What Shame Had To Do With It

As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world in early 2020, healthcare professionals were frequently named, blamed and shamed for spreading the virus. 

In this first episode of Shame and the Pandemic, we hear from Professor Luna Dolezal and Dr Arthur Rose, researchers from the Scenes of Shame and Stigma in Covid-19 project at the University of Exeter. They discuss examples of health worker shaming and war metaphors, opening up an in-depth discussion of shame and shaming which lays the groundwork for the rest of the Shame and the Pandemic series.

For more on the shaming of healthcare professionals during COVID-19, see this article Covid-19, online shaming and healthcare professionals by Luna Dolezal, Arthur Rose and Fred Cooper in The Lancet and their chapter Super-Spreaders: Shaming Healthcare Professionals in Covid-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK.

Stigma and the Logics of Wartime gives a short account of wartime metaphors. If you are interested in the broader question of wartime rhetoric, read Franziska Kohlt’s article Over by Christmas.

Thank you to Alice Waterson. Further thanks to Jennifer Allan, Ray Earwicker, João Florêncio, Tanisha Spratt and Nikita Simpson for contributing to the series.

This podcast series is based on the research findings in the book Covid-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK, by Fred Cooper, Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose.

This podcast series was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant number AH/V013483/1.

Further support has come from the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (WCCEH) at the University of Exeter, the Shame and Medicine project, the Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 project and the Wellcome Trust grant number 217879/Z/19/Z.

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash.

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