Un-Masking the Mask: Developing the Sociology of Facial Politics in Pandemic Times and After

The story goes that, when he was asked what he thought were the consequences of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai replied that it was still too early to tell. The same can be said of the Covid-19 pandemic. No-one knows yet how the pandemic and its multiple and complicated effects will alter the textures of all aspects of life, human and non-human, across the planet in the coming years and decades. But it is clear that, sociologically speaking, some of the consequences are already obvious in general terms. Existing social inequalities and power imbalances have been variously reinforced, extended, and worsened. This is so in terms of all the major sociological axes: class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, location, legal status, and suchlike. Meanwhile, new inequities are being forged. Conversely, potential novel forms of solidarity and positive social transformation may be in the making, including in terms of modes and forms of citizenship. This is the terrain that a new sociology of masks, masking and facial politics will now have to grapple with.

In the normative terms of critical sociology, both negative and positive processes are currently at play, even if the former seem likely to outweigh the latter. This is certainly the case in one of the most striking phenomena of what could be called Covid-19 times, namely the sudden appearance across most parts of the globe of facemasks, worn as protection against infection. Although such masks have been common in many parts of East Asia for a considerable period of time, especially in the wake of the SARS crisis of 2003 (Syed et al 2003), mass masking has not been a central feature of social life in most other world regions until Covid-19 struck. And just as the disease most likely came from East Asia and spread across the planet, so too has mass masking seemed to spread from there too, following in the wake of the virus. Covid-19 and its attendant masking practices are twin and inseparable elements of a certain kind of Asianification of the world (Park, 2019). Of course, the sociologist must be vigilant in making such claims: that apparently neutral statement is itself a kind of observation which right-wing political actors may choose to reframe and promote for their own purposes.