The global pandemic is generating a great deal of thinking among scholars broadly interested in the social and cultural implications of Covid-19. In order to provide a forum for early observations and reflections on the pandemic as it unfolds, the editors of Cultural Anthropology—Christopher Nelson, Heather Paxson, and Brad Weiss—are editing an open-ended collection on the global pandemic.

How to Submit

We are not accepting submissions at this time. Another call for papers may be announced here at a later date.

Prison as the Problem, Prison as the Cure

Prison as the Problem, Prison as the Cure

Across the United States, politicians, public prosecutors, and local and federal courts have released thousands in the country’s jails and prisons in an effort ... More

Stigma and the Logics of Wartime

Stigma and the Logics of Wartime

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service has been subsumed in recent weeks by military metaphors. Health workers are “servicemen” on the “frontline” “battli... More

Impact of Covid-19 on Hijras, a Third-Gender Community in India

Impact of Covid-19 on Hijras, a Third-Gender Community in India

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on the telly that India will put its population of 1.38 billion under lockdown to curb commun... More

Birthing under Investigation

Birthing under Investigation

Covid-19 has ushered in a new grammar of intimacy. Every physical interaction inspires a calculation of risk management. Consequential decisions are made over t... More

"Bigas Hindi Dahas": Covid-19 and State Violence

"Bigas Hindi Dahas": Covid-19 and State Violence

Fifteen days after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a Luzon-wide “enhanced community quarantine” to curb the spread of Covid-19, the residents of Si... More

Communion in Quarantine: How Liturgical Christian Churches Celebrated Easter

Communion in Quarantine: How Liturgical Christian Churches Celebrated Easter

Good Friday liturgical services in the Armenian Apostolic Church—under normal circumstances—include a grand procession carrying a wooden recreation of the Tomb ... More

Corona Chronotopes

Corona Chronotopes

A viral video produced by a collective of filmmakers based in Milan shows Italians recording messages to their selves of ten days ago. The video illustrates the... More

Hope and History in South Africa’s Pandemic

Hope and History in South Africa’s Pandemic

April 10, 2020. Lockdown Day 15. A few nights ago, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a further two weeks of lockdown, on top of the three we are... More

They Sow the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind (Covid Doubt in St. Petersburg)

They Sow the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind (Covid Doubt in St. Petersburg)

I’m in Russia, vacationing like everyone else: on March 25, 2020, President Putin gave most people a week off work, and then another three weeks. It’s sort of l... More

Lonely Death in Pandemic Times

Lonely Death in Pandemic Times

As anthropologists who research and write about death and trauma, we are troubled by accounts of pandemic-related deaths that fail to account for the intimacies... More