Hablar de COVID-19: aportes a la construcción de una memoria colectiva de la sindemia desde la alimentación

Patricia Aguirre

doi:10.18294/sc.2022.4054

Talking about COVID-19: contributions to the construction of a collective memory of the syndemic through the lens of food

Patricia Aguirre Doctor in Anthropology. Professor and researcher, Instituto de Salud Colectiva, Universidad Nacional de Lanús, Argentina.

Received: 7 April 2022, Accepted: 4 November 2022, Published: 14 November 2022

https://doi.org/10.18294/sc.2022.4054 | PMID: 36520506

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Abstract

This article explores the question of why the nine pandemics prior to COVID-19 – which have affected millions of people since the second half of the 20th century – were not recorded in collective memory despite their magnitude and extent. Thus, it proposes a reading of the pandemic as one component of a wider syndemic made up of contagious diseases, climate change, and malnutrition. This piece offers a narrative of the origins, development, and prospects of the pandemic within the dynamics of the global food system and national economic and political systems, highlighting components and connections. It includes a warning that – along with climate change and malnutrition (undernourishment-obesity) – pandemics are known and expected outcomes of the workings of a socio-political system that, as in the case of other components of the syndemic, by naturalizing causes and individualizing consequences, conspire against the creation of narratives that go beyond cosmetic changes.

Keywords: Pandemics, COVID-19, Feeding, Syndemic

Categories: Anthropology, Feeding

Full-text of the article is available for this language: Español.

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