Document Type
Article
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
3. MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES
Abstract
The term pandemic, pro-offers a vision of COVID-19 abstracted from its social, economic, and political context, suggesting a socially neutral phenomena framed within a medicalised discourse. An etymological and theoretical re-conceptualisation of COVID-19 as a syndemic re-situates the virus within these contexts, allowing an interrogation of the oft-stated claim, discussed in this journal (Nolan, 2020) that ‘we are all in this together’ and a deeper analysis of the viruses impact on particular social groupings. Several recent articles have posited that the syndemic label applies to COVID-19 at an international level (Bambra et al., 2020; Hill et al., 2020; Horton, 2020) and a national level (Katzymarzyk et al., 2020; Shrinivasin et al., 2020). This essay examines the emerging evidence to assess whether the syndemic label applies in Ireland.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/07916035211009147
Recommended Citation
O'Ralaigh, C. (2021). What’s in a name? Applying the Syndemic Perspective to COVID-19 in Ireland. Irish Journal of Sociology, April, 2021. doi:10.1177/07916035211009147