engleski

Celebrations as deviance during the COVID-19 pandemic

Celebrations and commemorations are ways of marking special events in our lives or lives of our institutions, nation-states etc. With the exception of certain socially “unacceptable” celebrations, which usually occur at the margins of societies, celebrations are desired social and cultural phenomena with the purpose to strengthen group identity by providing them with the space and time to remind them of their shared values. However, with the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 states’ measures often included complete or partial lockdowns during which most celebrations have either been largely reduced or forbidden, consequently impacting customary ways in which they were held, or completely turning their organization into deviance from the new official social norm. In this paper, I will look at celebrations during the COVID-19 pandemic, by focusing on the period of 2020 and Croatia as a case in point, and analyze them within the sociology of deviance theoretical framework. Firstly, I will present an overview of the official measures regarding celebrations and commemorations implemented by the government bodies in Croatia in charge of the pandemic. Secondly, I will conduct a qualitative content analysis of existing national newspapers’ articles in order to show whether citizens have conformed to the new rules regarding celebrations and the ways in which they have tried to bypass or ignore them. Finally, I will show how the media have reported on celebrations during the pandemic, almost exclusively negatively as social deviations.

sociology of deviance ; symbolic interactionist perspective ; sociology of celebrations ; COVID-19 pandemic ; Croatia

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