An Essay on the Political Economy Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic as Twin Crises

The subject and purpose of this study is to examine the new type of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which has turned into a global epidemic, with an economic-political approach. There are twin crises in the form of a health crisis (high human deaths) and an economic crisis (recession). Trillion-dollar aid packages from governments and international financial organizations also show that this global public health crisis has created an economic crisis. In the context of these crises, G-20 countries that did not intervene in their transmission channels in a timely manner showed the worst situations. This epidemic, calculated with the SIR model, is global, but the measures are local. What makes a clean, masked, and socially distant life obligatory against the risk of contamination is that this epidemic locks or restricts the whole economy, especially trade, education, and tourism. Measures called “new normalization” have started to relax in order to prevent further increase in unemployment and poverty.

Capitalism and the Environment

Rising economic inequality has put capitalism on trial globally. At the same time, existential environmental threats worsen while corporations continue to pollute and distort government policy. These twin crises have converged in calls to revamp government and economic systems and to revisit socialism, given up for dead only 30 years ago. In Capitalism and the Environment, Shi-Ling Hsu argues that such an impulse, if enacted, will ultimately harm the environment. Hsu argues that inequality and environmental calamities are political failures – the result of bad decision-making – and not a symptom of capitalism. Like socialism, capitalism is composed of political choices. This book proposes that we make a different set of choices to better harness the transformative power of capitalism, which will allow us to reverse course and save the environment.

The Twin Crises of Covid-19 and Racism: Pragmatic Mastery, Theory, Religion, and Ethics

In 2020, two crises emerged into prominence in the United States and other parts of the world: (1) the flourishing of the COVID-19 virus, in which the polarization and relativization of knowledge have hobbled efforts to prevent pandemic spread, and (2) the killing of George Floyd which has stirred worldwide protests against centuries of racial oppression and unbared an underlying racist ideology about the seemingly lesser value of Black people. It might seem that both these crises are unrelated, but this article argues that both crises are rooted in a common phenomenon, the surge of the pursuit of everyday pragmatic mastery beyond its legitimate boundary. This pursuit of mastery has instrumentalized structures of discourse, thereby undermining Alfred Schutz’s paradigm of the well-informed citizen seeking to understand dispassionately imposed relevances and the non-pragmatic provinces of meaning that might have restrained the pursuit of such mastery, such as the provinces of theoretical science and religious experience. As regards racism, the pursuance of such mastery results in transgressing and eliminating through violence the ethical boundaries the Levinasian other prescribes. These twin crises are not disparate happenings occurring now to remedy the tedium of the pandemic, but are bound together at the hip.

Austerity’s legacy: risk, opportunity and a new form of central–local relations?

This chapter reviews how local authorities in England have taken a range of initiatives to respond to super-austerity and face the twin crises of managing housing demand and supply. It discusses the restructuring of the form of local government and the creation of new unitary authorities or merging council administrations. It also explores the involvement of a range of direct activities for the local government to meet specific needs for housing and generate more income through property acquisition and investment. The chapter investigates the extent to which local authorities have engaged in asset- and income-generation approaches. It describes how councils have continued to extend their activities in a cumulative way, as they gain more confidence and learn from others.

Challenging austerity: why have local authorities been taking their own action?

This chapter looks at local authorities in England that have been intimately involved in the twin crises of super-austerity and housing over the past decade. It discusses the context of the resilient and adaptive system of the local government in England, wherein the authorities' pushback against austerity favoured their own direct action in delivering housing. It also highlights the local authorities' direct role in housing delivery and considers what has motivated them to get engaged in direct delivery. The chapter covers the local authorities' frustrations at private developers within the planning system. It examines how the forms of provision that deal with homelessness, and housing and income generation are enabled legislatively.

Twin crises deepen Gulf states’ policy competition and independence

A crisis often presents an opportunity for policy shift and a time to get ahead of the competition. But for the Gulf Arab states, the twin crises of the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse of oil prices in 2020 have accelerated trends already underway to differentiate their economic policies and force more aggressive responses to demands for job creation and market liberalization. The Covid-19 pandemic has called upon states to intervene and support domestic economies, making the competing priorities of shrinking public sector payrolls and stimulating domestic demand all the more difficult. What emerges are trade-offs that reveal leadership priorities, targeted support, and important distinctions within the ever-weakening body of the GCC on a range of policies from immigration, labor markets, fiscal programs and taxes, to monetary policy.

Querying ‘Karen’: The rise of the angry white woman

The (often memetic) figure of the white female ‘Karen’ has surged to prominence of late, moving from social media vernacular into broader usage at exactly the moment when twin crises of public health and racial social justice have fomented momentous change and uncertainty in American life. The angry ‘Karen’ is invoked to indicate her manipulation of her racial power, but she is equally significant, we suggest, for her positioning within a pre-existing antagonistic service economy.