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Vaccination has long been a controversial topic among the general public, and the COVID-19 pandemic resurfaced existing debates. But what role do vaccines play in people’s understanding and management of risk in everyday life? Here, Jens Zinn, a Collection Advisor for the new Sociology of Vaccines Collection on F1000Research, shares what the sociology of risk can tell us about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged societies worldwide in different ways. Throughout the pandemic, governments have debated how best to balance the public health risk with the economic risks associated of disrupting the spread of the virus. With vaccines in limited supply, politicians have attempted to balance the global need for collaboration to contain the virus alongside national interests and political pressures.

A quickly growing body of research tries to make sense of the crisis and the various national and global responses. While medical and epidemiological research has been central in government policy responses to the pandemic, scholars from many sociological subdisciplines have highlighted the social dimensions of the crisis. As a result, F1000Research has launched the Sociology of Vaccines Collection to provide a sociological analysis of the breadth of social, political, and cultural issues surrounding vaccination.

The sociology of risk

The sociology of risk and uncertainty developed since the 1980s is one such subdiscipline that can illuminate the shape and nature of social responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

Different theoretical approaches inform the sociology of risk and uncertainty. However, Ulrich Beck’s work on the ‘Risk Society’ shaped the sociological debate and helped risk become a central category for sociological thinking.

Taking a macro-perspective, Beck suggested in the 1980s that global, potentially catastrophic risks would increasingly shape social reality. For example, the destruction of natural habitats would lead to many zoonotic diseases while heightened global mobility increases the risk of quickly spreading such diseases. Following Beck, we might interpret new risks such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus as side-effects of successful modernization. According to Beck, successful social responses require global collaboration and a cosmopolitan worldview while balancing them against national interests.

The need for an intersectional approach

There is clear evidence that the coronavirus largely follows known socio-structural inequality patterns such as class and gender. As a result, this supports an intersectional approach to research. As Beck has criticized, research focusing on nation-states tends to miss out on the global and transnational inequalities, such as disrupted mobility patterns of care workers and the unequal access to vaccination. The global context of vaccination, including the socio-cultural influences affecting international vaccine provision, will therefore be a significant theme in the Sociology of Vaccines Collection.

The effect on marginalized groups

Moreover, from Mary Douglas’ cultural symbolic perspective, the COVID-19 crisis is a good illustration of how in hierarchical cultures, social stigmatization functions to shift blame to already marginalized social groups.

Stigmatization can also be a political strategy—for example, former US President Donald Trump blamed China for the pandemic. Equally, we have seen bottom-up stigmatization, such as community-based prejudice against people of Asian descent. But there have also been active strategies to counter stigmatization processes; for example, the WHO named virus variants by letters of the Greek alphabet instead of where they were discovered.

Towards a broader understanding of vaccination

The sociology of vaccines can build on a long history of the governing of public health, the production and application of vaccines, and the global disparities in vaccine availability. Vaccines are central to successfully managing the coronavirus crisis. With zoonotic diseases becoming more common, vaccines are moving to the center of population health management.

More research is needed to understand better the social conditions for the fast and successful development of vaccines, their large-scale production, regulation, and global dissemination. There is also a vital need for research into communication and social responses to vaccination. This will require combining the epidemiological, technological, environmental, and economic dimensions with structural, cultural, and political analysis.

Are you interested in submitting your research to the Sociology of Vaccines Collection? Find out more about the Collection’s aims and scope and submit your research here today.