Responses to Covid-19 as a form of ‘biopower’

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic caused many countries to take strict measures in order to control the spread of the virus. Their goal was to protect the vulnerable groups and the health care systems from collapsing. This discussion article relies on opportunistic observations from several countries and Foucault’s theory of biopower to discuss that governments attempted to control Covid-19 by monitoring large numbers of people, and that this was achieved through the construction of discourse and technologies of domination. The article further discusses that people could be better empowered in order to participate more effectively in any attempts to further manage Covid-19 and that governments should self-evaluate their strategy for responding to future pandemics.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• Foucault
• biopower
• discourse
• pandemics

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Costas S. Constantinou

Dr Costas S. Constantinou is an Associate Professor of Medical Sociology and Associate Dean for Students at the University of Nicosia Medical School, Cyprus. Dr Constantinou’s research interests are illness experience, illness narratives, organ donation and transplantation, cultural competence, medical education, teaching medical sociology, social theory, and qualitative research methodology.