Sulla gestione culturale della pandemia da Covid 19: una introduzione

This introduction to the ethnographic studies comprising this special issue has two main objectives. On the one hand, it provides a clarification of the conceptual tools (the distinction between a pandemic and a syndemic); a contextualisation of the structural conditions (the underfunding of the healthcare sector in Italy); and a critical perspective (pandemic management is not regarded as a neutral act but as revealing the prevailing political and economic logics). On the other hand, it highlights the common threads running through the ethnographic studies comprising this special issue: a grassroots perspective on pandemic management from the peripheries; epistemological divergences regarding notions of illness and care; a focus on the gap between the institutional representation of events and the lived experiences of individuals and communities; a critique of how the measures adopted have, in certain cases, exacerbated the precariousness of vulnerable groups; community strategies for sharing risk internally and closing off from the outside world; the search for self-managed ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ therapeutic solutions.