Unprecedented?

Unprecedented? tells the story of the COVID-19 pandemic as one of political-economic rupture, where the basic fabric of economic and political rules was torn up and underlying power struggles and social injustices were exposed. Focusing on the case of Britain, but with lessons for all countries, this book offers a critical and evidence-based account of unprecedented events. In early 2020, many of the most basic building blocks of capitalism were transformed in a matter of weeks, thanks to the novel coronavirus. Workplaces and schools were closed, governments took on unprecedented debt, and new technologies had to be rapidly procured and rolled out in an effort to achieve control over the pandemic. Meanwhile, lurking inequalities-of class, race, gender, and geography-were deepened and exposed in new ways, and populations became dependent on murky alliances between states and corporate contractors. Exceptional profits were reaped by some, while large sections of society teetered on the edge of destitution and despair. Series Overview: PERC seeks to refresh political economy, in the original sense of the term, as a pluralist and critical approach to the study of capitalism. In doing so it challenges the sense of economics as a discipline, separate from the other social sciences, aiming instead to combine economic knowledge with various other disciplinary approaches.