Week 2 of a partial lock down is a strange thing to make sense of. I'm a sociology teacher and have been since 2001. before that I worked in various jobs, before that I was a social studies undergraduate and before that sociology was one of my A levels. I'll stop going back, instead I want to look at now. I make sense of the world through sociology, I've long given up religion and science is an interest but I don't think it explains everything. I may not be an actual sociologist but sociology as a discipline does explain life to me and helps comfort me in a way. maybe it will you too. If there's anybody out there.
1) Data - quantitative data scares me - the numbers of death actual or predicted. The rise in numbers. 20,000, 200,000. I actually prefer qualitative data here, friends with the virus posting their experiences, newspaper stories and explanations. I particularly like to hear the stories of people either infected, working on the frontline (which includes a vast number of people not just NHS workers) this makes it more understandable, something that is a real experience. My partner shared this link as a response to my grump that washing our hands is the equivilent to 'duck and dive'.
https://medium.com/@amcarter/i-had-no-immune-system-for-months-after-my-bone-marrow-transplant-1b097f16040c
This woman's experiences and tips are helpful and comforting. The statistics are there to inform us but there are so many things missing from them that it is only looking underneath the numbers that we can make sense of them. A friend posts a daily update on his health and experiences of having the virus. It shows his friends how he is doing but also teaches us what to expect. I found interesting his observation that his lack of taste doesn't extend to salt, he can taste salt and craves it. Learning from the experiences of others can help us prepare, know what to look out for.
The negative side of all of this is of course misinformation and rumour. Social media is rife with these. I told my students when we were still together in a physical classroom to avoid anything which has 'maybe' , 'if' or 'could' in it. The newspapers splash scare stories and huge clamatory headlines which are often not true or only partially true. Of course they want readers (mostly online) and are competing with social media themselves. Their news values are dictated by this and who wants good news? Me. However if you read underneath these headlines things are usually not as bad or you learn that it is only speculative.
Weber's work dealt with the concept of verstehen - understanding. We must place ourselves in other's shoes. Largely a response to positivist explanations which are usually more quantitative - scientific. The statistics are important but we must look deeper. We are human beings with feelings and non uniform responses. The bulk buyers were selfish but I stood in Morrison's and looked at a man and his family pile their trolley full of food they'd never get through (hence bins now full of wasted food). I saw fear in his eyes, his wife tried to stop him buying lots of bottled water he kept saying "We need it. We need it". Who am I to judge this man? What he was doing was/is wrong but he was doing it for his family. His reasoning was just. I guess Weber's response would be that the role of the government is to reassure this man, make him realise he doesn't need to do this. But government is concerned with numbers and quantitative data. Its response will be to crack down and regulate. It has to because it can't get bogged down in personal experiences. It governs for the many. The sociologist Paul Thomas told me that Kirklees council was only interested in quantitative research because it deals with big numbers. It's more scientific.
My view is in line with Weber. The statistics are important but to survive we need verstehen, we must understand.
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