鑽石舞台

Timeline:

Abstract deadline – October 7th, 2022Abstract result notification – October 31st, 2022Submission deadline – March 15th, 2023Acceptance deadline – September 30th, 2023Planned publication – Early 2024

This proposed volume elicits international research contributions on emotions and sensory experiences during and post COVID-19, and implications for care and caring professions globally (e.g. social care and social work). In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 lockdowns engulfed the world, and death tolls and hospital admissions rose internationally. Touch was proscribed in various settings including care homes and hospitals while nursing care staff spoke to the media of being haunted by the sounds of body bags being zipped up and images of people separated from their loved ones who were unable to see them or hear their voices. While this proscription of touch and personal contact saved lives, COVID-19 lockdowns also wrought serious impacts on people’s experiences of caring for others and on the process of being cared for and cared about. It transformed daily (and hitherto largely unquestioned) regimes like social work home visits and intimate practices which are essential to the everyday working lives of caring professionals. Once infected, the COVID-19 virus is fused in our bodies and the (outwardly) physical manifestations of the virus are evident in masks, hand sanitizers and facial visors. As lockdowns and 『work from home』 guidance continue in some countries (e.g. China, Australia), we remember that this pandemic is not yet over and it is an opportune time to reconsider critical responses to the multidimensional effects of SARS-Cov-2 on human, sensory experiences and on everyday processes of emotional suppressions, displays and emotional labour.

For this special issue, we are especially interested in eliciting qualitative, narrative, ethnographic, autoethnographic, and biographical empirical research papers on people’s everyday emotional and sensory experiences (e.g., service users and professional services staff) from majority and minority world contexts, as well as theoretically-based critiques of emotions and the senses in relation to political and institutional approaches to managing the COVID-19 crisis, and conceptual understandings of care and practices of caring in pandemic and post-pandemic worlds. We are also interested in research on family life, creative approaches to methodologies and their implications for research on care (understood here in a multidimensional sense) during and post COVID-19.