Welcome to the second, global-focused volume of Social Problems in the Age of COVID-19, a rapid-response project in public sociology intended to provide a broad audience with rigorous scholarly insight on social problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. All involved in this project have been compelled by the objective to provide timely and highquality scholarly insight on the effects of COVID-19 on social problems, which can be of use to scholars, students, activists, policymakers, journalists, and the interested public. The editors and authors expect these chapters will be of use to readers for making sense of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and its after-effects, just as they will inform policy decisions and engagement in social action.
The volume fits within the scholarly rubric of public sociology, and the editors are members of the Society for the Study of Social Problems’ (SSSP) Justice 21 Committee (J-21), whose creation was inspired by the 2000 Presidential Address of Professor Robert Perrucci, 48th President of the SSSP and founding member of J-21 (Perrucci, 2001). In his address, Dr Perrucci reminded SSSP members that much scholarship in the social problems field had become esoteric and abstract, thereby diminishing its utility as a resource for mitigating or solving the very problems which are its focus of study. Dr Perrucci's reminder was that the SSSP and the journal Social Problems were established within a model of scholarship that saw research and publication as integrated with social action to address pressing social problems. Since its establishment, the J-21 group has published a series of volumes titled Agenda for Social Justice (US-focused) and Global Agenda for Social Justice (globally focused). (Links to open-access copies of the volumes are available in the Key Resources.)
Since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, our editors, contributors, and publisher have not been satisfied to sit idly by watching massive social disruptions, especially as the negative effects of pandemic continue to fall upon marginalized populations. We were motivated by the sense that, especially in times of such crises, social scientists have something important to say, and that COVID-19 has complicated and accelerated existing global social problems and inequalities.