The Corona Generation
Prompt 1
The COVID-19 epidemic has placed a sharp focus on inequity. Individuals living on the basis of pay check to pay check particularly in the service sector occupations are in a totally distinct situation than the ones working in salaried positions that they may perform from the comfort of their houses. Stark differences in fortune, healthcare and job have shifted from being chronic concerns to acute ones. Some inequities have grown much more relevant in this particular period of social distancing – such as access to regular services. Some have concerns that COVID may make class gaps even wider. Some think that some of the countermeasures to sustain the economic structure may lead to good long-term developments in the political economy. Basic income may not really sound as insane months in the near future as it did a year ago. It is certainly too early to know. The world could be at a historical political turning point. People could be back to business as normal rather fast. Although class differences are of more urgent relevance. There are substantial disparities by income class in both the danger posed by the pandemic, due of underlying health issues, and in degrees of reaction to the risk of becoming infected. As Bristow and Gilland (2020: 72) assert, the main concern brought about by the pandemic will turn out to be of class rather than generation.
Class plays a role in determine which individuals benefit and which ones loses in response to the coronavirus outbreak. This is particularly evident in the academic sector where inequalities between the rich and the poor have exacerbated. Laura describes how she was lucky to enrol in a school that provides all sorts of lessons both traditionally and online means. Nevertheless, in spite of the different sorts of lessons provided by the school, she heavily depended on herself to ensure that she stays on track with the academics. Some students prefer studying patterns that enable them to work in privacy and cover enough content that will enable them to pass their exams. Nevertheless, this will be a different story for other people. This is because even during normal times, individuals that come from the families with better-off backgrounds perform better in terms of academics since their parents can add additional resources to the ones offered by the government in schools. As Bristow and Gilland, 2020) puts it, “Even in ‘normal’ times, kids from better-off backgrounds do better in school because their families can top up the resources offered by state education”. In this period of pandemic, the world has witnessed widening gaps private schools that are trying all their best to justify their exorbitant fees with latest technologies such as Zoom from which they carry out their lessons as well as personalized support. What is offered online by the government schools varies widely, and so does the ability of pupils to engage with what the schools are offering. Learners who are already struggling or demotivated, the ones that do not possess computers, space they can use to do their school work or even lack a good internet connection and whose parents lack the money to hire tutors or acquire additional resources to assist their children keep up with their peers in privileged schools.
In the United States in particular, where the gap between the haves and the have nots in terms of academics is even broader when compared to the United Kingdom, the repercussions of school closures along with the current parental fears for the kids to contract the virus will probably have even starker associated consequences. According to an article by Butler, he predicts that there will be some dire downstream consequences in the middle-class flight from government learning institutions. She also notes that there is already evidence that the minority communities especially the Hispanic and the Blacks are bearing the Brunt of the disease. She additionally warns that white parents the in the upper middle and middle class will likely avoid sending the children two institutions having a larger percentage of the Hispanic and black populations since they will start associating with the virus that has already eliminated within the communities. By doing so, these parents could actually make such stereotypes to become prevalent and true. A majority of the minority community parents earn their living from jobs such as packaging, retail, food delivery as well as hospitals which do not offer them the opportunity to stay at home and hide out from the virus.
As Butler points out, one cause of this gap is that the pandemic could undo the attempts and efforts of integrating learning institutions and this comes as bad news for all learners. Promoting some sort of equality in terms of academics throughout the social divisions of class as well as race was complicated even before the pandemic broke out and the educational polarities in the United States and the United Kingdom were already significantly entrenched.
For the moon, the crisis brought about by the pandemic has presented itself as a tale between two cities. There is the working from home City, which entails corporate executives and professionals who glories in the lack of commute and bicycle rides or rather lovely long walks, spending memorable time with their kids in between the breaks of Zoom lessons established by the private schools. The individuals of this city brag about the money they are saving when they make their own lunch and preach about how people can benefit from the less consumerist lifestyle. On the other hand, there exist the keeping things going City who make their way to waste disposal services, retail outlets, and care homes making use of whatever means available for transportation. They are usually essential workers who work on low wages and often at time rhetorically applauded for the daily coronavirus death tally. They are the individuals who bear the weight of the pandemic. As the two authors puts it, “These are the people who will bear the brunt of health effects of the virus, economic effects of lockdown, and educational effects of school closures.”
The above points out that, the issue of the pandemic crisis is one of class rather than generation. Also, the real individuals do not necessarily reflect the cultural binary of the two cities. The experiences of people during the pandemic have also been impacted by their place of residence, whether they have people relying on them to cater to the needs, and or desperately suffering from their job loss. In this case, age is not a factor, especially in the case of the virus where the risk of serious conditions is clearly linked with advancing age. Nevertheless, it is worth to note that the corona virus pandemic, with its unprecedented characteristics, has not resulted in new problems, a lot has exacerbated what was already existing. This is particularly true at the beginning of the movement restriction as put by governments across the world, the distinction between the covid life and normal life appeared to be very stark thereby questioning the assumptions and norms which had underpinned social life till date.
The two authors are skeptical about ‘generation wars’ in regards to whether the world will witness an emergence of a genuine war between different generations. In their previous work, they have pointed out media and policy narratives that claim conflict of interest that exist between the young and the old generation do not reflect the manner in which folks themselves are concerned about their obligations to and relations with each other. Instead, the generationalist framework has turned out to be a fashionable where the cultural and political elites dodge talking about, let alone confrontation, the deeper cultural, social, and economic tensions which afflict today’s societies. When framed within the deeply divided ‘generation wars’ framework, the issue of skyrocketing house prices, which seem to be due to weak economies’ dependence on over-inflated, financialized residential bubbles, is faulted on an older population in which multitudes of purportedly greedy, rich elderly individuals have the audacity to live in their dwellings, is framed as an issue of race and class. Because of their ego conduct as children, the Baby Boomer generation profited from the post-war welfare system and has wrecked it as an adult. They have the audacity to survive longer than projected, putting a strain on the health-care and social-security systems at tremendous financial risk. Even difficult contemporary political occurrences, like the voting for Brexit in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, are interpreted as the result of selfish seniors voting against ‘the future’. Therefore, it carries on and on.
Prompt 2
The corona epidemic has had a significant impact on our day-to-day lives. To prevent the spread of the virus, a lot of effort is being put in. Furthermore, it is critical to consider the future. The measures taken to keep the virus controlled have an impact on our conduct, as well as our freedoms and liberties. Face-to-face conversations were frequently restricted to core network members, like partners, members, of the family or, in certain cases, live-in roommates, during the peak of COVID-19 regulations; some ‘weak’ ties were severed, and conversations became more constrained to those nearest to the person in question. Given the fact that periphery, poorer social relationships gave a greater range of resources, perspectives, and backing, the pandemic led to networks that were shorter and more homogeneous in composition. Because social networks are also flexible and receptive to change in the sense that a disturbance in customary means of connecting can be substituted by modern methods of interacting, such alterations were neither unavoidable nor particularly long-lasting (for example, Zoom). Despite this, there are significant inequities, with networks and individual connections across networks not being capable of adapting to these changes in the same way. I have had a significant number of recently developed friendships and other kind of relationships and I have experienced difficulty transferring these ties in the online spheres, leading to lost contacts and an increased risk of social solitude. I can now positively point out that I have experienced a worsening of my relationships with my colleagues and other people during COVID-19. nevertheless, I have been able to witness something else. When geographical limits like the stay-at-home orders were imposed, local area-based networks arose, leading to increased neighbourly solidarity and local volunteerism.
Connections with neighbours have resulted in the greatest net improvement in the quality of relationships in comparison to a variety of other kinds of relationships for example, partner, colleague, friend. Several of them were formed as a result of unplanned individual encounters within the small communities around where I reside, which collectively gave rise to the “community spirit” that several people experienced. As a result, COVID-19 limitations, I have seen the pandemic to have an influence on both the organisation of personal social networks and the formation of wider networks within society. Another positive effect that I have experienced as a result of the pandemic is intimacy. It is a fundamental human need to feel emotionally connected to others. This can be achieved via romantic, friendship, or familial relationships. Intimate connection has numerous benefits for health, such as reduced levels of stress, better mental health, reduced blood pressure, as well as a lower risk of developing heart disease as research suggests. Favourably, the coronavirus pandemic has provided opportunity for me to reconnect with as well as restrengthen intimate connections within my family by spending quality time around each other when since a majority of the typical outward social activities have been curtailed due to the outbreak. Nevertheless, this comes as two sides of the coin. This is because I have also experienced negative effects of the pandemic in terms of pandemic with my significant other. Interactions have been reduced to video calls. We no longer communicate one on one like before.
References
Bristow, J., & Gilland, E. (2020). The Corona Generation: Coming of Age in A Crisis. John
Hunt Publishing.
