The Research Imagination During COVID-19: Rethinking Norms of Group Size and Authorship in Anthropological and Anthropology-Adjacent Collaborations

This article explores some of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a collective critical event for anthropologists and other social scientists, examining how it has promoted new configurations of the research imagination. We draw on our own experiences of participating in a team of 17 researchers, hailing from anthropology and anthropology-adjacent disciplines, to research social life in Aotearoa/New Zealand during the pandemic, examining how our own research imaginations were transformed during, and via, the process of our collaboration. When our project first began, many of us had doubts reflective of norms, prejudices and anxieties that are common in our disciplines: that the group would be too large to function effectively, or that it would be impossible to develop an approach to authorship that would allow everyone to feel their contributions had been adequately recognised. In practice, the large group size was a key strength in allowing our group to work effectively. Difficulties with authorship did not arise from within the group but from disconnects between our preferred ways of working and the ways authorship was imagined within various professional and publishing bodies. We conclude that large-scale collaborations have many points in their favour, and that the research imaginations of funders, journals, universities and professional associations should be broadened to ensure that they are encouraged, supported and adequately rewarded. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Blowing bubbles: COVID-19, New Zealand’s bubble metaphor, and the limits of households as sites of responsibility and care

When New Zealand embarked on its COVID-19 lockdown, the world saw the emergence of a new social form: the “bubble.” This chapter examines bubbles for the social dynamics they enabled and elided, as well as for what the bubble metaphor suggested but did not always deliver. During level 4 lockdown, most New Zealanders (with exceptions such as essential service workers) were restricted to physical contact with members of their residence - a social unit the government referred to as the members of one’s “home, " “household, " or “bubble.” Not all care relations can, however, be reduced to a single home or household, nor are all households units of care. Regulations enabling bubble expansions in specific circumstances provided some means of addressing care needs that superseded households (e.g., singletons becoming “bubble buddies” to mitigate loneliness). But little was done for those consigned to bubbles whose members were unattached to one another, much less antagonistic. There is thus a need for bubble regulations to match more closely the flexibility inherent in the bubble as a concept when planning for future crises. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, J. Michael Ryan;individual chapters, the contributors.

'Safer communities horizontal ellipsis together'? Plural policing and COVID-19 public health interventions in Aotearoa New Zealand

International media have praised Aotearoa New Zealand for its response to the coronavirus pandemic. While New Zealand Police played a fundamental role in enforcing pandemic control measures, the policing landscape remained plural. This article employs Loader [2000. Plural policing and democratic governance. Social and legal studies, 9 (3), 323-345] model of plural policing to understand responses to public health emergencies. It identifies two forms of policing which were evident in Aotearoa during the COVID-19 lockdown that should be added to Loader's model. First, we argue that contexts with colonial history require that the model not only includes by-government and below-government policing but also next-to-government policing by Indigenous peoples - such as the 'community checkpoints' run by Maori. Second, and further developing Loader's model, we argue that the category of below-government policing be expanded to include 'peer-to-peer policing' in which government responsibilizes members of the public to subject each other to large-scale surveillance and social control. Since plural forms of policing affect each other's functionality and legitimacy, we argue that what happens at the synapses between policing nodes has profound implications for the process of community building. Because community building is essential to fighting pandemics, we conclude that the policing of pandemic intervention measures may require an expanded understanding and practice of plural policing to support an optimal public health strategy.