TY - JOUR
T1 - Do we need a posthumanist sociology? Notes from the COVID-19 pandemic
AU - Vallee, Mickey
N1 - Funding Information:
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - This article asks whether we need a posthumanist sociology, arguing that such a perspective can export a good deal of useful methodological and theoretical insight into the sociological toolbox. A posthumanist sociology is not a flattened ontology, in which we find agency in all things living and non-living. A posthumanist sociology asks instead what we do with the fundamental question of becoming both more and less human, following a surge of interest in decentring human exceptionalism. Moreover, a posthumanist sociology returns to the question of what it means to be an intersectional being, to proliferate the involvement of entities at the intersections of histories and social structures. Thus, it is a perspective that emerges from within the conditions of related crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has highlighted the need to decentre human exceptionalism, raising a challenge for sociologists to return to the premises of what it means to be a social being. In some sense, management of the pandemic already assumes a decentring. This article builds an argument by first reviewing what broadly constitutes a ‘posthumanist’ sociological perspective, then moves on to a case study of the interrelated human and non-human actors that constituted the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The case study usefully marks the intersection between human and non-human bodies as nodes in the interpretive production chain of this global event – one that acknowledges human extensions and connections to multispecies and ecological systems. Such interlinkages become foundational to interrogating what it means to become human in a posthuman world.
AB - This article asks whether we need a posthumanist sociology, arguing that such a perspective can export a good deal of useful methodological and theoretical insight into the sociological toolbox. A posthumanist sociology is not a flattened ontology, in which we find agency in all things living and non-living. A posthumanist sociology asks instead what we do with the fundamental question of becoming both more and less human, following a surge of interest in decentring human exceptionalism. Moreover, a posthumanist sociology returns to the question of what it means to be an intersectional being, to proliferate the involvement of entities at the intersections of histories and social structures. Thus, it is a perspective that emerges from within the conditions of related crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has highlighted the need to decentre human exceptionalism, raising a challenge for sociologists to return to the premises of what it means to be a social being. In some sense, management of the pandemic already assumes a decentring. This article builds an argument by first reviewing what broadly constitutes a ‘posthumanist’ sociological perspective, then moves on to a case study of the interrelated human and non-human actors that constituted the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The case study usefully marks the intersection between human and non-human bodies as nodes in the interpretive production chain of this global event – one that acknowledges human extensions and connections to multispecies and ecological systems. Such interlinkages become foundational to interrogating what it means to become human in a posthuman world.
KW - Bodies
KW - nature
KW - pandemic
KW - posthumanism
KW - virus
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128615550&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/00113921221090253
DO - 10.1177/00113921221090253
M3 - Journal Article
AN - SCOPUS:85128615550
SN - 0011-3921
JO - Current Sociology
JF - Current Sociology
ER -