Ethnographies of the coronavirus pandemic: empirical emergency and social resignification

This text introduces a special issue dedicated to compiling ethnographic accounts of the first months of the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the consequent isolation and social distancing measures. Based on empirical materials collected between March and May of 2020, the ethnographic texts vividly show the uniqueness of this period. It has been portrayed as a hiatus or a pause in the flow of normal society given the threat to the collapsed public healthcare system and the multiple side effects of the lockdown. However, this issue proposes an alternative view of this supposed lull entailing physical and geographic immobility by analysing the events from the standpoint of the major social resignification of daily life that took place. Therefore, we contend that social life has not stopped; on the contrary, it has accelerated, moving in unforeseen directions and resignifying spaces, times and relationships that may have changed forever.