Варвара Кобыща
Научная сотрудница
Лаборатории социальных исследований города,
факультет городского и регионального развития,
Национальный исследовательский университет
«Высшая школа экономики»
Студентка Аспирантской программы
по социальным наукам,
Университет Хельсинки
Адрес: ул. Мясницкая, д. 20,
г. Москва, Российская Федерация 101000
E-mail: vkobyshcha@hse.ru

 

The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis is one of the early examples of the studies intended to explore a COVID-19 pandemic-related phenomenon in a more systematic and holistic manner. The book is written by a collective of Australia-based social scholars, Deborah Lupton, Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark, and Ash Watson, who work on topics of public health, technology, materiality, culture, body, and gender. The data was gathered throughout the first year of the pandemic (2020), which resulted in a dynamic analysis of how masks were re-assembled as a socio-material object in the context of the global health crisis. It describes the period when the initially-uncertain status of masks and concerns about their inefficiency or related risks were replaced by the requirement to wear masks whenever it is impossible to maintain a safe distance and which was introduced in over a hundred countries around the world by July, 2020. The book is interesting and peculiar in at least two ways; first, in what it says about face masks as the key symbol and material equipment of the pandemic, and second, in what it reveals about the specific epistemological position of researchers who produce knowledge amid the ongoing events.