On the 9th March 2020 the Italian president Giuseppe Conte placed the country in lockdown as a preventative measure against the threat of the growing COVID-19 virus. As the first western democracy to restrict the movement of an entire country this move sparked what would become an international wave of emergency lockdown measures. At its peak in Italy COVID-19 claimed 919 lives in one day. As the measures continued into a third month the wider economic, political and social repercussions of this extensive lockdown became as pertinent as the death count. Through the operationalisation of an analytical framework that queries narratives of state responsibility, uncertainty and freedom in the reaction to the COVID-19 virus, as paralleled to the an auto-ethnographic account of an anthropologist quarantined with a Roman family this study will interpret the realities of life in lockdown for those living in Italy during this unprecedented health crisis.

Abstract

On the 9th March 2020 the Italian president Giuseppe Conte placed the country in lockdown as a preventative measure against the threat of the growing COVID-19 virus. As the first western democracy to restrict the movement of an entire country this move sparked what would become an international wave of emergency lockdown measures. At its peak in Italy COVID-19 claimed 919 lives in one day. As the measures continued into a third month the wider economic, political and social repercussions of this extensive lockdown became as pertinent as the death count. Through the operationalisation of an analytical framework that queries narratives of state responsibility, uncertainty and freedom in the reaction to the COVID-19 virus, as paralleled to the an auto-ethnographic account of an anthropologist quarantined with a Roman family this study will interpret the realities of life in lockdown for those living in Italy during this unprecedented health crisis.