The COVID-19 pandemic is a disaster, and disasters do not just happen. They are not natural phenomena or accidents of nature. They are caused. Despite constant references to “natural” disasters in the media, critical disaster research has not framed disasters as natural since the 1980s. Natural hazards certainly exist, but they are not framed as hazards until they intersect with human populations. That is to say, a hurricane in the mid-Atlantic is not a hazard, though it may become one. Human choices and their products and effects in the sociocultural and material world convert hazards into disasters. A great many of those priorities and choices are driven and shaped by economic values, priorities, structures, and practices. In that sense, economic anthropology, with its emphasis on how human societies provision themselves at the societal level and how choices are made at both the societal and individual levels, can contribute to a greater understanding of disasters, their root causes, the drivers of risk, and their outcomes, as well as to policies to reduce risk and diminish impacts of all sorts and at all levels.

Critical disaster research frames disasters not as one-off phenomena but as events or processes that are socially constructed, unfolding over time and profoundly connected to normal ongoing social processes and practices that create risk (Hewitt 1983; Wisner et al. 2004). In that sense, the term pandemic can be both a metaphor for a global process of risk construction and a specific instance of that process. In effect, such processes are ultimately the results of conscious and unconscious choices made by human beings regarding their relationships with each other and their priorities in the allocation of social and material resources. Disasters, including the pandemic, are therefore profoundly influenced by deeply rooted economic structures, organizations, practices, and ideological constructs informing global approaches to development that prioritize economic growth over social and environmental values and needs, providing both justification and operational guidelines for policies and practices that are key factors in driving disaster occurrence.

Framing the pandemic as a disaster, in-depth ethnographic research by economic anthropologists can reveal assumptions, priorities, and choices in normal economic conditions that either exacerbate or reduce vulnerability and exposure to the virus (Briggs and Lovell 2020; Faas et al. 2020). In particular, the dominant ideologies and practices of development, the latest of which is neoliberalism, are consistently implicated in the construction of the vulnerability of large segments of the world for the last half century, indeed, for the last half millennium (Cannon and Müller-Mahn 2010). Economic anthropology can illuminate how ideologies and practices energizing the political economy frame social realities for people at multiple organizational levels as they negotiate, within the contexts of daily existence, the hazards of their environment, their vulnerability, their exposure, and the concatenation of all three in the event and process of a disaster (Jones and Murphy 2009). In exploring these issues in the context of the pandemic, economic anthropology can shed new light on such core concepts as altruism, self-interest, efficiency, social solidarity, reciprocity, mutualism, and voluntarism, particularly as they relate to seeking alternatives to the current neoliberal model of the global economy. In that context, the virus has stimulated the further development of such alternative economic strategies as localization of economies, degrowth, commoning, and horizontality (Wilson 2020).

COVID-19 大流行是一场灾难，而灾难不仅会发生。它们不是自然现象或自然事故。它们是造成的。尽管媒体不断提到“自然”灾害，但自 1980 年代以来，重大灾害研究并未将灾害视为自然灾害。自然灾害当然存在，但直到它们与人口相交时才被视为灾害。也就是说，大西洋中部的飓风不是危险，尽管它可能会变成危险。人类的选择及其在社会文化和物质世界中的产物和影响将危害转化为灾难。许多这些优先事项和选择是由经济价值、优先事项、结构和实践驱动和塑造的。从这个意义上说，经济人类学，

重大灾害研究并非将灾害视为一次性现象，而是将灾害视为社会建构的事件或过程，随着时间的推移而展开，并与产生风险的正常持续社会过程和实践密切相关（Hewitt  1983；Wisner et al.  2004）。从这个意义上说，大流行一词既可以是风险构建的全球过程的隐喻，也可以是该过程的特定实例。实际上，这些过程最终是人类对彼此之间的关系以及他们在社会和物质资源分配中的优先顺序做出的有意识和无意识选择的结果。因此，包括大流行在内的灾害受到根深蒂固的经济结构、组织、实践和意识形态结构的深刻影响，这些结构、组织、实践和意识形态结构为全球发展方法提供了信息，这些方法将经济增长置于社会和环境价值和需求之上，为政策和实践提供了理由和操作指南是驱动灾害发生的关键因素。

将大流行视为一场灾难，经济人类学家的深入民族志研究可以揭示正常经济条件下的假设、优先事项和选择，这些假设、优先事项和选择会加剧或减少病毒的脆弱性和暴露（Briggs and Lovell  2020；Faas 等人2020） . 特别是，在过去半个世纪，事实上，在过去半个千年里，占主导地位的意识形态和发展实践，其中最新的是新自由主义，始终与构建世界大部分地区的脆弱性有关（Cannon 和 Müller -马恩 2010）。经济人类学可以阐明激发政治经济活力的意识形态和实践如何为多个组织层面的人们构建社会现实，因为他们在日常存在的背景下，他们的环境危害、他们的脆弱性、他们的暴露以及所有三者的串联在灾难的事件和过程中（琼斯和墨菲 2009）。在大流行背景下探索这些问题时，经济人类学可以对诸如利他主义、自利、效率、社会团结、互惠、互惠主义和自愿主义等核心概念提供新的见解，特别是因为它们与寻找当前的替代方案有关。全球经济的新自由主义模式。在这种情况下，病毒刺激了经济本地化、去增长、共同化和横向化等替代经济战略的进一步发展（Wilson  2020）。