The spread of fear in the globalizing world: The case of COVID‐19

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Fatih Fuat Tuncer
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2162

ACADEMIC PAPER

The spread of fear in the globalizing world:

The case of COVID-19

Fatih Fuat Tuncer

Political Science and International Relations,

Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence

Fatih Fuat Tuncer, Political Science

and International Relations, _

Istanbul

Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Email: fftuncer@gelisim.edu.tr

Since the end of the Cold War, the concept of “globalization”has been one of the

main topics of social sciences. Globalization is a controversial topic due to its main

features and effects. Debates in this contex generally focuses on the “advantages

and disadvantages”of globalization. On one side of these debates, some advocate

that with globalization, people's lives have significantly improved and countries have

started to develop rapidly, while, on the other side, some argue that nature, culture,

and human life have faced grave threats and “global risk society”is being built.

Debates on global risk society seem to have accelerated in recent years. With the

COVID-19 outbreak, that emerged in China in December 2019 and went global, lead-

ing to a pandemic, it is seen that debates on “global risk society”started again in the

media and among social scientists. This article aims to explore the effect of globaliza-

tion on the spread of fear across the world by focusing on the case of COVID-19.

Along with the basic characteristics of globalization, such as “widening,”“deepening,”

and “acceleration,”fear seems to have spread all over the world and have forced peo-

ple to discuss the benefits and harms of globalization once more.

1|INTRODUCTION

“Globalization”has become the most popular conceptof the post-Cold

War era. This concept,to which social scientists have to refer in almost

every discussion or study, has now turned into a reality of the age we

live in. While manydebates and discussions continueon the reality and

inevitability of globalization, case studies based on globalization are

becoming increasingly important within social sciences. In international

relations, particularly, it is not possible to understand and interpret the

world today withoutexamining the effects of globalization. For this rea-

son, globalizationhas become one of the most emphasizedconcepts in

modern studieson international relations.This seems to be an expected

outcome considering the fact that the interaction among countries

increased especially in the post-Cold War period. Therefore, an event

occurring anywhere in the world goes global to the extent thatit can

affect and transform the social, political, economic, and cultural struc-

ture of first neighboring countries, then neighboring regions, and ulti-

mately the entireworld.

Coronavirus (COVID-19), which first appeared in China in late

2019, was not at first predicted to have the potential to negatively

affect people's lives across the world. Although Chinese officials and

the World Health Organization (WHO) claimed that the situation was

“under control”throughout December 2019, the outbreak gradually

got out of control and turned into a pandemic that afflicted the health,

economy, politics, culture, and psychology of almost the whole global

system. The ease of transportation across the world as a result of

advancing technology and failure to timely take necessary precautions

caused the coronavirus and the fear of the virus to spread all over the

world. Similarly, the outbreak has brought almostall economic activities

to a halt in China. Given the interconnectedness of financial markets,

the world has started to drift into a more severe economic crisis than

the 2008 crisis. Afterthe failure to prevent the spread of thevirus and

the loss of thousands of people, strict quarantine measures affecting

millions of people have been taken all over the world, especially in

Europe. The year2020 started with a test for humanity.This pandemic

is considered to have caused unprecedented outcomes for the world.

With the outbreakof COVID-19, economic andfinancial systems linked

to each other as a result of globalization seem to have collapsed, all

international organizations have been cancelled, and countries have

already closed borders or introduced severe restrictions. Manypolitical

Received: 31 March 2020Revised: 20 April 2020Accepted: 22 April 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2162

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2162.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd1of9

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2162