Coronablog: Introduction | Kirsten Marie Raahauge

SPACES OF DANISH WELFARE IN CORONA TIMES

In these times of corona, conducting fieldwork, accessing archives and libraries and participating in conferences is put on hold, which of course also affects the researchers of Spaces of Danish Welfare. In these weeks of exception, instead of posting news about our research findings and disseminations, we will post commentaries about how the exception state caused by the corona epidemic affects our fields. In the coming weeks, we will all come up with different answers to the question How does the exception state of the corona times affect our fields of research?

The state of exception due to covid-19 as it is structured in Denmark might put Danish welfare spaces in perspective in at least two ways: 

• As a crisis to be dealt with by the welfare state, the corona times influences the empirical worlds that we study. The corona times give rise to questions such as: How are the prioritizations of the welfare state? How is it interpreted in various places and institutions? Can the alterations that we experience in these weeks transform Danish welfare spaces? If so, how? What do these alterations mean to citizens and spaces in welfare systems? What is the impact of ideas about contagion on the way spaces and materiality is dealt with within welfare systems? How does the contagion ideas that are prominent in these weeks impact exchange between people, and between state and society in the field of welfare?
• As a state of exception, the corona times provides us with a methodological extra-gaze, an X-ray-method, that might unveil sides of society, which are normally implicit and thereby difficult to discover. The corona times give rise to questions such as: What is lacking in these weeks? Who lacks it? What do people long for or desire, now that certain sides of life are restricted? How does welfare institutions provide its users with amenities under these exceptional circumstances? Which amenities are chosen as more important than others? What is forgotten? What seems not to be needed at all?