Ontologies of a Pandemic: Polarisations Exposed by COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Bangladesh, the government has struggled to enforce regulations to curb spread of the disease. People continued to travel to their desh (home village) not caring about the prescribed health guidelines even after national lockdown was announced. As per many people’s perspectives, they—the pious/Bangladeshis—were immune to COVID-19. Nevertheless, novel forms of stigmatisation emerged. In this article, I seek to illuminate why Bangladeshis violated the government-prescribed health guidelines and put themselves and their families at risk. I contend that, though it can be argued that not many people were aware of the seriousness of the coronavirus, the pandemic has exposed ontological potentialities and differences among the people of Bangladesh.

Keywords:

• Afterlife
• Bangladesh
• COVID-19
• desh
• dividuality
• ontology
• pandemic
• social body

Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous South Asia readers and the editor for their insightful feedback and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

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15. These questions were raised by the anonymous reviewers of this paper.

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26. Jitka Kotalova, Belonging to Others: Cultural Construction of Womanhood among Muslims in a Village in Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University Press Ltd, 1996 [1993]), pp. 44–7. This argument can be compared to de Castro, ‘The Gift and the Given’, pp. 237–68.

27. Bertocci, ‘Islam and the Social Construction of the Bangladesh Countryside’, pp. 71–85.

28. See also Kotalova, Belonging to Others, p. 44.

29. Dhaka Tribune (28 Mar. 2020) [https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/dhaka/2020/03/28/COVID-19-10-million-mobile-subscribers-left-dhaka?fb_comment_id=2766734516774399_2768613433253174, accessed 30 Mar. 2020].

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32. Bertocci, ‘Islam and the Social Construction of the Bangladesh Countryside’, pp. 71–85.

33. K.M. Ashraful Aziz, Kinship in Bangladesh (Dhaka: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, 1979), pp. 127–36.

34. Historical examples can be found in Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 131–53; see also Arnold, Colonising the Body, pp. 171–83, 218–29; and Arnold, ‘Disease, Rumour, and Panic in India’s Plague and Influenza Epidemics, 1896–1919’, pp. 111–30.

35. For an analysis of panic behaviour during pandemics, see David Peckham (ed.), Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), pp. 1–22, 57–86, 111–30.

36. The Financial Express (29 Mar. 2020) [https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/public/index.php/national/akij-groups-coronavirus-hospital-construction-resumes-in-tejgaon-1585478442, accessed 6 Oct. 2020].

37. Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury, ‘Crowd, Contagion, Corona’, Fieldsights (8 May 2020) [https://culanth.org/fieldsights/crowd-contagion-corona, accessed 7 Oct. 2020].

38. See also Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 106–16, 147–57, 326–40.

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41. Kotalova, Belonging to Others, pp. 48–53; also see McKim Marriott, ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism’, in Bruce Kapferer (ed.), Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior (Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976), pp. 109–42; E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 61–104; and Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 191–224.

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50. Ibid. This point can be compared with de Castro, ‘Exchanging Perspectives’, p. 7.

51. Siddiqi, Becoming ‘Good Muslim’, p. 41.

52. de Castro, ‘The Gift and the Given’, pp. 237–68; see also Martin Holbraad, ‘Ontography and Alterity: Defining Anthropological Truth’, in Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, Vol. 53, no. 2 (2009), pp. 80–93; and Holbraad, ‘Against the Motion’, pp. 179–85.

53. Santi Rozario, ‘The New Burqa in Bangladesh: Empowerment or Violation of Women’s Rights?’, in Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 29, no. 4 (2006), pp. 368–80; Shelley Feldman, ‘Gender and Islam in Bangladesh: Metaphor and Myth’, in Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretative Essays (Dhaka: The University Press Ltd, 2001), pp. 209–35 [210]; and White, ‘Beyond the Paradox’, p. 1432.

54. Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 466–7.