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The Corona-lockdown has severely affected retail, as economic analysts show. Whether true or not, the Berlin department stores of Karstadt seemed to use the lockdown to explain its crisis when its planned closures made the news in October 2020. The debate after Karstadt’s announcement of closures on the need to save the department stores from disappearing was narrowly economic. The debate on its apparent causes – lockdown and home-shopping – appears scant, as if digitalization is something we just live with. So, when we can buy all that we need online – and much more as the Algorithm will propose whatever else we ‘need’ – why bother saving a department store? How may such stores and surrounding shopping streets matter for our social life? Does it matter all that much when, along with home-office, we’ll be doing more home shopping?

The Corona crisis will change our conditions of observation. The clarification of sociological positioning for observation and interpretation requires a heuristic of subjectivity. Two main figures are shaping this heuristic: the suffering body and the virtual body, connected as well as elaborated through dense internet practices. On the basis of this heuristic the alteration of communicative action can be analyzed.

With the Covid-19 pandemic touching all parts of life, academic research has not been an exception. Even for researchers who are able to maintain access to their field – for instance, through online research – considerable changes in the objects of study force them to rethink their research questions and study designs as they go along. The team behind CRC project B05 “Translocal Networks” reflects on their experiences of conducting a survey of intense Twitter users at the height of the first Covid-19 wave in Jerusalem.

"Ich bin die 'Fremde', die 'heute kommt und morgen bleibt.' (Simmel, 1992: 764). In Zeiten der Corona-Krise fühle ich mich als Südkoreanerin in Deutschland noch fremder, doch gleichzeitig fühle ich mich als in Deutschland lebende Südkoreanerin auch fremd, wenn ich mit meinen Freunden in Korea kommuniziere." Kayoon Kim berichtet über den unterschiedlichen Umgang mit Corona in Südkorea und Deutschland.

In a nutshell, the measures taken to stem the Covid-19 disease consist basically in the drawing of new and the thickening of existing borders. The strategy of bordering practices, as Norbert Cyrus & Peter Ulrich summarize these interventions against the spread of the Corona virus, was pursued first time in Wuhan, China: The right to leave and enter the city area had been restricted and movements across city borders became the subject of surveillance. Also, within the city area, the citizens’ freedom of movement was strictly restricted by imposing a curfew. Moreover, access to stores and working places was only allowed under certain restrictions.

Am 26./27.02.2020 fand die zweite Internationale Konferenz des SFBs unter dem Titel „Polycontextural Spatial Arrangements“ an der TU Berlin statt. Nina Meier reflektiert in ihrem Bericht die verschiedenen Perspektiven, die sich aus dem Zusammenspiel von Vorträgen, Publikumsfragen und Plenumsdiskussionen ergaben und arbeitet dabei eine Auswahl an Argumentationslinien und offener Fragen mit Blick auf das Thema der „Polykontexturalität“ heraus.

In a context of global inequality, the ontological status of the SARS-CoV-2 virus changes according to the socio-technical network into which it is integrated. Jannik Schritt discusses how the virus travels and translates around the globe in context-specific ways producing different effects and exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. In light of the context-specific transformations of the virus, the question is whether a global standardized approach of isolation and lockdown that builds on a decontextualized equivalence construction is apt to manage the pandemic.

In the face of the corona virus, numerous references to war and battle frame what is foremost positioned as a national challenge despite transnational cooperation. The Second World War as touchstone carries a particular relevance for Britain where heroic images of victory form a focal point of the current national discourse and conscience. Through reflecting on the current crisis, this post explores how clinging to war images connects to how the UK regards itself and, subsequently, how it perceives both Germany and the European Union.