SOC 1101B Principles of Sociology Assignment In an earlier lecture this semester, when I spoke about the intellectual competences and
skills to be acquired and worked on in order to develop sociological thinking, I said that
there are situations that allow us to learn new ways of looking at familiar patterns of
social life. These situations include times of massive social change or social crisis, which
have the effect of throwing us off balance, challenging the things we take for granted, and
thus stimulating our sociological imagination. There is nothing like a great crisis to
challenge our social assumptions.
The global health crisis we currently face is no exception.
For the past 8 months, the state of public health emergency and the strategies deployed to
counter the COVID-19 pandemic have so far resulted in containment measures,
quarantine, restrictions on freedom of movement and assembly, hygiene, voluntary
isolation and physical/social distancing, increased airport controls, border closures,
school and business closures, reductions in international flights, use of teleworking, etc…
In return, these strategies to counter the pandemic are currently disrupting all spheres of
our society and facets of our social life: employment, work, the economy, consumption,
tourism, our travels, our social interactions, etiquette and good manners, our daily habits,
our certainties (including entertaining conspiracy theories)…SOC 1101B Principles of Sociology Assignment
These health strategies do not reach and affect all social categories in the same way. For
example, two groups seem to have more difficulty conforming to social distancing, the
young and the elderly. And while parents who telework from home experience burnout
and struggle to separate work and family, millions of newly unemployed people have so
far filed employment insurance claims since the beginning of the pandemic…SOC 1101B Principles of Sociology Assignment