The Body in the Pandemic Context

Abstracts: July 30, 2021

The pandemic resulting from COVID 19 directly affects people’s bodies, either because of the disease and its consequences for the health of the world population, or because of the dynamics of social detachment caused by it. Bodies are both affected and the affect.

In the context of reviewing the meanings of the body, the embodiment and corporealities around the world, relationships between individual and collective bodies, determined by health issues, emerge as a fundamental perspective. To have the objectives achieved, government policies must contemplate aspects that are beyond economic factors and seek scientific support for making decisions that involve the health of the population in countries and in the world. When we talk about the human being, we talk about bodies, the right to health and citizenship. Then it is important to discuss more about bodies and your place on the pandemic context in the XXI century.

We agree with Le Breton’s writings:
The body is a particularly propitious subject for an anthropological analysis, as it fully belongs to the identifying strain of man [of the human being]. Without the body, which gives it a face, man would not exist. Living consists of continually reducing the world to its body, based on the symbolic it embodies. The existence of man [of the human being] is corporeal. And the social and cultural treatment of which the body is an object, the images that expose its hidden thickness, the values that distinguish it, also speak to us of the person and the variations that his definition and ways of existence know, of a structure the other. Because it is at the heart of individual and collective action, at the heart of social symbolism, the body is a far-reaching object of analysis for a better understanding of the present (LE BRETON, 2016, p. 8-9) .

One of the implications of the new dynamics on the present time are the online events, which allows the integration of participants from different parts of the world, despite some limiting factors.

However, reinforcing the role of potentializer and socializer of knowledge, RC 54 – The Body in the Social Science from International Sociological Association launches its POST FORUM “BODIES IN THE PANDEMIC CONTEXT”, which will be held from 02 to 04 September 2021, in partnership with the following institutions:

• International Sociology Association (ISA)
• Work and Thematic Group “Body and Culture” – Brazilian College of Sport Sciences (CBCE) / Brazil
• Physical Education Post Graduted Program – University of Brasilia/Brazil
• NOVA University Lisbon/Portugal
• Université de Strasbourg/France

In the Post Porto Alegre Forum Bodies in the Pandemic Context will have these activities:

Conferences. To participate in accordance with research of great international relevance in studies of the Body from the perspective of Social Sciences. There will be two practices. As they will have 50 minutes of exposure by the invited and 40 minutes for debate.

Short Videos. video in a short film format of up to 15 minutes, use a cell phone camera. APPROACH: We are experiencing the transitory bodies, so that we see in different social contexts a process of change or reconfiguration of the other and of itself. This universal pandemic moment has raised the appearance of human, social and political weaknesses, which lead to the construction and deconstruction of bodies. That said, do we question how the different social groups have experienced their corporeality? Our purpose is to produce a work that allows the dialogue between audiovisual language and research in Physical Education in dialogue with Social Sciences, from the following perspectives: 1. Body, Nature and Gender; 2. Body, Traditional and Political Cultures; and, 3. Body, Corporealities, Sensations.

Round Table. The round tables will be made up of members of the RC 54 scientific committee and guests from researched communities. There will be two in number. ROUND TABLE 1 – Building Networks. Research Groups and Researchers in Connection: Elements for the Viability of the Observatory of the Body. ROUND TABLE 2 – “Circles” of Knowledge. Interfaces between bodies that research and bodies that participate in research in different intercultural contexts.

Oral Presentation. Oral presentations of the entries will be organized in the form of round tables sessions. At the round tables, exhibitors will have between 5 and 7 minutes to present their ideas (with slides in English and presentations in their languages). The debate will be privileged, which will have 30 minutes or until the session ends.

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