“Social Effects of Inequality due to COVID-19: Infrastructure, Health, Agency”

Kooperation Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, North-West University, Südafrika, & University of Fort Hare, Südafrika

Visioning a post-COVID-19 transformation towards greater equity and sustainability, this research aims a) to draw the links between COVID-19’s differential impact in South Africa; and b) to identify the subaltern infrastructures of sustainability that have emerged in response to contingencies and precarities resulting from the pandemic. The aim will be to a) build a framework for imagining a post-COVID society rooted in building life from within zones of economic exclusion and in the pursuit of the SDGs and b) inform actors in the administration, NGOs, and public sphere about possible strategies for a future dealing with states of society-wide emergency. Of priority to the consortium’s research intention is the linkage between the social impact of COVID-19, the deepening of already existing social inequality, and the possibly longterm disruption of social structures. Thus the project also reflects on a possibly negative social sustainability as one result of the impact of COVID-19 on social equality. The findings of this research will help to establish socially grounded strategies for dealing with the consequences of the pandemic that: a) aim to understand the current impact of COVID-19 on social life-worlds, including their destabilization; b) aim to understand the diversity of formal and informal resources upon which vulnerable citizens are drawing in attempts to compose located, contextually suitable strategies; and c) aim to establish from these identified strategies insights capable of guiding policy in a manner that fosters social equity, cohesion and sustainability. This will be guaranteed by a cooperation network ranging from community initiatives to administrative bodies and by the usage of various tools for public science. The consortium consists of one German university (JLU) and two South African universities (NWU & UFH). Methods applied will be qualitative research and innovative participatory research by cooperating social actors.