Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies (Dec 2023)

The Influence of Covid-19-Induced Unease Infrastructure on Cultural and Social Spheres

  • Sergey Troitskiy

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7592/YBBS6.10
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6
pp. 210 – 227

Abstract

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Covid-19 challenged the entire population of the world, affected everyone and all spheres of life, and changed the content, and the ways, of communication. For example, medical discourse was integrated in a variety of discursive fields. Covid-19 brought with it individual anxiety that was transformed into moral panic. The anxiety was further amplified by the unease infrastructure in everyday culture. This is found in the procedural aspects of culture, from the semantics and pragmatics of language to cultural patterns. Social and cultural presumptions were also revised during the pandemic so that the cultural reputations of topos were transformed and the cultural presumption of innocence, the basic for communication, was replaced by the opposite, the presumption of guilt. As a result, people began to perceive each other as potential threat carriers, as potential carriers of the virus. In the paper, I present the mechanisms of building unease infrastructure during the pandemic, various ways to overcome anxiety, and the impact of unease infrastructure on the individual level. I will talk about the influence of the unease infrastructure on changes in common sense, individual preference, and the social levels of the acceptable in the future.

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