Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being

ABSTRACT

Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case, ‘refused’ knowledge claims emerging outside institutionalised science play a performative role in questioning the current models for managing individual and public health. Such refused claims ascribe novel meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the ways in which people manage their own health and well-being during their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions are at stake in the production and enactment of refused knowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised to reframe one’s body in a process of self-care, thus validating a corpus of refused knowledge through personal experience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between a body of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedical paradigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemic autonomy.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• thought style
• thought collective
• refused knowledge
• web ethnography
• Italy

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Italian Minister of University and Research (PRIN 2017B434E8_003 – Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale) for the project ‘Social factors and processes affecting the acceptance of fake scientific knowledge’. The project is led by the University of Padova. We thank Maria Carmela Agodi, Paolo Bory, Paolo Giardullo, Barbara Morsello, Federico Neresini, Simone Tosoni, Paolo Volonté for their comments on previous versions of this text. We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and support to the development of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Contribution statement

• ♦ Stefano Crabu: Conceptualization (lead); methodology (equal); writing – original draft (equal); data curation (equal); formal analysis (equal); editing (lead); Writing – Review & Editing (lead).

• ♦ Ilenia Picardi: Conceptualization (supporting); methodology (equal); writing – original draft (equal); data curation (equal); formal analysis (equal); editing (supporting); Writing – Review & Editing (supporting).

• ♦ Valentina Turrini: Conceptualization (supporting); methodology (equal); writing – original draft (equal); data curation (equal); formal analysis (equal); editing (supporting); Writing – Review & Editing (supporting).

Notes

1 This principle has recently been endorsed by the British Psychological Association (2009) and by the British Sociological Association (2016).

2 In this case study, WhatsApp (along with Telegram) proved to be the most relevant online space in terms of interaction and refused knowledge production because of mainstream social media bans on No-5G-related content.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research: [Grant Number PRIN 2017B434E8_003].

Notes on contributors

Stefano Crabu

Stefano Crabu (PhD in social sciences) is a science, technology and medicine sociologist at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology of the University of Padova. He studies scientific and technological innovation processes in the life sciences and ICT. His recent publications centre on the sociomaterial and epistemological aspects of translational biomedicine, laboratory practices and hacking practices. He is the principal investigator of the project ‘En-RRI – Enhancing RRI in the bottom-up co-creation of science and technology’, which aims to have an impact on the empowerment of the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process.

Ilenia Picardi

Ilenia Picardi (PhD in mind gender language, PhD in physics) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Naples Federico II (UNINA), Italy. Her research focuses on social studies of science and technology, particularly on issues related to the social impact of techno-science, environmental sustainability and intersectionality in scientific research and academia. She is currently in charge of the Gender Studies in Science and Technology area at the Gender Observatory of university and research at the University of Naples Federico II.

Valentina Turrini

Valentina Turrini (PhD) is a sociologist working as post-doctoral researcher at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. Her research interests focus on the social processes that lead to the circulation and acceptance of knowledge rejected by the institutional scientific community. She is also carrying out projects regarding the social construction of haptic interfaces, which are technologies that provide tactile feedback in various contexts such as tele-robotics, medical training, videogaming and mobile communication.