Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Development Society

Dear Colleagues,

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, one of the hymns of hope was the song “Andrà tutto bene” (Everything will be all right), composed by Cristovam (https://www.publico.pt/2020/09/29/impar/
noticia/milhao-mortos-vai-ficar-bem-cristovam-acredita-sim-1933339). To watch the video of this song, please access https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZIp_PKeZ0.

Currently (December 16, 2020), it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic generated a huge convulsion at the micro, meso and macrosocial levels, with a profound influence at the individual, social, economic, political, educational and health levels, among other dimensions, in a real global crisis, with people all over the world dying and becoming infected: 71,919,725 confirmed cases, 1,623,064 confirmed deaths in 220 countries, areas or territories with cases (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019).

Although there is already a vaccine for the coronavirus, there are still doubts and reservations, both about its effectiveness in practice and about the processes of acquisition and vaccination of the population worldwide.

We deem it pertinent to question whether everything “will be all right”, inasmuch that the impacts of the pandemic are multiple and interdependent: at the social, economic, health, political, educational, work and employment, ethnic-racial, freedoms and citizenship rights’ levels, which pose multiple and complex scientific, moral, social and political challenges to various agents in the post-COVID period. Thus, this Special Issue seeks to be a space for reflection on the aspects that shape the articulation between the complex and polyhedral processes of a pandemic crisis and the possible prospective scenarios in their various components and dimensions, namely the social, cultural, health, ecological, political and economic ones, developed from a positioning that favours the perspectives of the social sciences, emphasising, however, a plural scientific project centred on interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.

In this Special Issue, we welcome manuscripts of various types, such as research articles, reviews, and conceptual papers (whatever the methodology used) of a disciplinary or transdisciplinary nature, that seek to contribute to the analysis of a “Challenges of post-COVID-19 for a sustainable development society”.

What are the consequences of COVID-19, now in a more distanced analysis and with more information, as well as what will be the future that COVID-19 helped to shape? These are the main purposes of this Special Issue.

Dr. Sandro Serpa
Prof. Carlos Miguel Ferreira
Guest Editors

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