In challenging social science’s established orthodoxies, this first in a series of books is a call for its disciplines to embrace new theoretical paradigms and research methods to better understand the reality of life in a post-COVID world. By offering a detailed insight into the harmful effects of neoliberalism before the pandemic, as well as the intervallic period the world is currently living through, the authors show how it is more important than ever for social science to evolve and take a leading role in contextualising the biggest crisis of the 21st century. This is a critical blueprint for ongoing debates about the COVID-19 pandemic and alternative modes of research.

Although the world has experienced many epidemics, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is exactly that--novel. The impacts on society's way of life, education, family, and economy are drastic. As a result, people seek explanations that have answers rooted in social science. The Social Science of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Call to Action for Researchers draws on theories derived from the social sciences to address the multitude of questions raised by the pandemic and to inspire a future generation of researchers. This book focuses specifically on the social science of a pandemic. While medical, health, and other sciences are critical to understanding a pandemic, so, too, is understanding the role of society and person. Together, psychology and society shape every aspect of life, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception to this pattern. Parts of society--and science--will be forever affected. Edited by Monica K. Miller, The Social Science of the COVID-19 Pandemic is a collection of academic essays written by a group of international authors. The book begins by overviewing the timeline of the pandemic and how it affected life. It then discusses behaviors and experiences during the pandemic, followed by sections on outcomes after the pandemic and best practices for conducting future studies during or about the pandemic. This book is an expansive, go-to text designed to help promote recovery from the pandemic, to minimize the negative effects of similar events in the future, and to inform social science research going forward.

"The authors in this volume make the case that COVID-19 has exposed deficiencies in much of the traditional narrative found in social studies textbooks and state curriculum standards. They offer guidance for how educators can use the pandemic to pursue a more justice-oriented, critical examination of contemporary society"--

This volume introduces innovative and inspired qualitative methods through topics on crime commission, victimisation and crime control. It highlights how qualitative methods offer significant insights that frame our understanding of the narratives, events, theoretical perspectives, and realities of the social world. This book includes chapters discussing cutting-edge methods, which demonstrate how qualitative research can expand beyond traditional approaches. It offers diversity in research, including gender, race, and geographic sensitivities. The volume addresses a multitude of approaches for using qualitative methodologies, including innovative uses of technology mediums—such as social media, participatory videos, Zoom interviewing, and photographic visual methods—as means of collecting and co-producing relevant data on meaning. Ultimately, this book illustrates how qualitative criminology allows for deeper and more nuanced understandings of local and regional specificities in a globalized world, and how social interactions are influenced by individual interpretations, social interactions, and collective decision making. This volume is an essential read for graduate students and researchers in criminology and other social science disciplines interested in qualitative empirical research and informed policy making.

This book asks whether the decision to lock down the world was justified in proportion to the potential harms and risks generated by the Covid-19 virus. Drawing on global, empirical data, it explores and exposes the social harms induced by lockdowns, many of which are 'hidden', including joblessness, mental health problems and an intensification of societal inequalities and divisions. It offers data-driven case studies on harms such as domestic violence, child abuse, the distress of being ordered to stay at home, and the numerous harms associated with the new wealth industries. It explores why some people weren't compliant with lockdown restrictions and examines the already vulnerable social groups who were disproportionally affected by lockdown including those who were locked in (care home residents), locked up (prisoners), and locked out (migrant workers, refugees). The book closes with a brief discussion on what the future might look like as we enter a post-Covid world, drawing on cutting-edge social theory.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into relief some key issues in contemporary youth transitions to adulthood in Europe, presented in this book In early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic struck Europe with a vengeance. All sections of the population were rapidly affected by the efforts made to limit the deadly impact of the coronavirus: lockdowns and other restrictions on personal movement, the closure of public spaces and limits to association. Young people were perhaps the least at risk in terms of illness and mortality. In other respects, they were disproportionately affected, on account of the closure of educational institutions, the collapse of recruitment to the labour market and the range of challenges surrounding the places and spaces where they lived, whether “at home” or elsewhere. Covid-19 regulations lasted for well over two years and their consequences linger on or persist. The experience of the pandemic affected young people in many ways. This book provides a range of accounts of those experiences, among different sectors of the youth population, in different parts of Europe and among those who sought to provide young people with support. It draws perspectives from pre-existing research projects that were sustained through the pandemic, spontaneous research inquiries and reflective case studies from practitioners in the field. This volume of the Youth Knowledge Book series presents a contemporaneous account of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic period on young people. It broadly confirms the resulting exacerbation of the inequalities affecting young people in different and cross-sectional ways, as their lives and aspirations were disrupted and put on hold. But it is by no means completely bad news. Young people also displayed creativity, resilience and sometimes resistance during the pandemic, as did some professionals responsible for supporting them. From this diversity of understanding about responses to one crisis, there are important lessons and ideas for youth policy and how it may respond better to similar crises in the future.

With contributions from leading experts in the fields of anthropology, communications, disaster studies, economics, epidemiology, Indigenous studies, philosophy and sociology, this expansive book offers a diverse range of social science perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic, providing critical insights into what a research agenda for COVID-19 and society resembles across different fields of study.