COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND HUMAN COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLORE THE INTERRELATION

COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND HUMAN COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLORE THE INTERRELATION 

 As we all know that the subject matter of Anthropology is wide-ranging and can be said as limitless because it deals with the totalistic study of ‘Man’ who used to have a wide range of physical, social or cultural contexts and used to face limitless of issues. Anthropologists do engage themselves not only in the study of the human bio-cultural origin, evolution, its distribution and variations but also a great aspect of mankind or human being is also been studied along with all the mentioned aspects and that is human communication and behavioural pattern in respect to time and space. And this dimension is mainly being focused on by social-cultural anthropologists and social scientists. When we are concerned with a situation like the Coronavirus pandemic, we can study many dimensions of our life but can’t deny the role of the process of communication and our behaviour along with all those dimensions or can be studied separately.

               Human communication and behaviour are a dimension where both phenomena do mingle with each other. They are typically interconnected and influenced by each other. If we closely focus on this aspect then we will surely be able to recognise that a huge change in our process of communication and behaviour has impacted tremendously due to this Coronavirus outbreak, the pandemic situation and lockdown and so on related to this. The word ‘Pandemic’ and ‘Lockdown’ it-selves are negatively hitting our communication patterns and our central nervous system to control our behaviour accordingly. In this critical situation, our behaviours play important role in our livelihood, how we are perceiving things, how we are accepting things, how we are living in this period and how we are expressing our responses to others through the so-called ‘social distancing’, which rather should be ‘physical distancing’ through connected socially with all of our close ones.

               So now, if we separately look at each of the phenomena, we are familiar with the matter that the communication itself can be intrapersonal, interpersonal or mass communication. If we talk about our intrapersonal communication, right now we have a feeling of uncertainty about our future and lifestyle along with a fear of being infected or what would happen if our family members or close ones somehow get this infection. Now we are more conscious regarding our health, own immunity power and lifestyle than in the pre-COVID period. Our thinking mentality is going continuously changing with each step of the Coronavirus. So, there is a huge change in interacting with own selves due to this situation.

                What is about interpersonal and mass communication? It is undoubtedly transformed to the digital world rather than being physically connected due to the enforcement of ‘Social distancing’ which is unexpected or can be said unfavoured by all of us as a way of living within our social-cultural lifestyle. We may love to use social media platforms and web-based entertainment for our intrapersonal enjoyment but when it is the only way to connect with the person opposite to me, it would surely be not-favoured. The digital world is something that emerging along with the advancement of our lifestyle or can be said it is advancing our daily lifestyles from many dimensions. But can we deny the emotional connection of being physically connected with our family members, relatives, friends and loved ones?  No!  the transformation of our physical classroom to the virtual one, our discussions and meetings through different audio-video conferencing platforms are making us somehow less present in the situation as we used to be before when we don’t have any fear of getting infected by anyone. For being at home, not in a formal environment like classrooms for learning or meeting or conferencing environment, our destructions are working more on us. The virtual platforms, and digitally new adaptations are of course suitable, more advanced and easier for a set of people, but what is about those who are unable to effort this advancement, may be due to their economic instability or maybe for other reasons as well! There are a huge number of people whose substantial needs cannot be fulfilled from home. they have to go out to earn and to have their daily meal. It will create asocial boundaries or barriers in various societies. The meaning and feelings of proxemics and haptics are changing as we all are far away from each other and trying to live our life, trying to connect, trying to complete our duties regarding our teaching-learning or even our substance through the digital platforms. This means we are welcoming a ‘new normal with the new tradition of ‘Work from home

                So, what I am trying to mean through the above focusing points is that the way we are pursuing our process of communicating with other people is not as we normally do expect. Thus, there are a lot of changes and negative impacts along with positive visions somewhere. Social scientists or especially anthropologists can focus on the dynamic process of changing this aspect of our life. We can even study in a comparative sense, like what changes and impacts have been working in their communication process who can afford the digital world easily and what about those people who are unable to access these platforms, what are the changes have been made in both the spheres people living in, how they are perceiving this kind of lifestyle, what are their perspectives and how they are accepting and managing this way of living. We can study on what are the consequences we all are facing and how we can manage and adapt the way of communicating with others being far away and so on.

 

Now our behaviour is something that starts with how we are accepting anything, after perceiving those things and ends with how we are approaching our responses or feedback. The process between both of these endpoints is influenced by our emotional and biological way of living. Our lifestyle has been deeply affected due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. The way we are experiencing the lockdown is different from person to person, different in a different social context and economic status. So our experience is not the same for all of us. Some people are at home, some people are stuck between their migration and coming back to their place and some even are staying far by choice or unable to come, so we can say that if our situations are not the same then our behaviour and thinking would, of course, won’t be similar as well. The way we are experiencing our work from home is also not similar. Some people can easily manage their work from home and can be paid but this situation is not the same for all the other people around. Economic condition is such a matter that greatly impacts our mind and psychological stability. The mental condition of a student who doesn’t to be paid at the end of the month won’t be similar to his or her parents who are supposed to go out to earn money and sustain their family, so their behaviour according to the acceptance or overcoming of this critical situation will differ in a great manner.

            The way we are behaving with our respected senior citizens is also different among different families. Most of the family are taking more and more care of their health and emotion. Some grandparents are spending a good time with their grandchildren but we have also heard that some people are not caring for their senior-aged relatives even their parents just for the misconceptions that they may attack by the coronavirus and can infect others who will be closer to them and sending them like in a prison, all alone. So there are a lot of positive as well as negative behavioural patterns that can be seen just because of the fear of getting infected by the virus.   

            We are having healthy foods, cooked in our kitchen without touching the street foods for a couple of months. Our digestion system has already been adopted with its present processing. But there is a conflict between our physical needs and psychological need regarding our food habits. So how we are experiencing not having street foods will also affect how we are behaving with own ourselves or with our family members and this again would be different from person to person. After this lockdown maybe some of us won’t have that many street foods that we used to have before or some of us would have a lot of street foods to make or ourselves satisfied as it was a long time like in a hostel and having a routine unfavoured meal. Some of us are approaching that corona has taught us how to live a healthy lifestyle or some may approach that it has created a lot of burdens and barriers to their happiness. So how we are experiencing, how we are living in this situation and how we are managing all over the consequences are important aspects of research.

             We are staying informed all the time, looking at the news channels or internet sources to have daily news. This typical pandemic situation has influenced a little child to listen to news reports, a busy man or woman is spend his or her good times with their closest ones and family members, and some teenagers and husbands are having great interest to cook for their family members or sometimes doing various experiments, kids are also engaging themselves by having some productive practices like craft creations, drawing, creative writing or some people who do not have time to spend on watching movies or web series is now enjoying those on subscribed Netflix or Amazon Prime, even this situation has changed the behaviour of the typical housewives also who doesn’t have any kind of interest or opportunity to look at the news channels or listen to the daily news report analysis to stay tuned and connected with the current affairs. Of course, these all are our behavioural changes that have taken place during this lockdown.

        Our reactions to the risk factor also have some important changes like being Xenophobic (having a fear of shadow pandemic all the time), being a patient of the stock home syndrome, which forces us to stock our needs to sustain for long despite while we know that there may have scarcity of the goods in that store due to transport issues. The behaviour of over consciousness is also important, how people are going extra conscious or over, how the practice of hyper-suggestibility and collective whispering are covering our lifestyle behaviour is also a matter to focus on.

          The cases of domestic violence have also increased, what to say for that! There are a lot of couples who are unable to live together for their services or other issues, for this outbreak of virus people are being forced to be at home, they are not allowed to visit here and there whenever they want, some people are happily living by thinking that we will overcome this situation together but some people are heavily tempered for not going outside, there psychological disturbances making them uncomfortable to stay at home, they are getting tempered on small issues, sometimes being constantly arguing with one over another is escalating those issues and when the issues are going over control of their tolerance, it embarking as social and domestic violence.

          Even the norms and values are changing simultaneously when the participants of a webinar are not physically or sincerely attending a lecture rather he or she knows that they will receive the certificate as they have registered, for them certificate is more important than learning from the lecture and ultimately it is their fall in. This type of carelessness can be seen much less while we are physically present in front of each of us while attending a seminar or formal class or meeting.  

So, here I would like to conclude by looking at that it is always important to find out the root source of the issue before exploring the problem. But today we know the source is the Coronavirus outbreak and it has impacted and reshaped our lifestyle. As the concerned study is vast there may be a lot of aspects that may have been left out by me, but these are some of the points through which I have tried to establish the focusing area of two interrelated dimensions, the human communication process and human behaviour, which were significantly impacted by the Coronavirus outbreaking. Anthropological and other social scientific studies on both of these topics can surely be critically done concerning physical, social, cultural, economic and other human-related contexts.