2021

Corona, uninvited guest

Country/area: Iran

Organisation: neuer Osten

Organisation size: Small

Publication date: 14 Jul 2020

Credit: Helia Asgari

Project description:

The article “Corona, uninvited guest” is about the corona virus and the impact of it on social life. it focus on the issue that, in addition to enduring the pain and problems caused by the disease, patients with Covid-19 experienced a different face, which was the stigma and the distance it caused among humans; isolated them, restricted, ridiculed, and sometimes rejected them.

Impact reached:

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, many articles have been published about the impact of the covid-19 on the economy, unemployment, domestic violence, and the psychological effects of quarantine and how to deal with it.Among the researches I did in this field, I encountered a serious problem, and that was the society’s reaction to this virus. As mentioned in the article, the hidden part of this research is the culture of a society in dealing with an issue. An issue that has been seen in connection with various issues in Iranian culture for many years. Exclusion and rejection of people from society with various diseases, and the most important example is the people who have AIDS. that although the type of illness and society’s view of the two is very different, what they have in common is the community’s concern about themselves being infected with these viruses and their fear of social stigma, the reason of which is low awareness.

Techniques/technologies used:

in order to answer my question and investigate how true this issue is, I utilized qualitative method with grounded theory methodology for analysing the data to explore the social stigma in Iranian culture and the relation between coronavirus infection and social stigma. 

By utilizing qualitative method and in-depth and semi-structure interviews, participants were asked to become narrators of their experiences. 

some of the interviewees had good and positive experience but some of them not. I collect the negative answer and by coding the data attempt to show and narrate the cultural problems of a society in relation to a disease.

What was the hardest part of this project?

the hardest part of the project was finding the people who had bad experince and also find people who had same experience due to their problems and also their disease

What can others learn from this project?

The point is that the culture of a society can be very influential at the time of crisis. When a crisis occurs, its economic, political, and to some extent psychological aspects are examined, but all crises have hidden aspects that cause serious damage to society. And this is the part that needs to be addressed

Project links:

www.neuer-osten.org/post/corona-ein-ungebetener-gast