Social Distancing, Safe Spaces and the Demand for Quarantine

Social distance has been a topic of interest in sociology for more than a century before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas in the past it referred to the distance between groups in more recent times it signifies the space between individuals. The aspiration for safe space and personal boundaries in recent years indicated that social distancing has acquired an increasingly individuated and privatised form. This article suggests that the demand for safe space can be interpreted as a demand for a quarantine from psychic threats. This pre-existing demand for a quarantine from criticism and pressure has seamlessly meshed with the imperative of social distancing in the COVID-19 era. As a sociologist I was astonished to discover that so many people have become comfortable with their life in lockdown. When in the course of a zoom conference in May 2020, I tell a colleague in New York that I am going stir crazy and want my life back, she admonishes me for thinking irresponsible thoughts. Another attempts to reassure me that there is much that I can do “to make life more comfortable” during the lock down. One major survey published on the UK in May 2020 indicated that 49% of the respondents agreed with the statement that “there are some aspects of the “lockdown” measures that I’ve enjoyed.”Footnote1 Surveys also suggest that millions of people are worried that the lockdown is being eased too rapidly.Footnote2 Numerous commentators claim that social distancing is here to stay. These responses to a public health crisis did not emerge out of nowhere. They have a prehistory and what this essay will attempt to show is that what the COVID-19 pandemic has done is to amplify and reinforce a pre-existing cultural orientation towards the spatial dimension of safety

Precautionary Culture and the Rise of Possibilistic Risk Assessment

The shift from probabilistic to possibilistic risk management characterises contemporary cultural attitudes towards uncertainty. This shift in attitude is paralleled by the growing influence of the belief that future risks are not only unknown but are also unknowable. Scepticism about the capacity of knowledge to help manage risks has encouraged the dramatisation of uncertainty. One consequence of this development has been the advocacy of a precautionary response to threats. This article examines the way in which precautionary attitudes have shaped the response to the threat of terrorism and to the millennium bug. The main accomplishment of this response has been to intensify the sense of existential insecurity

Adiabatic Quantum Computing for Random Satisfiability Problems

The discrete formulation of adiabatic quantum computing is compared with other search methods, classical and quantum, for random satisfiability (SAT) problems. With the number of steps growing only as the cube of the number of variables, the adiabatic method gives solution probabilities close to 1 for problem sizes feasible to evaluate via simulation on current computers. However, for these sizes the minimum energy gaps of most instances are fairly large, so the good performance scaling seen for small problems may not reflect asymptotic behavior where costs are dominated by tiny gaps. Moreover, the resulting search costs are much higher than for other methods. Variants of the quantum algorithm that do not match the adiabatic limit give lower costs, on average, and slower growth than the conventional GSAT heuristic method.Comment: added discussion of discrete adiabatic method, and simulations with 30 bits 8 pages, 8 figure

Undercurrents to Independence: Plantation Struggles in Kenya’s Central Province 1959-60

The avalanche of plantation strikes which took place during early months of 1960 initiated the successive strike waves which plagued Kenya’s decolonisation process. The lifting of the Emergency and the announcement of a transition period to African majority government in January 1960 was marked by a new confidence. After years of draconian discipline, estate workers embraced trade unionism and moved into their first organised struggles over wages and conditions. They were joined by unrestricted former Mau Mau detainees and the victims of land consolidation who entered the plantation work force. The arousal of high expectation fuelled the strikes that engulfed the plantation districts of Kenya’s Central Province during the approach to independence. These events took place against a background of severe crisis within world coffee markets. Faced by this, European coffee growers attempted to compensate themselves by rationalising the plantation economy at the expense of their workers. This was met by fierce resistance from plantation labourers which was only eventually tamed as union leaders struggled to arrest the movement and surrender organisational autonomy to the state

Between Will and Thought: Individualism and Social Responsiveness in Amazonian Child Rearing

This essay provides an ethnographic account of how moral dispositions towards independence and social responsiveness are forged during infancy and toddlerhood among the Runa, an indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I will show how two local concepts, munay (will) and yuyay (thought) shape children’s early experiences of the self and the self in relation to others. In particular, I will argue that, unlike middle class Anglo-Americans who repute paternal responsiveness to be necessary for a “healthy” child development, Runa adults strategically chose not to respond to children’s will in order to make them “thoughtful”. Such state of thoughtfulness, I argue, emerges from socialization practices which stress a child’s unique will while at the same time forcefully encourage the development of social responsiveness

The Public Playground Paradox: "Child’s Joy" or Heterotopia of Fear?

Literature depicts children of the Global North withdrawing from public space to“acceptable islands”. Driven by fears both of and for children, the publicplayground – one such island – provides clear-cut distinctions between childhoodand adulthood. Extending this argument, this paper takes the original approach oftheoretically framing the playground as a heterotopia of deviance, examining –for the first time – three Greek public playground sites in relation to adjacentpublic space. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Athens, findings show fear tounderpin surveillance, control and playground boundary porosity. Normativeclassification as “children’s space” discourages adult engagement. However, in anovel and significant finding, a paradoxical phenomenon sees the playground’spresence simultaneously legitimizing playful behaviour in adjacent public spacefor children and adults. Extended playground play creates alternate orderings andnegotiates norms and hierarchies, suggesting significant wider potential toreconceptualise playground-urban design for an intergenerational public realm

On the relational dynamics of caring: a psychotherapeutic approach to emotional and power dimensions of women’s care work

Care is double-edged and paradoxical, inspiring a vast range of strong feelings in both care-givers and care-recipients. This paper draws on ideas about psychotherapeutic relationships to offer a theorisation of the complex emotional and power dynamics and imaginative geographies of care. Examining the humanistic approach developed by Carl Rogers as well as the psychoanalytic tradition, I advance an interpretation of psychotherapeutic practices that foregrounds the fundamental importance of the emotional and power-inflected relationship between practitioners and those with whom they work. I show how different traditions offer conceptualisations of the shape of therapeutic relationships that are highly relevant to consideration of the emotional and power dynamics of giving and receiving care. Against this background I discuss current debates about care, emotions and power, drawing especially on feminist and disability perspectives and arguing that psychotherapeutic approaches offer a powerful lens through which to understand the emotional and power dynamics of caring relationships. I conclude by emphasising how this theorisation helps to illuminate ubiquitous features of women’s care work