Epistemology of the Pandemic: On “Knowledge of Knowledge” (Body, Culture and Society)

Abstract

The study aims at developing a sociological inquiry guided by reflexive sociology to articulate the COVID19 pandemic, as social phenomena within its complex, adaptive, and societal contexts. The pandemic which has thrown us into a living laboratory requires a different mode of thinking: one that overcomes the epistemological barriers of prior world vision and transcending the dictates of the scientific logic of conventional paradigms. The current historical transformation constitutes a rupture with the core way of paradigm thinking. The virus is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. As a portal, it forces a re-imagination of the social. The study strives for internal consistency and logical structuring to discuss in sequence: 1) the pandemic and the conventional sociological imagination; 2) Systems modality for bridging the gaps in sociological analysis; 3) building alternative theoretical architecture of pandemic epistemology; and 4) utilizing practice theory of sociology for analysis and interpretation of pandemic epistemology.