Masking in Pandemic U.S.: Beliefs and Practices of Containment and Connection

This anthropological study explores the beliefs and practices surrounding masking in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the diverse and fractured responses to health and safety mandates. It emphasizes the role of bodies and materials in shaping beliefs and values, and how practices can be passageways between people and possibilities. The author reflects on how American subjects became relational selves and sustained response-able communities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 124 pages
Publication date: 19 September 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This anthropological study delves into the beliefs and practices surrounding mask-wearing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this illness, Americans navigated the complex terrain of social and bodily boundaries, shaping and supporting certain beliefs while actively engaging in practices that solidified them as compelling realities. The debates over health and safety mandates revealed the diverse perspectives and subjectivities at play, as individuals inhabited different worlds and their bodies became central in conflicts over breathing, masking, and social distancing.

Contrasting approaches to practices highlighted the boundaries and possibilities of imaginaries, revealing differences and similarities between groups and the potential for actions to bridge people and possibilities. During a period of profound uncertainty and loss, the intimate connection between bodies and materials infused beliefs, values, and emotions of care into the act of mask sewing and usage. By examining these practices, the author reflects on how American subjects transformed into relational selves and fostered response-able communities, enabling individuals to protect each other from mutating viruses while navigating a shifting terrain of intimacy, distance, connection, and containment.

Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032137629