COVID-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK

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This open access book examines the various ways that shame, shaming and stigma became an integral part of the United Kingdoms public health response to COVID-19 during 2020. As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded in 2020, it quickly became clear that experiences of shame, shaming and stigma dominated personal and public life. From healthcare workers insulted in the streets to anti-Asian racism, the online shaming of Covidiots to the identification of the lepers of Leicester, public animus about the pandemic found scapegoats for its frustrations. Interventions by the UK government maximised rather than minimized these phenomena. Instead of developing robust strategies to address shame, the governments healthcare policies and rhetoric seemed to exacerbate experiences of shame, shaming and stigma, relying on a language and logic that intensified oppositional, antagonistic thinking, while dissimulating about its own responsibilities. Through a series of six case studies taken from the events of 2020, this thought-provoking book identifies a systemic failure to manage shame-producing circumstances in the UK. Ultimately, it addresses the experience of shame as a crucial, if often overlooked, consequence of pandemic politics, and advocates for a "shame sensitive" approach to public health responses. The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

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This book on COVID-19 and the role shame and shaming has played in the handling of the pandemic in the UK and elsewhere is much to be welcomed. It offers both a sophisticated understanding of a multidimensional concept and a wide-ranging analysis of its personal, social and political salience for pandemic governance and for how people struggled to make sense of their changed lives. The authors are to be congratulated for their accessible reporting of a ground-breaking piece of research. * Graham Scambler, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at UCL, UK *
Six detailed, very telling case-studies implicate each one of us in adding to the anguish of the pandemic. In the context of thousands of unnecessary deaths, we blame and shame others for sins of omission and commission of which we are probably equally guilty. But the lasting realization of this pioneering study of shame as a social emotion is that we have been deliberately manipulated by a shameless government intent on diverting attention from its own culpability. * Robert Walker, Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, UK *

Author Bio

Fred Cooper is a research fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, UK. He is a historian of loneliness, health, medicine, and the psy and social sciences, and co-investigator (with Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose) on the AHRC urgent grant Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19. Luna Dolezal is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter, UK. Arthur Rose is a Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, UK.