Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 5. October 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 5 Front cover Covid-19 symbolism: Amabie in Japan The Japanese yōkai Amabie (アマビエ) was a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disaster and epidemics until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a few manga artists and Kyoto University Library brought her back to public attention and gave her global fame on social media. A drawing contest with the hashtag #AmabieChallenge started in earnest, crossing the borders of Japan to reach and captivate an enthusiastic global audience. Her body is an assemblage of human, fish and bird characteristics, with three fish tails/legs and long, dark hair. The front cover picture on this issue of AT was taken in September 2020 at the annual Scarecrow Competition in Tokyo, which this year elected to have Amabie as its theme. In this issue, Claudia Merli explores how this yōkai's resurgence from pre-modern Japan intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those associated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. Reasons for Amabie's sudden celebrity hark back to the culture of representation of historical epidemics via woodblock prints and the special place occupied by ningyo (mermaids and mermen) in Japan. Presented by some commentators as a pandemic mascot, this uncanny yokai from southern Japan addresses our contemporary lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions. We could even say that as we entered the pandemic, Amabie came to reinhabit a world she previously belonged to, one of unfathomable disasters and global intersections. The article follows some of these serendipitous connections to make sense of a phenomenon that should be analyzed in terms of the polysemic capacity of an icon of protection, whose beaky features recall all too well the spectral appearance of a plague doctor in Renaissance Europe. Back cover COVID-19 SYMBOLISM: TEDDY BEARS IN NZ On the day that Aotearoa/New Zealand started its unprecedented nationwide lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that despite the order to ‘stay home’, walking locally was not prohibited and that children, in particular, were welcome to stroll through their neighbourhoods in search of teddy bears in windows. She then added, ‘And if you're in Wellington and you're walking in a local neighbourhood, you might see one in my window’. Within days, across the country a multitude of teddy bears, as well as other stuffed animals and plastic toys, appeared in residential windows, tied on top of letterboxes or, like this one, affixed onto lamp posts. Inspired by the popular children's book, We're going on a bear hunt, wellknown for its refrain, ‘we're not scared’, the bears were widely understood to inspire ‘hope’ and ‘care’ and were just one of the ways that New Zealanders affectively invested in the Covid-19 lockdown. While scholarly work on national crises has frequently focused on the misuse of emergency measures to expand state power, much less has been said of the ways that citizens help constitute states of emergency. During the first Covid-19 lockdown (March-May 2020), New Zealanders set up community roadblocks to seal off neighbourhoods deemed to be under threat, ‘dobbed in’ perceived rule breakers or engaged in acts of vigilante justice against them, and called on the nation to recast the lockdown as a rahui or Maori protective prohibition. They also displayed a seemingly endless array of teddy bears, including the occasional bear engaged in acts that contravened lockdown regulations. Examining these and similar acts of collective responsibility, care and blame is a vital step in widening our understanding of the variety of dynamics that create and sustain states of emergency in democratic nations as well as their potential long-term implications.     

Securitising HIV/AIDS in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

For the People's Republic of China, the localised HIV/AIDS epidemics in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are emerging as threats to those persons affected by the disease, but also to the stability of Xinjiang. This article examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Xinjiang and considers the impacts it may have on human and political security. The authors argue that due to its remote location and the religious, cultural and ethnic diversity of its population, and current political situation, Xinjiang poses difficult obstacles to effective programs in tackling HIV/AIDS, and the pandemic has disproportionately affected the minority nationalities in the region compared to their Han counterparts. If the HIV/AIDS pandemic among minority nationalities in Xinjiang continues to grow, it has the potential to further weaken social cohesion there, as well as Uyghur human security. Therefore, a HIV/AIDS pandemic in Xinjiang could tip the balance in terms of ethnic and regional stability.     

“We can’t return to normal”: committing to tourism equity in the post-pandemic age

Abstract

Tourism transformation must bring an actionable focus on equity. A new normal openly recognizes the crises and tensions inhabiting tourism well before the COVID-19 pandemic along with the holistic and integrated nature of a pro-equity agenda. A resilient post-pandemic tourism must be more equitable and just, in terms of how it operates, its effects on people and place, and how we as scholars teach, study and publicly engage the travel industry—particularly in preparing its current and future leaders. A commitment to equity is about making specific changes in practices and decisions at multiple levels, along with growing a wider ethical framework. This pivot of a mindset requires us, as tourists, corporations, and educators to step away from a selfish perspective and critically change our perception and understanding of tourism to a truly equitable focus. Consequently, these actions force us to question the consumerism and capitalistic lens that has contributed to mass growth across the touristic landscape and instead, choose a system that fosters sustainable and equitable growth - which in turn, ‘slows down’ our ways of consuming the world around us - transforming our values and experiences of what tourism is and should be.     

Social media reconstructions of urban identity during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected people in urban areas. This article reports on a comparative empirical study of the pandemic in Guangzhou and Xi’an in 2021 and analyses how residents responded to social media during the crisis. Using Baidu’s hot search time machine to search for hot topics related to the spread of disease during each outbreak of COVID-19, we collected 35 and 41 hashtags for Guangzhou’s and Xi’an’s epidemics, respectively. Based on a thematic analysis of those hashtags, we considered how residents reconstructed expressions of urban identity in both cities. We found that China’s unique official accountability system in local anti-epidemic practices led to stricter forms of top-down urban governance and that urban residents deployed forms of bottom-up agency in response. Our work provides a refined agenda for geographers and other social scientists to examine the interconnections among urban resilience, urban social responses to major public crises, and urban culture.     

先秦两汉时期疫灾地理研究

疫灾是由传染病大规模流行导致人类健康与生命损失的灾害。先秦两汉时期(公元前771～220年)见于记载的疫灾年份57个,疫灾频度5.74%。其中,春秋战国为1.64%;西汉为7.33%;东汉为15.90%;公元前二世纪为4%,公元前一世纪为9%,公元一世纪为12%,公元二世纪为15%。不排除疫灾记载有近详远略的可能,但从全国范围看,先秦两汉时期疫灾越来越频繁的趋势是客观存在的。疫灾发生的季节除秋季较少外,春、夏、冬季的概率差不多。在周期性规律上,该时期经历了2个大的疫灾稀少期和3个大的疫灾频繁期,第一个波动周期(公元前200～公元前120年)约80年时间,波峰不很明显;第二个波动周期(公元前120～80年)长达2个世纪,其中公元前50～50年的疫灾频度高达17%,为两汉之际的疫灾高峰;第三个波动周期始于80年,东汉灭亡尚未结束,而是下接三国时期的疫灾高峰。在空间分布上,疫灾分布与人口分布有高度相关性,先秦时期仅黄河、长江流域有疫灾发生,西汉时期由于匈奴的介入,蒙新高原开始有疫灾记载,东汉时期南方人口大量增加,东南沿海开始有疫灾记载。总体来说,先秦两汉时期的疫灾是北方甚于南方,但随着时间推移,南方疫灾比重不断提高,反映了南方人口与经济的发展。     

COVID-19疫情对中国节日人口城际出行影响研究

论文基于百度迁徙数据,对比 2020 年与2019年中国清明节、劳动节、国庆节3个重要节日人口城际流动差异,探讨 COVID-19 疫情对中国节日人口城际出行影响。研究指出：①2020年清明节、五一劳动节百度迁徙日均人口城际流动强度分别较2019年同期下降50.1%和45.2%,同时影响程度存在显著的空间差异;②2020年劳动节、国庆节百度迁徙日均人口城际流动强度指数分别较同年前一个节日增加了17.7%和36.7%,人口出行网络的路径权重、紧密性在持续增加。其中劳动节分析表明,疫情影响下人们倾向于短途出行,同时目的地选择更加多元化;③2020年4月份以哈尔滨市为主的局部疫情复发导致黑龙江省人口城际流入、流出水平分别下降 0.360 个单位和0.365个单位,同时对周边地区人口出行存在负向扩散影响。     

Viewpoint: Visibilising Care in the Academy: (Re)Performing Academic Mothering in the Transformative Moment of COVID-19

The effects of COVID-19 have been profoundly felt across higher education as across broader society. In particular, the pandemic has revealed that many of our most stubbornly entrenched inequalities do not simply follow gendered fault lines, but rather care fault lines. In this article, we adopt a maternal epistemology and collaborative witnessing to outline the disruption that academic mothers have experienced during the pandemic. However, we argue that this disruption is not simply obstructive to academic mothers and other caregivers. Rather, COVID-19 has provided a potentially transformative moment for the visibility and normalisation of care in the academy. It has forced the complex negotiation of paid work and care work that academic mothers must constantly manage into the spotlight. The pandemic has provoked an opportunity for a different performance of mothering in the academy; one that does not require us to invisibilise our care to be valued. This (re)performance and revaluation has the potential to reform the cultural landscapes of the academy, towards spaces in which care is reimagined as not simply an encumberment but also an enrichment.     

Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re)generating the potential ‘new normal’

Abstract

With or without the global COVID-19 pandemic to promote and envision a meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically, a wake-up call is long overdue. The 300-years old industrial and modern paradigm of ruthless and selfish exploitation of natural resources has separated us from nature and ultimately ourselves to such an extent that the crises of our economic, political, environmental, social and healthcare systems do not come at any surprise. Yet, in juxtaposition to (post)modern pessimistic views, the positive transmodern paradigm shift with its holistic perspectives and practices can be observed. Led by ‘the silent revolution’ of cultural creatives, new worlds are emerging, although still kept at the margins. ‘Transformative travel and tourism’ as an ever-growing trend, appears to be an important medium through which these cultural creatives reinvent themselves and the world they live in. Inner transformation is reflected in the outer world. New ways of being, knowing and doing in the world are emerging as conscious citizens, consumers, producers, travellers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders are calling and acting upon the necessary transformation towards the regenerative paradigm and regenerative economic systems. Based on the natural cycles of renewal and regeneration, this circular approach is underpinned by regenerative land practices. The vision of connecting regenerative agriculture and transformative tourism is offered to reset the global tourism system for good.     

PLAGUE AND POWER RELATIONS

Public policy and economic practice, quintessential expressions of institutional cognition, create an opportunity structure constituting a tunable, highly patterned,‘non‐white noise’ in a generalized epidemiological stochastic resonance that can efficiently amplify unhealthy living and working conditions, particularly within highly concentrated, marginalized urban populations, to evoke infectious disease outbreaks. This is especially true for the infections carried by socially generated ‘risk behaviours’ which are usually adaptations to histories of resource deprivation or marginalization. A number of local epidemics originating in such ecological keystone communities may subsequently undergo a policy and structure‐driven phase transition to become a coherent pandemic, a spreading plague which can entrain more affluent populations into the disease ecology of marginalization. We use this approach to contrast the ecological resilience of apartheid and egalitarian social systems, and apply these perspectives to the forthcoming social and geographical diffusion of multiple drug resistant (MDR) HIV from present AIDS epicentres to the rest of the United States.     

The novel spaces and power-geometries in tourism and hospitality after 2020 will belong to the ‘local’

Abstract

The global crisis we have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency challenges our perception of the global and local context in which we live, travel, and work. This crisis has spread novel uncertainties and fears about the future of our world, but at the same time, it has also set the ground to rethink the future scenario of tourism and hospitality to bring about a potentially positive transformation after 2020. Such a scenario can be understood in light of the work of Doreen Massey and the pivotal theorisations on ‘space’ and ‘power-geometry’ she presented in her book For Space (2005). Massey conceives space as the product of multiple relations, networks, connections, as the dimension of multiplicity, the result of an ongoing making process, and in a mutually constitutive relationship with power. Interweaving Massey’s theorisations with a critical examination of the neoliberal capitalism approach to the conceptualization of space, the COVID-19 global crisis prompts us to rethink the space inside and outside of tourism and hospitality by re-focusing on the local dimension of our space as the only guarantee of our own wellbeing, safety, and security. While the global dimension seems more broken than ever, the urgency of belonging to the local is more and more evident. Hence, we propose a critical reflection on the implications of such a scenario in the space of tourism and hospitality, foreseeing a potentially positive transformation in terms of activation of local relations, networks, connections, and multiplicities able to open up such space to multiple novel functions designed not just for tourists and travelers but also for citizens.     

MY COVID-19 DIARY

Written in weekly instalments, Michelle Munyikwa's Covid-19 diary reflects upon the experience of an unfolding pandemic from her dual role as a medical trainee and anthropologist living in the United States. Her observations centre on everyday encounters with scenes or objects that reflect the growing crisis, from the absence of masks outside patient rooms to emergent forms of care through telemedicine. The diary follows the author as she experiences grief, ambivalence and disorientation in the first weeks of the pandemic.     

Rats cannot have been intermediate hosts for Yersinia pestis during medieval plague epidemics in Northern Europe

The commonly accepted understanding of modern human plague epidemics has been that plague is a disease of rodents that is transmitted to humans from black rats, with rat fleas as vectors. Historians have assumed that this transmission model is also valid for the Black Death and later medieval plague epidemics in Europe. Here we examine information on the geographical distribution and population density of the black rat (Rattus rattus) in Norway and other Nordic countries in medieval times. The study is based on older zoological literature and on bone samples from archaeological excavations. Only a few of the archaeological finds from medieval harbour towns in Norway contain rat bones. There are no finds of black rats from the many archaeological excavations in rural areas or from the inland town of Hamar. These results show that it is extremely unlikely that rats accounted for the spread of plague to rural areas in Norway. Archaeological evidence from other Nordic countries indicates that rats were uncommon there too, and were therefore unlikely to be responsible for the dissemination of human plague. We hypothesize that the mode of transmission during the historical plague epidemics was from human to human via an insect ectoparasite vector.     

MY COVID-19 DIARY,PART 2

Written in weekly instalments, Michelle Munyikwa's Covid-19 diary reflects upon the experience of an unfolding pandemic from her dual role as a medical trainee and anthropologist living in the United States. In this second instalment of her diary Covid-19 dairy, the author reflects upon ethics, risk, pandemic futures and the murder of George Floyd as the crisis continues in the United States.     

Life under lockdown: Notes on Covid-19 in Silicon Valley

This article is a preliminary exploration of the effects of Covid-19 in Silicon Valley, one of three pandemic ‘hotspots’ on America’s west coast. In particular, it describes how the crisis has deepened and magnified social and economic inequalities in a region where poverty, homelessness and gentrification are rife. Despite the fact that many technology firms are reaping massive profits in the wake of ‘shelter in place’ orders, many Silicon Valley workers have lost their jobs and are struggling to cope with the consequences of Covid-19. The article also analyzes the different meanings of ‘lockdown’ by comparing examples from China, Brazil, Taiwan and the United States. The authors conclude that anthropologists have a significant role to play in helping to understand how and why communicable diseases emerge, the underlying social and environmental conditions that fuel them and cross-cultural strategies for the effective mitigation of epidemics and pandemics.     

Hope and everyday crisis: Young adult experiences in COVID-free Tasmania

The COVID-19 pandemic is characterised by more than mass viral spread. Interviews with young adults in the Australian island-state of Tasmania narrate how COVID-19 is shared socially, economically, and biologically, but not equally. During the time interviews were done, border policies separated Tasmania from mass infections experienced elsewhere, giving us an opportunity to understand how separation does not equate with a lack of socio-material and emotional impact from the pandemic. Recognising spatially diverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic means becoming more reflexively aware of the structural inequalities informing how it has been experienced, particularly in the early period of the pandemic. We warn against exclusionary narratives of the pandemic that do not value impacts on those without high physical risk or exposure to the virus. Responding to such exclusionary narratives involves promoting a form of hope that is reflexive, self-aware, and critical. We develop on these aims by reference to the themes of COVID-19 as a syndemic, the temporal narrative of a boom-bust cycle, and COVID-19 as a crisis in everyday life.     

Australian Middle Cambrian molluscs and their bearing on early molluscan evolution

Thirty ammonite taxa are recognised in the Wangarlu Mudstone of the Bathurst Island Group from the Cox Peninsula and Shoal Bay, Northern Territory, Australia. Included are a new heteromorph genus Notostreptites, type species N. exilis, and four additional new species and subspecies: Pseudhelicoceras gracilis, Labeceras (L.) tumidum, Labeceras (Appurdiceras) decorum, and Idiohamites dorsetensis laticostatus. The assemblage is best collectively correlated with the Mortoniceras (M.) inflatum Zone of the standard European Albian zonation but some of its members may represent the lower part of the Stoliczkaia dispar Zone. It is broadly correlative with faunas from the Eromanga Basin, which relate to an extensive eastern Australian Late Albian epicontinental sea, but is strikingly different in aspect. The Wangarlu Mudstone assemblage has relatively high diversity and an abundance of cosmopolitan heteromorph taxa well known from Europe and elsewhere, whereas Eromanga Basin assemblages are of relatively low diversity and dominated by Austral heteromorph genera known only from Australasia, southern Africa and Malagasy. The Austral character of Eromanga Basin assemblages is attributed to evolution in a restricted epicontinental sea environment and modest dispersal whereas the continental margin position of the Wangarlu Mudstone ensured an influx of pandemic elements drawn from the mid-Cretaceous world ocean.     

The Promised Medicine: Fore Reflections on the Scientific Investigation of Kuru

This paper explores the oral narratives of five South Fore men who assisted with the scientific investigation of kuru. Drawing on the framework of the dramaturgic form of epidemics, the narratives start with childhood memories of the social crisis at the height of the kuru epidemic. With the arrival of the European scientists they build to a climax of optimism over the prospect of a cure for kuru and enhanced personal futures before descending into disillusionment over the scientists' departure and a return to traditional village life.     

Reproducible Science Is Vital for a Stronger Evidence Base During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reproducible research becomes even more imperative as we build the evidence base on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. In his study, Paez assessed the reproducibility of COVID-19 research during the pandemic, using a case study of population density. He found that most articles that assess the relationship of population density and COVID-19 outcomes do not publicly share data and code, except for a few, including our paper, which he stated “illustrates the importance of good reproducibility practices”. Paez recreated our analysis using our code and data from the perspective of spatial analysis, and his new model came to a different conclusion. The disparity between our and Paez’s findings, as well as other existing literature on the topic, give greater impetus to the need for further research. As there has been near exponential growth of COVID-19 research across a wide range of scientific disciplines, reproducible science is a vital component to produce reliable, rigorous, and robust evidence on COVID-19, which will be essential to inform clinical practice and policy in order to effectively eliminate the pandemic.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 3. June 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 3 Front cover COVID-19 IN ITALY An elderly man steps outside, a bag in his hand and a mask covering his face. He stares at the wet pavement as he goes. He is wondering whether to take that onward step. His shadow on the wall magnifies his uncertainty. He is alone. It has been raining. The sun spells help. Maybe. Uncertainty and loneliness are among the emotions that we now associate with Covid-19. By 9 May, the death toll among those who had tested positive for the virus in Italy surpassed 30,000, the highest in Europe. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the paramount need has been to protect those in the most ‘vulnerable categories’, the aged and those with pre-existing conditions. Italy, as the country with the highest percentage of elderly people in Europe, has failed them. At the outbreak of the pandemic, the rushed and short-sighted resolution to transfer Covid-19 patients to nursing homes resulted in a massacre, whose scar will get deeper with time. Yet, how vital ‘the elderly’ are to society cannot be stressed enough, particularly when state family support policies are insufficient, a gap that grandparents have long been filling by taking care of their grandchildren. If uncertainty is ahead of us, so is the void left by all those ‘elderly’ men and women who will be deeply missed. In this issue, Manuela Pellegrino provides a narrative of her experience as an Italian doing fieldwork in Greece while the epidemic was in full swing. Back cover Covid-19 Rear Admiral Timothy Weber, commander of US Naval Medical Forces Pacific, speaks to members of the press moments before the hospital ship USNS Mercy departs from its base near San Diego, California, 23 March 2020. The vessel, which can host up to 1,200 medical personnel, is being deployed in support of US Covid-19 response efforts. It will serve as a referral hospital for up to a 1,000 non-Covid-19 patients should shore-based hospitals prove unable to adequately serve them. The Mercy's deployment illustrates how grave the situation has become in the US. It also reveals something about how, after decades of neglect, the country's public health infrastructures have come to rely heavily on support from military and corporate institutions. The pandemic brings to light a host of global issues, ranging from food scarcity and insecurity, mass unemployment and economic crisis, the crucial roles played by elderly people, the fate of education and schooling, the unplanned release of prisoners, the long-term consequences of ‘distancing’ directives and much more. Underlying all of these topics is a sobering observation made by medical anthropologists more than two decades ago: locally and globally, it is the poor who are most likely to contract – and die from – infectious diseases. In Salento and Silicon Valley, in Rio de Janeiro and Wuhan, the pattern has been strikingly similar – the most economically vulnerable members of society suffer disproportionately. Anthropology contributes to a fuller understanding of Covid-19 and its aftermath. Recent research has developed a more complete cross-cultural picture of recent epidemics like AIDS, SARS, Ebola and Zika. When combined with archaeological and biological knowledge of pandemics stretching back to the Black Death and earlier, the discipline adds critical historical and cross-cultural perspectives. Anthropologists have much to say about how and why communicable diseases emerge, the underlying social and environmental conditions that fuel them, and potential strategies for their effective mitigation.