âLife canât just be working all week and then going to the supermarket on Saturday. It just canât be. That life is not human.â So said paleoanthropologist Juan Luis Arsuaga in a widely shared interview with EL PAÃS last year. At the time, the Spanish government had declared a nationwide home lockdown in a bid to control the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly one year on, Alberto del Campo, a doctor in anthropology, has taken a closer look at this idea. In his new book
La Vida Cotidiana en Tiempos de la Covid (or, Daily Life in Times of Covid), Del Campo pulls together a dozen studies that investigate how the health crisis has impacted daily life, turning what was once simple and routine into highly prized activities. The newly unemployed who dream of going back to work, the working mothers overwhelmed without their support network, the youngsters who have had to change their sex lives, the people who want to wake up without being afraid of contagion â these ar