‘Pollution’ and ‘Blaming’: A Sociological Analysis of the COVID-19 Time Through Cultural Perspective

Abstract

This article aims to highlight some peculiar aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to the theoretical tools of Cultural Theory and Cultural Sociology. For this purpose, first of all, I introduce the issue of the pandemic from a cultural perspective. In the second section, I analyze the phenomenon of the COVID-19 pandemic through the concept of ‘pollution’: in symbolic terms, the dimension of contagion is very close to that of ‘contamination’. From this particular theoretical perspective, however, ‘contamination’ is not understood only in its material but also in its symbolic meaning. The third section focuses on the different forms of ‘blaming’ that have been activated during the pandemic time: to protect and strengthen the social bond threatened by the anguish of contagion, different targets have been identified on which to ‘blame’ the spread of the virus. In the conclusions, I summarize the reasoning developed in the article in an overall way, trying to briefly show how Cultural Theory and Cultural Sociology can offer a useful contribution to the analysis of the pandemic catastrophe.