- Published
- 04 July 2022
- Journal article
Risk and responsibility: Lay perceptions of COVID-19 risk and the 'ignorant imagined other' in Indonesia
- Authors
- Source
- Health, Risk & Society
Abstract
Lay constructions of risk impact upon public health activities, and underpin social reactions to experiences and understandings of infectious diseases. In this article we explore the social construction of COVID-19 risk and responsibility by citizens of Jakarta and the Greater Jakarta Area, Indonesia. We draw upon digital diaries produced each week by 37 participants across a 5-week period from April to June 2020, a time of substantial policy flux in Indonesia. Key findings reflect the everyday construction of risk within the context of changing government restrictions regarding physical distancing. In a context of perceived confusion around government activity, the participants narrated individualised accounts of risk production, as they reflected upon the transmission of COVID-19. Our findings indicate the emergence of the concept of the ‘ignorant imagined other’ as underpinning how lay persons locate risks in unknowledgeable others and see themselves as socially protected through their own perceived knowledgeability of COVID-19. Our findings contribute to the literature on the social perception of infectious disease through the examination of the understudied context of urban Indonesia and by demonstrating the social location of risk in relation to a generalised imagined other, within a wider context of public health governance.
Rights
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Cite as
Abeysinghe, S., Amir, V., Huda, N., Humam, F., Lokopessy, A., Sari, V., Utami, A. & Suwandono, A. 2022, 'Risk and responsibility: Lay perceptions of COVID-19 risk and the 'ignorant imagined other' in Indonesia', Health, Risk & Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2022.2091751