Editors: Ieva Snikersproge and Sandy Smith-Nonini

Living with the pandemic has become both a new normal and a transitive state, as many seek an end to public health protocols and a return to their pre-pandemic lives. In the name of a collective response to the virus, politicians have deployed many exceptional, often nationalistic, policies. Highly varied, often inadequate public health measures and poorly enforced workplace safety, combined with conservative mis-information campaigns, have contributed to a high death toll – especially among low-income “essential” workers and people of color. In mid-2021 vaccines offered the promise of normalcy, but lack of access to vaccines in poorer countries and unequal access and uptake within industrialized countries reveals deep social, political, and economic divides and vulnerabilities, suggesting that pre-COVID normalcy was not working for all.

COVID-19-induced political crisis has propelled new innovations in policy and practices that announce emerging paradigmatic changes whose precise contours remain difficult to discern. While many states adopted Keynesian policies to benefit vulnerable populations, the resulting increases in sovereign debts and inflation are controversial and hard to sustain in many settings. Service industries, especially restaurants and pubs, were deeply hurt by lockdowns and labor shortages, even as corporations received tax breaks and generous bailouts by capitalist governments. The pay of “essential workers” has not been significantly revalorized, and stirrings of new labor movements remain hobbled by decades of shrinkage in unionized labor. The economic pain for many households hurt public faith in government and fed new protests – especially over racial discrimination, while also emboldening rightwing narratives of white supremacy and rugged individualism. Even as lockdowns and travel bans revealed the potential for a greener, less polluted future, and lower GDPs, high fuel prices and a string of energy and political crises across the globe raise fears about prospects for a green transition. These contradictions raise questions about how extraordinary pandemic measures may encourage – or discourage – a transition to a non-productivist or post-growth economy.

This blog series reunites contributions that were presented at the 2021 AAA annual conference and attempts to anticipate the post-Coronavirus economy from various vantage points. Sandy Smith-Nonini analyzes emerging energy crises during 2021 that reveal fragility in deregulated, privatized fossil infrastructures that compromise prospects for green transition. Andrew Flachs looks at how the crisis has affected prospects for alternative approaches to agriculture in the American Midwest. Ieva Snikersproge analyzes how French Pandemic financial policy promotes green growth and ignores the need to incentivize the local labor-intensive industries we need in a post-growth world. Donald Nonini examines how digitalization and financial debt-peonage have created new socio-economic divides during the Pandemic. Andrew Orta examines how MBA programs in business schools repackaged unsavory capitalist practices during the pandemic into inspirational pro-business messages. Alexander W. Anthony takes us behind locked doors to explore how COVID-19 has impacted “disposable” populations such as prisoners. Susan Paulson explores the persistent gender biases of COVID safety messages and pandemic policies despite data suggesting widespread rethinking of gender norms.