Halloween, Organization, and the Ethics of Uncanny Celebration

This article examines the relationship between organizational ethics, the uncanny, and the annual celebration of Halloween. We begin by exploring the traditional and contemporary organizational function of Halloween as ‘tension-management ritual’ (Etzioni, Sociol Theory 18(1):44–59, 2000) through which collective fears, anxieties, and fantasies are played out and given material expression. Combining the uncanny with the folkloric concept of ostension, we then examine an incident in which UK supermarket retailers made national news headlines for selling offensive Halloween costumes depicting ‘escaped mental patients’. Rather than treating this incident as a problem of moral hygiene—in which products are removed, apologies made, and lessons learned—we consider the value of Halloween as a unique and disruptive ethical encounter with the uncanny Other. Looking beyond its commercial appeal and controversy, we reflect on the creative, generous, and disruptive potential of Halloween as both tension-management ritual and unique organizational space of hospitality through which to receive and embrace alterity and so discover the homely within the unheimlich

TNFα-producing CD4⁺ T cells dominate the SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell response in COVID-19 outpatients and are associated with durable antibodies

AbstractSARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cells are likely important in immunity against COVID-19, but our understanding of CD4+ longitudinal dynamics following infection and specific features that correlate with the maintenance of neutralizing antibodies remains limited. We characterized SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cells in a longitudinal cohort of 109 COVID-19 outpatients. The quality of the SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ response shifted from cells producing IFNγ to TNFα+ from five days to four months post-enrollment, with IFNγ-IL21-TNFα+ CD4+ T cells the predominant population detected at later timepoints. Greater percentages of IFNγ-IL21-TNFα+ CD4+ T cells on day 28 correlated with SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies measured seven months post-infection (ρ=0.4, P=0.01). mRNA vaccination following SARS-CoV-2 infection boosted both IFNγ and TNFα producing, spike protein-specific CD4+ T cells. These data suggest that SARS-CoV-2-specific, TNFα-producing CD4+ T cells may play an important role in antibody maintenance following COVID-19.</jats:p