Pandemic of Perspectives : Creative Re-imaginings

This volume brings together academics, activists, social work practitioners, poets, and artists from different parts of the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. It sheds light on how the pandemic has exposed the inequities in society and is shaping social institutions, affecting human relationships, and creating new norms with each passing day.

It examines how people from diverse societies and fields of work have come to conceptualise and imagine a new world order based on the principles of social and ecological justice, care, and human dignity. It prioritises the realm of imagination, creativity, and affect in understanding social formations and in shaping societies beyond the positivist approaches. Documenting the myriad experiences and responses to the pandemic, the volume foregrounds varied processes of making meaning; understanding impulses, resistances, and coping mechanisms; and building solidarities. Further, it also acts as a tool of memory for future generations, and articulations- artistic, political, socio-cultural, scientific- of hope and perseverance. This spectrum of expressions intends to value visceral experiences, build solidarities, and find solace in art.

Its uniqueness lies in the way it brings together a much-needed interface between science, social sciences, and humanities. A compelling account on our contemporary lives, the volume will be of great interest to scholars of sociology and social anthropology, politics, art and aesthetics, psychology, social work, literature, health, and medical sciences.

Rimple Mehta is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Communities, School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. She has previously worked at the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai and Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has studied Sociology, Social Work and Women’s Studies. She researches and writes on gender, criminalisation of mobility, trafficking and incarceration. Her monograph titled Women, Mobility and Incarceration: Love and Recasting of Self across the Bangladesh-India Border was published in 2018. Her latest co-edited volume titled Women, Incarcerated: Narratives from India was published by Orient BlackSwan in 2022. She has researched with women in prisons in Mumbai, Kolkata and The Netherlands and also worked with organisations such as Swayam and networks such as Maitree against violence on women in West Bengal.

Sandali Thakur is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Women-centred Social Work, Tata institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She has taught Women’s and Gender Studies/Social Work/Sociology at the Azim Premji University Bengaluru, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Youth Development Sriperumbudur, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai and Chennai. Sandali has been part of anti-caste struggles and co-founded a New Delhi-based organisation (funded by Ford Foundation) to intervene in the area of social exclusion in higher education. She has also been involved in the Women’s Studies movement and helped set up the Women’s Studies Program in Patna University. Her doctoral work explored social relations of caste, class and gender amongst ‘folk’ artists of Madhubani/ Mithila.

Debaroti Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts, Presidency University, India. As a researcher- artist and performance thinker she focuses on making cross-cultural and inter-cultural performances based on lived experiences, narratives, and oral history. Her doctoral work broadly studies narratives of women in India and Latin America through a comparative perspective in the context of borders. Debaroti has been an instructor at the ‘Bodies at the Borders’ collaborative video-conferencing course between Cornell University, U.S.A and Jadavpur University. She has also taught at the under-graduate and post-graduate levels in the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University. She also writes as a performance critic with the Telegraph.