Social Change in the Covid-19 Era: A Retrospective

Abstract

This article offers a retrospective sociological reassessment of the COVID-19 pandemic as a case of dramatic social change (DSC), examining which transformations proved enduring, which were reversed, and how the crisis exposed the theoretical and methodological limits of sociological analysis. Drawing on the DSC framework, the paper analyses the pandemic as a large-scale disruptive event affecting social structures, institutional trust, digitalization, and social inequalities. Rather than treating the pandemic as a uniform rupture, the article emphasizes the temporal, uneven, and context-dependent character of crisis-induced transformations, showing that processes of persistence, adaptation, and reconfiguration unfolded differently across social domains. In this sense, the pandemic is interpreted not only as a catalyst for change but also as a lens through which existing structural tensions and inequalities became more visible. The article further contributes by extending the DSC framework beyond its predominantly psychological applications, demonstrating its relevance for analyzing institutional dynamics, collective identities, and crisis governance from a sociological perspective. At the methodological level, it engages with critiques of linear explanatory models, arguing that global crises such as COVID-19 are better understood as non-linear, co-evolving processes characterized by interdependencies, feedback loops, and temporal variability. By situating the pandemic within a broader context of polycrisis, the paper highlights the need for multi-level, flexible, and reflexive sociological approaches capable of capturing complex and unstable forms of social change.