Risk and Pandemic: Covid-19 and the Social Risk Perception of a “Cultural Trauma”. A Brief Sociological Analysis

COVID-19 is without a doubt a «cultural trauma», whose «moral force» feeds beliefs and behavior in the pandemic society. The crisis caused by the outbreak of the COVID- 19 in our society has forced contemporary human societies – albeit in different ways – to deal with the threat – produced by an invisible enemy – to the integrity of the boundaries which are not only physical but also social, institutional, symbolic and cultural. The pandemic troubles the individual and social system and it turns into a threat for the preservation of its identity. The outbreaks of the disease caused an upheaval in the framework of the ordinary experience producing chaos and the lack of distinction: all over the world anguish and uncertainty have «polluted» the imaginary of the everyday life. New rituals – that in part still persist in the social practices – were therefore set up in the daily existence. Moreover, pandemic has unsettled the way people experienced the urban spaces. More specifically, urban spaces have suffered a process of readjustment in order to maintain order and «purity»: an «epidemic architecture» seems today to penetrate the ordinary project requirements of the experts. The social expressions of the phenomenon of COVID-19 (and of the disorder that it produced) would be, for the reasons explained above, a «return of the nocturnal». Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze – through a socio-anthropological perspective – the ambivalence of the coronavirus phenomenon that has emerged from social practices, behaviors, beliefs and cultural representations, which are all related to this contemporary «cultural trauma».