Ethnographies of the coronavirus pandemic: empirical emergency and social resignification

This text introduces a special issue dedicated to collect ethnographic accounts of the first months of the global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the consequent measures of isolation and social distance. Based on empirical materials collected between March and May of 2020, the ethnographic texts vividly show the uniqueness of this period. This moment has been portrayed as a break or pause in the normal society flow given the threat to the collapsed public health system and the multiple side-effects of the lockdown. However, this issue proposes an alternative gaze at this supposed parenthesis of physical and geographic immobility, analyzing the events from the point of view of the strong 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, resignifying spaces, times and relationships that may have changed forever.