‘I Know Who Caused COVID-19’: Pandemics and Xenophobia

Zhou Xun · Sander L. Gilman

oct 2021 · Reaktion Books

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A timely exploration of the global explosion in xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through a close analysis of four cases from around the world, this book explores prejudice toward groups who are thought to have caused and spread COVID-19: the residents of Wuhan and Black African communities in China; ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel; African-Americans in the United States and Black/Asian/mixed ethnic communities in the United Kingdom; and White right-wing groups in the United States and Europe. The authors examine stereotyping and the false attribution of blame towards these groups, as well as what happens when a collective is actually at fault, and how the community deals with these conflicting issues.

This is a timely, cogent examination of the blame and xenophobia that have been brought to the surface by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Zhou Xun is a reader in modern history at the University of Essex. Most recently, she is the author of The People’s Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Mao’s China, 1949–1983. Sander L. Gilman is distinguished professor of the liberal arts and sciences as well as professor of psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of more than ninety books, most recently Stand Up Straight: A History of Posture, with Reaktion Books. Together, Xun and Gilman are the coeditors of Smoke: A Global History of Smoking, also published by Reaktion Books.