Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are established by research as effective for controlling pandemics. COVID-19 incentivized much research into the effectiveness of NPIs, which confirmed their efficacy, indeed indispensability, for pandemic management. Yet the success or otherwise of NPIs in bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control has obviously depended on the level of public compliance with these restrictions, especially in the pre-vaccination era. However, the NPIs were rather less successful in curbing the pandemic than is commonly thought because their efficacy was compromised by substantial levels of public non-compliance. This paper contends that public non-compliance with NPIs may be explained to some degree by a concept of de-civilization. De-civilization is not theorized here as regression of the modernization process, as Norbert Elias understood it, but rather as integral to the neoliberal mode of capitalism. De-civilization denotes cultural, social and political mechanisms at work in our globalizing world (especially neo-liberalization, individualisation, and class polarization) that undermined the stringency of NPIs due to the harms they have inflicted on the social compact. This paper concludes that effective responses to future pandemics will depend not on technological solutions but on reversing decivilizing processes.

Authors:
Sean Creaven, University of the West of England (UWE), United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Sean Creaven is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at University of the West of England (UWE) in United Kingdom

Additional website of interest
https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/SeanCreaven

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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