[ad_1]
The effects of COVID-19 have been devastating for economies around the world. This was also true in South Africa, where the unemployment rate climbed to almost 33%. The suffering is visible. In every town and village, one is struck by the number of queues of desperate people seeking help of all kinds.
In this situation, hardly anyone disputes the claim that science is the linchpin on which the recovery will be based. Right now, it’s time for virologists, immunologists, vaccinologists and public health specialists. To their great honor, they took action.
Even though biological factors are the immediate cause of our problems, the effects are social. We have the sick, the dying, the unemployed, people unable to seek treatment. Less visible – but no less debilitating – are social trauma and stresses in families and communities.
It is therefore not surprising that the role of the social, human and artistic sciences is so critical at this time.
The contributions of researchers in the social and human sciences have been publicly recognized. But concerns have also been raised about their sufficient involvement.
As close to a number of initiatives involving social scientists over the past 12 months, I firmly believe they have been. Social sciences and humanities have been at the heart of the pandemic from the very beginning. They provided help, advice, advice and, as was to be expected, reviews.
It should be like that. It is the role of the social sciences and humanities, based on evidence, to assert where official policy is in the public interest, but also to show where it is not. I try, in this article, to show how the social sciences and humanities reacted in South Africa.
Gather the evidence
Days after the announcement of the national lockdown, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the country’s scientific council for research on human behavior and social conditions, launched two different rounds of surveys to establish perceptions of the South. -Africans of the crisis.
Both sought to establish what South Africans thought about the situation they found themselves in, their attitudes towards the proposed mitigation measures, their confidence in the government and what people on the ground were doing to help them. themselves. It was necessary to do this to inform the government’s responses to the pandemic.
In addition, as the surveys rolled out, teams of researchers from various universities across the country began to work on the effects of the pandemic on employment, household income, child hunger and poverty. access to government grants. Their job, the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAMS), was to survey a sample of 10,000 South Africans each month for six months. This type of work was essential in keeping up with the work shifts and the changes in the situation people were facing and how they were dealing with those changes.
Read also: COVID-19 holds lessons for the future of social protection
The poll results – five have been released – have helped inform national discussion about the pandemic, including the government’s response to the lockdown.
The data was used to underpin policy briefs telling government and policy makers what people were feeling, the state of their well-being, their attitudes towards vaccines. Importantly, they also allowed a feedback loop to government on responses to physical distancing measures, corruption, service delivery and access to basic rights. These have placed direct emphasis within the government on the calamitous corruption problem of COVID-19 and, equally serious, on the weaknesses of its service delivery mechanisms and procedures.
This was particularly relevant in highlighting the dysfunction of hospitals and clinics.
At the same time, many universities and scientific councils have taken the initiative to make public commitments on the epidemic. These ranged from its impact on education, to problems in households affected by gender-based violence, to the distribution of vaccines.
In addition to these initiatives, many academics have joined civil society initiatives to address emergencies in stressed communities. And to help overcome the socio-economic information crisis, scientists have helped generate and disseminate reliable information.
Scientists have become more public-oriented because, thanks to their research, they have become much more active in public dialogues, radio and television interviews. They have provided the public with an informed analysis of often complex issues.
Researchers have intervened on a number of fronts, launching new work and providing information to organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The South African government has gone so far as to include social scientists in ministerial advisory committees for the pandemic and for vaccinations.
It is true that much remains to be done. Pandemics are complex social phenomena. They raise questions for which questions have not yet been formulated. This is where the social sciences and humanities have to solve problems such as the social relations between individuals, in families, in communities and in society in general.
And the issue of inequality needs to be looked at at a macro level, and how it insidiously reconfigures relationships – whether gender or between different groups in societies. All require attention.
Longer-term impact
In my opinion, lasting changes have already been incorporated. For example, government departments such as the Department of Science and Innovation have set up initiatives focused on social sciences, such as a national data observatory based at the Council for Science and Innovation. Industrial research.
This transdisciplinary approach also led a team of medical scientists and social scientists from various organizations to conduct a COVID-19 antibody sero-prevalence study to determine the levels of antibodies against the disease in the South African population.
The leadership role of public health researchers continues to be important. But there is growing recognition that social scientists need to be there from the start – and should be given the responsibility of leading.
Crain Soudien receives funding from several organizations. It is affiliated with the Human Sciences Research Council, UCT. My organization, the SSRC, receives funding from parliamentary grant and through procurement, tendering, tendering, etc. receives funding for research. It also receives funding from large donor organizations, such as NIHS, CDC, Gates Foundation, Master Card Foundation.
By Crain Soudien, Director General of the Humanities Research Council, Humanities Research Council
Source link
