COVID-19 and Shame

«This book on COVID-19 and the role shame and shaming has played in the handling of the pandemic in the UK and elsewhere is much to be welcomed. It offers both a sophisticated understanding of a multidimensional concept and a wide-ranging analysis of its personal, social and political salience for pandemic governance and for how people struggled to make sense of their changed lives. The authors are to be congratulated for their accessible reporting of a ground-breaking piece of research.»

«Six detailed, very telling case-studies implicate each one of us in adding to the anguish of the pandemic. In the context of thousands of unnecessary deaths, we blame and shame others for sins of omission and commission of which we are probably equally guilty. But the lasting realization of this pioneering study of shame as a social emotion is that we have been deliberately manipulated by a shameless government intent on diverting attention from its own culpability.»