Aaron Hock M.A.

Past and present

As a cultural anthropologist, it is important to me to put the analysis of contemporary societies into a historical perspective. Therefore, my part in the project on pandemic human differentiation is the historical comparison of epidemics and pandemics, which I use to deepen the cultural analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nature and culture

I understand epidemics and the associated processes of pandemic human differentiation as events beyond nature and culture that emerge between humans and diseases. The hypothesis is that pandemic human differentiation, in the past as well as today, makes a significant contribution to making epidemics manageable in terms of both their physiological effects and their sociocultural uncertainty. This demonstrates the interconnectedness of these supposedly separate spheres.

People and pathogens

During epidemics, a change in social practices, cultural knowledge, material-spatial infrastructures, etc. emerges from the characteristics of the respective pathogen on the one hand and the reactions of human societies on the other. I am particularly interested in the question of how pathogens and diseases as non-human entities can participate in sociocultural processes such as human differentiation and how this biosocial coexistence can be precisely described.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich