Events

COVID-19 vaccines, with suspicions and preoccupations around their safety, their substances and their implicit moral implications, have been at the center of debates across Asian societies and their diverse religious, non-religious and spiritual communities. In media representation, vaccine hesitancy is often discussed as the direct result of irrationality, ignorance, the malicious influence of anti-modern religious leaders, or the misinformation campaigns. This discourse is dominated by Western and particularly American voices, representing religious and spiritual communities as the bulk of “anti-vaxxers” demanding religious exemptions to vaccine mandates. Yet to understand the mechanisms regulating “faith in immunity,” scholars need to peel beyond this binary discourse to interrogate the complex interplay between COVID immunity and pre-existing structures of trust, cosmologies of protection, and epistemologies of healing. What kinds of community relations, power structures, spiritual inclinations and influential authorities (religious, governmental, biomedical, etc.) lead people to trust or not trust COVID vaccines and information about it? How are COVID vaccines understood, accepted, or supplemented by Asian communities of practice? How are other concepts of immunity mobilized and given authority based on pre-existing structures of trust?

This workshop interrogates notions of immunity, focusing on the ways in which it is also culturally constructed and socially shaped through processes and practices that involve the intertwined spheres of cosmology, medicine, ritual and health. Through the concepts of “faith in immunity” and “structures of trust,” this workshop will explore the different conceptualizations of personal and collective responsibility towards COVID-19 resistance tracing the forms of epistemological authority that come from collective religious, non-religious, and spiritual traditions in Asia and globally. The themes we aim to explore include the following:

• Definitions and conceptualizations of immunity and protection mobilized around COVID-19 including in traditional and plural medicine
• The role of religious leaders, religious authorities, and ritual communities in promoting, distributing, or discouraging COVID vaccines, and defining what constitutes a COVID vaccine
• Ideas about individual and collective responsibility relevant to vaccination and their connection to religio-moral values
• Entanglements and/or conflicts of religious and secular epistemic authority in relation to COVID vaccines and their material components
• Connections between vaccine and ritual practice
• The sensory engagement of the biological, biomoral, gendered, and ritual body in the achievement of the aspired immunity from COVID contagion

PARTICIPATION

This workshop will use a synchronous and asynchronous format that aims to optimize the time and the technology at our disposal to improve the papers and stimulate more interactive discussions. Papers and presentations will be uploaded online 2 weeks before the workshop takes place. This workshop is oriented toward the publication of a Special Issue in a peer-reviewed academic journal of international reputation.

Please note that participation in the closed-door workshop is by invitation only.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Emily Hertzman
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Dr Ashawari Chaudhuri
Cornell University, USA

Dr Erica M. Larson
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Dr Carola E. Lorea
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore