Contributions by international intellectuals on the possible sociocultural effects of the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, governments took measures at the end of September 2020, whose future consequences are uncertain. Faced with this reality, current societies consult international intellectuals as mediators of the possible sociocultural effects, from which questions emerge, such as: what social meaning is given to international intellectuals as mediators of the possible sociocultural effects after the Covid-19 pandemic? Specifically, what are the future post-pandemic sociocultural effects that international intellectuals foresee, and how will these future sociocultural effects be interpreted? Understanding them would help public policy planners to foresee their effects with greater certainty. To achieve this, the theories of modernity and social mediation are applied, due to their reflective contributions on the current situation; accompanied by a descriptive exploratory investigation based on a content analysis with a comparative discursive method; intentional sampling and techniques from grounded theory for the selection and analysis of the content of the speeches. The results indicate that international intellectuals are socially recognized as an authority specialized in the criticism and appreciation of possible consequences due to the philosophical, theoretical, and practical handling of the phenomenon in question. They are able to foresee the future post-pandemic effects: the metamorphosis of the prevailing systems; the emergence of types of societies, such as the conjunctural, the adaptable, the mutable, and the dominant, interpreting these as discourses that construct subjectivities. The recommendations are to investigate how society legitimizes discursive changes as symptoms of Covid-19 change