C03Pandemic Human Differentiation

The project investigates how pandemics affect the differentiation of people.

Auf dem Mainzer Karnevalsumzug werden von kostümierten Personen Schachteln mit FFP 2 masken verteilt.
Masks being distributed at the carneval in Mainz.

Proxemic Shifts in Virally Exposed Sociality

To what extent can viruses, as non-human entities, become co-players in social relations? How did the always uncertain guiding distinction between endangering and endangered unfold? How were socio-spatial microstructures adapted to new physical distancing regulations?

Using an interdisciplinary approach, we decipher such processes in the Corona pandemic sociologically and put them into perspective in a historical comparison. The study reconstructs human differentiations in different cultural layers of meaning: in legal texts, material infrastructures and bodily practices.