The Covid-19 pandemic was a global test of the dynamic relationship between individual freedom and collective responsibility in the context of public health and health policy. The numerous measures enacted at the local, national, and international levels – from social distancing to the wearing of hygienic masks; from lockdown to vaccination recommendations or mandates – sparked both waves of solidarity and fierce opposition. The proposed paper draws on empirical material collected during a publicly funded three-year research project in Switzerland to analyze the role of religious and secular worldviews in shaping compliant and non-compliant attitudes toward measures restricting individual freedom and choices in the name of public health. The paper combines a comparative analysis of long-format semi-structured interviews conducted with people from a diverse range of socio-religious backgrounds with a theoretical reflection on the interrelation between worldviews and risk perception.
The paper’s starting point is a dual criticism of essentialist approaches to religion and secularity as well as objectivist approaches to risk. The paper employs Ann Taves et al.’s concept of worldviews (Taves, Asprem, and Ihm 2018; Taves 2020; see also Droogers and Harskamp 2014; Vidal 2008) and Leonard Primiano’s (1995) concept of vernacular religion to examine the underlying premises that contribute to individual world-making processes and shape the perception of and interaction with the social and material environment. In a similar vein, it draws on inputs from folklore studies (Goldstein 2004, 2015; Kitta 2012, 2019) and medical humanities (Engebretsen and Baker 2022) that call attention to the narrative dimension of risk awareness and prevention and promote the study of the vernacular construction of risk.
However, the paper seeks to move beyond these approaches, in particular by critiquing their excessive focus on the individual at the expense of social and structural factors. To remedy this shortcoming, the paper suggests revamping Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky’s project of “cultural analysis” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Douglas 1992; see also Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990), which, in a Durkheimian fashion, relates individual attitudes to social contexts.
The paper demonstrates that different worldviews can coalesce in times of crisis in light of their relative positioning to competing worldviews. In this respect, the semantic content of a particular worldview is less important for the perception of risk than its relational coordinates in the social field. The analysis results in a complex picture that defies a simple binary distinction between conformity and deviance. Against this backdrop, the paper argues that research should not unilaterally focus on non-compliant attitudes that challenge public health policies but should rather account for the diversity of worldviews underlying both compliant and non-compliant attitudes to tease out the constitutive role of their relational dynamics.
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This paper examines how religious and secular worldviews shape attitudes toward Covid-19 public health measures, drawing on empirical data from a three-year research project in Switzerland. Using a comparative analysis of semi-structured interviews, it critiques essentialist views on religion and objectivist approaches to risk. The study employs concepts from worldviews research, vernacular religion, folklore studies, and medical humanities to explore the narrative construction of risk. Moving beyond individual-centered approaches, it integrates cultural analysis to highlight how worldviews interact within social contexts. The findings challenge a binary view of compliance and non-compliance, emphasizing that risk perception is shaped more by relational positioning than by worldview content. The paper argues for a more comprehensive analysis of both compliant and non-compliant attitudes to better understand their underlying social dynamics.