Pandemische Verletzbarkeit im städtischen Raum. Humandifferenzierung im historischen Seuchenvergleich

This paper explores the role of vulnerability for the discursive and practical socio-cultural responses to epidemics. To do so, it examines the socio-material conditions under which unequally distributed physiological affliction arises and the preconditions for socio-cultural attributions of vulnerability. Such pandemic human differentiations are particularly visible and significant in contexts of people living in close proximity, i.e. in cities. Based on a re-reading of historiographical analyses of three epidemics around the year 1900, the paper examines the circumstances under which differentiated vulnerabilities can (not) arise in epidemics. Historically informed by this, a deeper understanding of the significance of differentiated affliction and vulnerability in the coronavirus pandemic can be developed.

Hock, Aaron. "Pandemische Verletzbarkeit im städtischen Raum. Humandifferenzierung im historischen Seuchenvergleich" Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2025-2004