The Long Year: A 2020 Reader

Description

Some years―1789, 1929, 1989―change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world―like many patients―met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn’t the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnosis. In The Long Year, some of the world’s most incisive thinkers excavate 2020’s buried crises, revealing how they must be confronted in order to achieve a more equal future. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls for the defunding of police and the refunding of communities; Keisha Blain demonstrates why the battle against racism must be global; and Adam Tooze reveals that COVID-19 hit hardest where inequality was already greatest and welfare states weakest. Yarimar Bonilla, Xiaowei Wang, Simon Balto, Marcia Chatelain, Gautam Bhan, Ananya Roy, and others offer insights from the factory farms of China to the elite resorts of France, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest to the overcrowded hospitals of India. The definitive guide to these ongoing catastrophes, The Long Year shows that only by exposing the roots and ramifications of 2020 can another such breakdown be prevented. It is made possible through institutional partnerships with Public Books and the Social Science Research Council. Table of Contents Acknowledgments, by Caitlin Zaloom Introduction: Preexisting Conditions, by Thomas J. Sugrue Part I: Diagnosing the Crises Pandemics as History, by Andy Horowitz It’s the Geography, Stupid! Planetary Urbanization Revealed, by Éric Charmes and Max Rousseau Global Inequality and the Corona Shock, by Adam Tooze The Job of Critical Thinking Now, by Joan Wallach Scott Part II: Essential Work “The Supply Chain Must Continue”, by Andrew Lakoff The Enduring Disposability of Latinx Workers, by Natalia Molina Fast Food, Precarious Workers, by Marcia Chatelain Mothers, Mental Health, and the Pandemic, by Michelle Cera Working in China in the COVID-19 Era, by Gilles Guiheux, Renyou Hou, Manon Laurent, Jun Li, Anne-Valérie Ruinet, and Ye Guo India in COVID-19: A Tragedy Foretold, by Marine Al Dahdah, Mathieu Ferry, Isabelle Guérin, and Govindan Venkatasubramanian Pandemic Security and Insecurity in the Gulf, by Neha Vora Hidden Vulnerability and Inequality: The COVID-19 Pandemic in Singapore, by Sulfikar Amir Addressing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Gender Inequality and Gender-Based Violence in South Africa, by Sherihan Radi Part III: Policing and Protest Civil Rights International: The Fight Against Racism Has Always Been Global, by Keisha N. Blain Rage and Uprising, by Mustafa Dikeç Defund the Police and Refund the Communities, by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Policing’s History Argues Against Reform, by Simon Balto Can I Get a Witness?, by Jeffrey Aaron Snyder As American as Child Separation, by Rachel Nolan Protests Against Police Brutality Go Global, by David Schmidt Part IV: Viral Biopolitics To Heal the Body, Heal the Body Politic, by Julie Livingston American Eldercide, by Margaret Morganroth Gullette The World Is a Factory Farm, by Xiaowei Wang Listen to the Birds, by Priscilla Wald Risk for “Us” or for “Them”? The Comparative Politics of Diversity and Responses to AIDS and COVID-19, by Evan Lieberman Think Like a Virus, by Warwick Anderson Part V: Pandemic Lives For the Love of Strangers, by Julia Foulkes Where Is She?, by Soledad Álvarez Velasco Grief Circling, by Sophie Lewis In China, Pandemic Diaries Unite and Divide a Nation, by Guobin Yang Part VI: Private Crises in Public Spaces The Violence of Urban Vacancy, by Sophie Gonick The Limits of Telecommuting, by Margaret O’Mara A Quiet Disaster: Mexico City, Mexico, by Alfonso Fierro Health Self-Defense in a São Paulo Favela, by Erick Corrêa Emergency Urbanism, by Ananya Roy A Crisis Too Big to Waste: What Comes After Private Housing Fails?, by Gianpaolo Baiocchi and H. Jacob Carlson Part VII: The Failure of the State COVID Blindness, by Quentin Ravelli Five Lessons for Democracy from the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Jean-Paul Gagnon, Rikki J. Dean, Afsoun Afsahi, Emily Beausoleil, and Selen A. Ercan Can Democracies Handle Systemic Risks?, by Miguel Centeno The Vulnerable Foundations of India’s Urbanism, by Gautam Bhan Pandemics in the Post-Grid Imaginary, by Joanne Randa Nucho Pandemic Déjà Vu, by Yarimar Bonilla COVID-19 in a Border Nation, by Jacob A. C. Remes Part VIII: Alternative Futures Are We in Denial About Denial?, by Rodrigo Nunes Can the Crowd Speak?, by Warren Breckman The Pandemic’s Brief Disaster Utopia, by Daniel F. Lorenz and Cordula Dittmer Building a Society the Values Care, by Kathryn Cai Rebuilding Solidarity in a Broken World, by Eric Klinenberg Part IX: Further Reading Pandemic Syllabus, by David S. Barnes, Merlin Chowkwanyun, and Kavita Sivaramakrishnan List of Contributors Source Credits