Masking in Pandemic U.S.: Beliefs and Practices of Containment and Connection (Routledge Focus on Anthropology)

Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist of material culture and religion with a focus on bodily practices. She is associated with the Matiere a Penser group, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK, and is the founder/editor of the open-access digital journal The Jugaad Project. She has researched and theorized materiality, praxis, and aesthetics in diverse contexts including religious communities and maker groups in India, Indonesia, and the U.S.

Title: Masking in Pandemic U.S.: Beliefs and Practices of Containment and Connection (Routledge Focus on Anthropology)

Author:

ISBN: 9781032137629

Binding:

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Publication Date: 2022-09-19

Number of Pages: 124

Weight: 0.2811 kg

Only two years after the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, Urmila Mohan produces a compelling account of the emotional, religious and subjective implications of this event. She investigates facial masks as micro-technologies of the self, revealing their imaginary dimension in sewing and making do geared to care, labor, religious practice, activism, loss, intimacy, boundaries. Bodies and materials in motion provide the rationale for a rich and striking iconography, expanding the scope of description and analysis of a crisis that is still unfolding.

Jean-Pierre Warnier, Professor of Anthropology (retired), University Paris-Descartes, France

In this well written and exquisitely illustrated book on masks in motion, Urmila Mohan offers fascinating layers of insights into how people sew and use masks, and how the imperative to mask under the COVID-19 pandemic unmasked a myriad of vulnerabilities, tensions and cracks in the delicate and sensitive body of American society and politics.

Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa