In the contemporary West, masks are usually more likely to be objects of entertainment than the awe-inspiring entities they have been in other times and places. But in the West, masks and masking have undergone long-term processes of sequestration, moving them from the centre of social life into specific, regulated pockets, often commodifying and trivialising them on the way.

Many societies around the world have maintained masking traditions up until the present time, albeit inflected many ways by modernising and globalising dynamics. Manipulating the human face by masks, whether to hide it wholly or partly, or alternatively to draw attention to it, seems to have been very widespread throughout much of human history. The historical / anthropological record shows that masks and masking have been present in most, if not all, human societies. There is probably a Western bias in sociology’s relative lack of interest in masking. But anthropology has more systematically dealt with actual, physical-material masks, in terms of what they look like, and what types of work they have been and are put to, in diverse societies around the world, at different historical periods. The use of masks as ‘stage props’ by actors like doctors and dentists is another obvious Goffmanian focus. Both everyday talk and Goffmanian sociology deal with issues to do with a person’s face being ‘like a mask’. Sociology has often dealt with masks more as metaphor than concrete objects. Sociology has not had a great deal to say about masks and masking, at least in comparison to anthropology, where these inter-related topics have for a long time been a major investigative focus. Consequently, the masquerade surrounding Coronavirus has become a deadly serious globalised phenomenon, truly a matter of life and death. Masks have fast become ever more subject to various kinds of politicised dispute and controversy. But large parts of the population of the world have very recently donned, or are being compelled to wear, face masks, in response to the rapid spread of Covid-19. David Inglis, University of Helsinki, FinlandĬorona-Masquerade: It sounds like the name of a comic opera.

Maske til maskerade