Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/288922 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Place Branding and Public Diplomacy [ISSN:] 1751-8059 [Volume:] 17 [Issue:] 4 [Publisher:] Palgrave Macmillan UK [Place:] London [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 397-407
Publisher: 
Palgrave Macmillan UK, London
Abstract: 
This paper offers a social phenomenological reading of the globally binding practice of ‘social distancing’ in light of the precautionary measures against the spreading of the Covid-19 virus. Amid speculation about the far-reaching effects of temporarily applicable measures and foresights about the advent of an ethos that has been heralded by the media as the ‘new normal’, the ubiquitous phenomenon of social distancing calls for a fundamental ontological elucidation. The purported hermeneutic that is situated in the broader place branding and experiential marketing literatures places Covid-19 in the shoes of Being, and, therefore, imagines how Being would behave ontologically if it were a virus. By arguing that the virus does operate like Being, five theses are put forward as experiential interpretive categories with regard to the ontological status of Covid-19. The adopted approach makes the following contributions to the extant literature: First, it addresses a wholly new phenomenon in place branding, namely a pre-branded place whose meaning is non-negotiable, globally applicable and seemingly equivalent to pure void. Second, it advances the application of phenomenological research in place branding and experiential consumption by highlighting the aptness of the so far peripheral (in the marketing discipline) strand of Heideggerian fundamental ontology. Third, it extends the meaning of place in the place branding literature, by showing how spatialization is the outcome of temporalization, in line with the adopted phenomenological perspective.
Subjects: 
Social distancing
Place branding
Experiential consumption
Covid-19
Social phenomenology
Fundamental ontology
Rhetoric
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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