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Be Kind: Negotiating Ethical Proximities in Aotearoa/New Zealand during COVID-19

By Susanna Trnka

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Cite As:
Trnka, Susanna. 2021. “Be Kind: Negotiating Ethical Proximities in Aotearoa/New Zealand during COVID-19.” Cultural Anthropology 36, no. 3: 368–380. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca36.3.04.

Abstract

Citizens do not merely respond to states of emergency; in democratic societies, they help constitute them. This essay analyzes New Zealanders’ engagements in ethical reasoning during the country’s first COVID-19 lockdown. Specifically, I examine how we can understand a variety of public responses to emergency measures—including breaching regulations, threatening rule-breakers, sealing off neighborhoods, and recasting citizen-returnees as “strangers”—as negotiations of ethical proximities focused on keeping appropriately close that which is thought should be near, and keeping distanced that deemed best held afar.

Keywords

Aotearoa; COVID-19; ethics; lockdown; New Zealand; proxemics; proximity; social distancing; state of emergency; state-citizen relations