The Virus That Therefore I Am

Her own COVID book, I Immunodemocracy i (2020), was therefore dedicated to saving "Agamben" from Agamben himself, to resuscitating his social theory. So how, we ask, might longer and more intense experiences of the continuing pandemic have changed the minds of Agamben, Zizek, Latour, and others like them? " Philosophy and the Pandemic in a Postdigital Era: Foucault, Agamben, Zizek." French philosopher [24], approaching eighty, also dismissed his old friend Agamben's viral suspicions and speculated that the pandemic might forge new social solidarities instead of fragmenting communities into isolates of bare life. [Extracted from the article]

Immunities of the Herd in Peace, War, and COVID-19.

Intermittently, the concept of herd immunity has been a potent, if sometimes ambiguous and controversial, means of framing the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and envisaging its end. Realizing the full meaning of human herd immunity requires further attention to its connections after World War I with British social theory. Distracted by "obvious" yet unsubstantiated correspondences with veterinary research, historians of the concept have not engaged with the more proximate influence of discussions of social psychology and group dynamics on postwar epidemiology. Understanding the openness of early 20th century epidemiology to social thought deepens our appreciation of the significance of herd or population immunity, as well as suggests new avenues for exchange between public health and contemporary social sciences. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(10):1465-1470. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306931).

The digital transformation of higher education – “uni for nothin’, MOOCs for free”?: JITCAR

In 2017, the newly-elected, Labor-led government of New Zealand boldly declared access to higher-education to be a universal right and committed to a year’s “fees-free” studentship, with the promise of eventually extending it to an entire first-degree programme. Against such a backdrop, this article will examine the role of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as surrogates for “fees-free” higher education and whether the design of such a Higher Education 4.0 platform is even a credible proposition. More specifically, the research question addressed is: can higher education be made universal in terms of access and costs through the intermediation of MOOCs? The case attempts to provide a socio-technical view of such a “value proposition” and concludes that the charter of higher education extends beyond the distribution of knowledge and skills that may perhaps be better delivered with blended learning models than MOOC platforms. A university is more than a certification of core-competencies in that it also brings about socialization and participation. With the undercurrent of design ideals such as “tech for good”, the academic community must examine whether MOOCs are credible substitutes or at-best, complementary platforms. In this era of Industry 4.0, higher education should not be about the creative destruction of what we value in universities, but their digital transformation. Regretfully, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed gaping holes in the sectors’ readiness for online learning. The article concludes with an agenda for large Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) driven by Action Design Research that could fulfil the aspirations of the key stakeholder groups – students, faculty and regulators. It is intended that the case will inform policy makers on the implementation of a Blended Learning platform which draws from the relative strengths of traditional and online delivery.

The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19.

During the past forty years, statistical modelling and simulation have come to frame perceptions of epidemic disease and to determine public health interventions that might limit or suppress the transmission of the causative agent. The influence of such formulaic disease modelling has pervaded public health policy and practice during the Covid-19 pandemic. The critical vocabulary of epidemiology, and now popular debate, thus includes R0, the basic reproduction number of the virus, 'flattening the curve', and epidemic 'waves'. How did this happen? What are the consequences of framing and foreseeing the pandemic in these modes? Focusing on historical and contemporary disease responses, primarily in Britain, I explore the emergence of statistical modelling as a 'crisis technology', a reductive mechanism for making rapid decisions or judgments under uncertain biological constraint. I consider how Covid-19 might be configured or assembled otherwise, constituted as a more heterogeneous object of knowledge, a different and more encompassing moment of truth - not simply as a measured telos directing us to a new normal. Drawing on earlier critical engagements with the AIDS pandemic, inquiries into how to have 'theory' and 'promiscuity' in a crisis, I seek to open up a space for greater ecological, sociological, and cultural complexity in the biopolitics of modelling, thereby attempting to validate a role for critique in the Covid-19 crisis.