Institut für
Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (Anthropological Studies in
Culture and History)
Foto: UHH/Denstorf
24. Mai 2023
Foto: EKW Universität Hamburg
Der Vortrag von Dr. Kevin Hall findet als Online Termin statt! / The lecture by Dr. Kevin Hall will take place online!
https://uni-hamburg.zoom.us/j/69115829115?pwd=QnRJVFRPNW8rWHJjSnZoQ0pTeW4yQT09
please contact me if you have any Questions!
florian.david.helfer"AT"uni-hamburg.de.
Open Windows, Air Change Rates and Sneeze Guards: Unpacking Indoor Exposure Criteria to SARS-CoV-2
During the COVID-19 pandemic the very air we breathe became problematic. It became the medium of transmission for SARS-Coronavirus-2. At the same time the contagiousness of pre- and asymptomatically infected persons simultaneously made the tracing of the contacts of infectious persons necessary but also posed problems for contact tracing: Contact persons had to be differentiated according to the likelihood of sufficient exposure to viral aerosols and risk of subsequent infection. This paper investigates the practice of contact tracing and various enactments of invisible viral aerosol clouds in the criteria for likely exposure to SARS-CoV-2 that contact tracers draw on. I employ the concept of riskscapes to think about how the criteria constitute different landscapes of risk by relating, risk, space and practice to each other. To this end I first conceptualize contact tracing as a practice of translating narratives into cognitive maps. In a second step, I unpack the different criteria that contact tracers employ to imagine invisible viral aerosol clouds. The material semiotic relations constituted by the criteria point at a controversy about the spatial ontology of air. In a third step, I will discuss how the experimentally enacted relations of airborne exposure in turn inform arrangements, movements and practices of personal protection and sensing in office spaces, classrooms and even the office of the contact tracers themselves.