Crisis, Community, and Control: Informal Social Sanctions and COVID-19 Rule Enforcement in New York City

• In Event: 50259 - Third Places: Beyond the Home and the Workplace

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed urban public spaces into arenas of informal governance, where individuals and communities—rather than formal authorities—enforced public health guidelines. This study examines how New York City neighborhoods became sites of informal rule enforcement, shaped by social norms, fear of contagion, political identity, and institutional messaging. While formal institutions lacked direct legal authority to enforce many public health measures, they tasked individuals and businesses with upholding compliance through social pressure, moral narratives, and control of public health information.
Drawing from Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, Erving Goffman’s face-work and public interactions, Elijah Anderson’s street codes, and Gary Alan Fine’s microcultures, this research explores how informal social sanctions—ranging from verbal confrontations to exclusion from social spaces—either enforced or undermined compliance. Additionally, Michel Foucault’s concept of panoptic surveillance contextualizes how institutions normalized interpersonal policing by framing compliance as a moral and civic obligation.
Using ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews and participant observations across two diverse New York City neighborhoods, this study identifies key patterns in compliance, resistance, and community policing of pandemic rules. Findings reveal that informal enforcement varied by neighborhood microculture and political ideology. Fear-based heuristics fueled strict informal policing in some communities, while others rejected pandemic rules as threats to autonomy and personal freedom. Face-work shaped interactions, with some using public shaming as a moral performance, while others avoided conflict to “save face.” Formal institutions—including media, public health agencies, and corporations—reinforced these dynamics by normalizing interpersonal policing and framing compliance as a civic duty.
This work highlights how governance in crisis is not solely institutional. It is deeply social, relying on community norms, moral emotions, and political divisions to nudge public behavior toward desired goals. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for designing public health policies that account for local enforcement dynamics in future crises.

Author

• Kent Rigg, Temple University