Introduction: Anthropological histories of COVID-19: The Romani case

Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023).

Anthropological histories of the COVID-19 pandemic exceed the virus and epidemiological trends. Although its catastrophes have escalated globally, they have not unfolded homogeneously. The intensities and expressions of the pandemic have been and continue to be experienced in distinct ways by individuals and populations, particularly Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor, migrant, and Romani people, who face persistent socio-environmental and health vulnerabilities. There is much more than just the virus at play in producing situations of risk and vulnerability among populations already living with potentially harmful conditions, exacerbated by the perverse combination of unequal working and housing conditions, economic limitations and injustices, prejudices, and social, political, and cultural segregations of all kinds. Inequalities and injustices are not properties of the virus. They result from political decisions about its control and management and how these decisions include or exclude populations for priority attention. In other words, socio-economic, cultural, political, and environmental distinctions challenge the notion of homogeneous risk and uniformly distributed care. From an anthropological perspective, a virus alone does not create a pandemic, nor does it explain the disease that may result from contact with it. There are always contingent entanglements that establish the conditions for events like this to take shape, intensify, and sometimes, expand (Segata, Schuch & Damo et al., 2021; Segata & Löwy, 2024).

More than three decades ago, medical science historian Charles Rosenberg (1992) warned of the pitfalls of understanding epidemics without considering local sensitivities. He pointed out that the episodic and exceptional nature of health catastrophes demands immediate responses, which often echo hierarchical global structures and models. These typical standardized global health responses may avoid culturalist interpretations of health and disease but they frequently hide social and political conditions, thereby reinforcing unequal impacts and responses to the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, produced—for a specific period—a rather unprecedented movement in the anthropological study of disease. More than simply encouraging research in the medical and health fields, the pandemic mobilized vigorous anthropological approaches, spanning from art, science, and technology to urban and rural studies, labor and the state, and research on Indigenous and quilombolas (maroon communities), as well as studies on Romani peoples, presented here in an unprecedented way. Thus, beyond challenging the limits of biomedicine and the different meanings attributed to health, disease, and care—traditionally explored by medical and health anthropologists—this broader movement within the discipline advanced our understanding of more complex cosmopolitical issues that have affected multiple and unequal pandemics. Romani Chronicles of COVID-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, which compiles testimonies from Romani communities in different countries, boldly highlights this multiple and unequal nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussed by authors from various countries, the book’s accounts from Spain, Brazil, Slovakia, Poland, and Czechia reveal different dimensions of the social exclusion faced by Romani people during the pandemic, making visible structural discrimination, difficulties in accessing healthcare, and strategies for collective survival. The book’s contributors offer both Romani and non-Romani perspectives from inside communities, and as NGO workers, health practitioners, mediators, activists, and academics. The five distinguished contributors to this series, who themselves come from varied backgrounds, amplify the bold methodological challenges and achievements of the volume. By addressing the pandemic from this perspective, it becomes possible to understand that it is not merely a global biological event, but a reality shaped by socio-environmental, political, economic, and cultural dynamics that have unevenly impacted different parts of the world. Romani Chronicles of COVID-19 provides a stark and essential testimony to this multiplicity, contributing to a broader and more situated understanding of the pandemic’s effects on historically marginalized communities.

References

Rosenberg, Charles. Explaining epidemics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Segata, Jean; SCHUCH, Patrice; DAMO, Arlei; VÍCTORA, Ceres. A Covid-19 e suas múltiplas pandemias. Horizontes Antropológicos, 27(59): 7-25, 2021. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-71832021000100001

Segata, Jean; LÖWY, Ilana. Long COVID, the unending pandemic. Horizontes Antropológicos, 30(70): 2024, e700601. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9983e700602