakeholders, and actively curating its pedagogy, team is, and then quietly towards the very end of the methodology, practice and certifi cation. It is from this evening, we wonder: ‘Will that be the last time we location, both intellectual and pragmatic, that my are in a big crowd?’ At the airport, the next morning, encounters with COVID-19 have been experienced. I see friends: we hug, share food, make plans and One of the Institute’s partners asks me: ‘How are joke about toilet paper. On 10 March, the Premier of you making sense of all of this?’ I had to wonder the State of Victoria warns that ‘extreme measures’ then, can we talk about life during the pandemic in a to contain the spread of the virus are coming (Harris way that honours and acknowledges many individ- 2020a). On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organi- ual stories, but that also provides us with a broader zation (WHO) declared a global pandemic caused by structure or framework? Especially, how might we COVID-19. On 12 March, my friend texts me to tell talk about life during state-mandated lockdowns me that there was a confi rmed case in the next stand and stay-at-home orders specifi cally, but also about at the MCG, and the local health authority informs the broader moment/s between the determination of me I have a ended a conference with someone who a global pandemic and the putative end point of the has subsequently received a positive diagnosis. I count scaling up of a credible vaccine or reliable treatment? the days back to that last gathering, 13 of them, and Are there ways of making sense of what we are cur- wonder how many more emails and notifi cations rently experiencing and fi nding the threads that con- there will be now. nect the world as it was to the world as it will be? Is The news from Italy dominates our television there an abstraction or a schematic that might help screens in Australia, and the rate of infections is ris- us organise our thoughts and also our actions? Can ing in a curve shape we are learning to recognise; it anthropology be applied to COVID-19 and, if so, to will take three days to double, as it is growing expo- what ends? nentially. On 24 March, the Australian government, It was a lot of questions. It is partly what we teach acting in concert across all our states and territories, our students here at the Institute: how to frame a declared a Stage One public health emergency – all set of questions that helps generate new possibili- Australians were to stay home (Harris 2020b). The ties and open up conversations; rather than how to logic behind the stay-at-home orders was two-fold: augur in on a solution or even the problem space as slow the rates of transmission and create time for the articulated. public health system to get ready. There were four categories of exceptions to the stay-at-home mandate: health care, shopping for food and basic supplies, COVID-19 through exercise and essential jobs. There were new laws an Anthropological Lens passed and states of emergency declared, and our federal and state chief medical offi cers were on the Life itself means to separate and to be reunited, to nightly news. There was frantic shopping; there were change form and condition, to die and to be reborn. jobs suddenly to be done remotely; and there was It is to act and to cease, to wait and to rest, and then confusion about schools – it all felt abrupt and sud- to begin acting again, but in a diff erent way. den. By early April, more than half the world’s popu- — Arnold van Gennep ([1960] 2019: 189–190) lation would be in some form of lockdown (Kaplan et On 8 March, I am in Melbourne with 86,173 other al. 2020; Sandford 2020; Storrow 2020; Woods 2020). people. It is International Women’s Day, and the Mel- It is 10 April now, and I am texting with an old bourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is hosting the fi nal of friend and former colleague; we have always been the World T20 women’s cricket competition. In ad- the ones who travelled a lot. We compared notes vance of the match, I write to my friend: ‘Are you about airports; I sent photos of my coff ee from the 80 | Pandemic Passages | AiA around world; we joked about jetlag. He is under a ‘state’), or from both. During the intervening ‘lim- stay-at-home order in California and going a li le inal’ period, the characteristics of the ritual subject stir-crazy; he speculates about the dissertations that (the passenger) are ambiguous; he passes through a will be wri en about this moment.
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