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The uneven distribution of futurity: Slow emergencies and the event of COVID-19

Grove, K.; Rickards, L.; Anderson, B.; Kearnes, M.

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Authors

K. Grove

L. Rickards

M. Kearnes



Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic strains conventional temporal imaginaries through which emergencies are typically understood and governed. Rather than a transparent and linear temporality, which envisions a smooth transition across the series event/disruption-response-post-event recovery, the pandemic moves in fits and starts, blurring the boundary between the normal and the emergency. This distended temporality brings into sharp relief other slow emergencies such as racism, poverty, biodiversity loss, and climate change, which inflect how the pandemic is known and governed as an emergency. In this article, we reflect on COVID-19 response in two settler colonial societies—Australia and the United States—to consider how distinct styles of pandemic response in each context resonates and dissonates across the racially uneven distribution of futurity that structures liberal order. While in each case the event of COVID-19 has indeed opened a window that reveals multiple slow emergencies, in these and other responses this revelation is not leading to meaningful change to address underlying forms of structural violence. In Australia and the United States, we see how specific slow emergencies—human induced climate change and anti-Black violence in White supremacist societies respectively—become intensified as liberal order recalibrates itself in response to the event of COVID-19.

Citation

Grove, K., Rickards, L., Anderson, B., & Kearnes, M. (2022). The uneven distribution of futurity: Slow emergencies and the event of COVID-19. Geographical Research, 60(1), 6-17. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12501

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 4, 2021
Online Publication Date Aug 19, 2021
Publication Date 2022-02
Deposit Date Aug 17, 2021
Publicly Available Date Aug 20, 2023
Journal Geographical Research
Print ISSN 1745-5863
Electronic ISSN 1745-5871
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 60
Issue 1
Pages 6-17
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12501
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1243813

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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Grove, K., Rickards, L., Anderson, B. & Kearnes, M. (2022). The uneven distribution of futurity: Slow emergencies and the event of COVID-19. Geographical Research 60(1): 6-17., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12501. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.





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