Social Structure Adaptation to COVID-19 offers global, interdisciplinary perspectives that examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the development trajectory of schools, public health, the workforce, and technology adoption. It explores social themes in society, economy, policy, and culture and draws on a social framework to describe key functions of societal adaptation to the pandemic.

Edited by Suresh Nanwani and William Loxley, the volume is grounded in the study of system components and their objectives to improve overall well-being given the ill effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapters explore interconnected social networks and how sectors restructured themselves to stabilize or transform society. International contributors from 20 countries offer case studies that highlight key themes including personal connectivity, societal equality, well-being, big data, and national resilience. They predict how impactful the pandemic might be in reshaping the future and assess how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected school system shutdown, public health collapse, business closures, public policy failure, and technology-driven social media acceleration.

Offering insights into how institutions and sectors work together in times of crisis, and how COVID-19 has restructured social behavior, Social Structure Adaptation to COVID-19 will be valuable reading for scholars and students of sociology, political science, anthropology, comparative international development, psychology, and education. It will also be of interest to policymakers concerned with education, work and organizations, and media and technology.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 international license.

Suresh Nanwani is Professor in Practice in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, the United Kingdom. He has more than 35 years of development work experience in international organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is a certified mediator with the Center for Effective Dispute Resolution, the United Kingdom, and an associate certified coach with the International Coaching Federation. He is the author of Organization and Education Development: Reflecting and Transforming in a Self-Discovery Journey (Routledge, 2021).

William Loxley is a former principal education specialist at the Asian Development Bank and executive director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Academic Achievement (IEA) headquartered in the Netherlands. He is now retired and living in the Philippines, and he maintains an advisory role in education at the above institutions. He also previously worked at the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program in Vietnam, and the Peace Corps in the Philippines.