Living in a Time of Rupture: The Lived Experience and Resilience of Kashan Citizens during the COVID-19 Crisis

Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic was not merely a medical or epidemiological crisis but a profound social disruption that transformed multiple dimensions of everyday life. Beyond its impact on public health, the pandemic altered social interactions, economic activities, educational practices, family relationships, and cultural routines. By challenging the taken-for-granted assumptions that structure daily existence, it compelled individuals to reinterpret their habits, relationships, and understandings of the social world. From a sociological perspective, everyday life represents the arena in which social structures and human agency intersect. The pandemic therefore provides a valuable opportunity to examine how people experience uncertainty, construct meaning, and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.
This study focuses on the lived experiences of Kashan’s residents, a city characterized by strong kinship ties, dense social networks, enduring cultural traditions, and a distinct local identity. Rather than treating COVID-19 solely as a health emergency, the study approaches it as a disruptive social event that penetrated individuals’ lifeworlds and transformed the foundations of everyday experience. The research sought to answer three questions: How did people understand COVID-19? What was the essence of their lived experience of confronting the disease? And how did they interact with and adapt to the challenges imposed by the pandemic in everyday life?
Methodology
This study employed a qualitative design based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The phenomenological approach was selected because it enables an in-depth exploration of lived experience and focuses on how individuals interpret significant events within their social and cultural contexts.
Participants included men and women living in Kashan who had direct experience of different stages of the pandemic. Purposive sampling continued until thematic saturation. Data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interview transcripts were analyzed following IPA procedures, including repeated reading, significant statements identification, meaning units development, themes clustering, and interpretative analysis. Trustworthiness was enhanced through prolonged engagement with the data, reflexive interpretation, analytical procedures transparency, and rich contextual description. Ethical principles including informed consent, confidentiality, and voluntary participation were observed throughout the research process.
Findings
The analysis revealed a central interpretative theme: the disruption of the lifeworld and the continuous effort to reconstruct the practical and symbolic order of everyday life. Participants experienced the pandemic not simply as a disease but as a transformative event that destabilized assumptions concerning security, predictability, social relations, and trust.
The first theme concerned participants’ understanding of COVID-19. Perceptions evolved through a gradual process from denial and distancing to acceptance and reinterpretation. Initially, the virus was viewed as a distant and media-driven threat; however, as it entered family and community networks, it became a tangible reality that disrupted ordinary understandings of everyday life. Participants constructed meaning through the interaction of personal experience, cultural beliefs, social relationships, and institutional information. In this context, uncertainty became a defining feature of daily life, encouraging reliance on experiential knowledge and informal networks of interpretation.
The second theme concentrated on the experience of infection. Contracting the disease transformed COVID-19 from an abstract threat into an embodied reality. Participants described fear, vulnerability, isolation, and confrontation with mortality. Yet illness was not experienced solely as a physical condition. Participants consistently expressed worry about transmitting the virus to relatives and articulated a strong sense of obligation toward others, which featured prominently in their accounts. Consequently, illness emerged as a relational and ethical experience embedded within social and emotional networks.
The third theme addressed lifestyle transformation. The pandemic altered daily routines, reshaped domestic and public spaces, and transformed patterns of social interaction. Homes simultaneously became workplaces, educational settings, and spaces of emotional strain. Participants adopted new habits and reorganized everyday practices in an effort to regain stability and control. These adaptations represented more than behavioral adjustments; they reflected attempts to restore meaning, continuity, and predictability within a disrupted lifeworld. At the same time, economic pressures and structural inequalities significantly influenced individuals’ capacity to adapt.
The fourth theme concerned evaluations of governmental and public responses to the pandemic. Participants frequently referred to inconsistent communication, inadequate support, and perceived institutional inefficiency. Such experiences contributed to declining trust in formal institutions and generated feelings of uncertainty and abandonment. However, institutional distrust did not lead to passivity. Instead, individuals increasingly relied on family ties, kinship networks, and informal systems of support. The findings suggest that the erosion of institutional trust became a central mechanism through which everyday life was reorganized during the pandemic.
Conclusion
The findings demonstrate that COVID-19 constituted far more than a public health emergency; it represented a profound disruption of the everyday lifeworld. The pandemic challenged established meanings, routines, and expectations, compelling individuals to engage in ongoing processes of adaptation, reinterpretation, and reconstruction. Understanding the pandemic therefore requires attention not only to its biomedical dimensions but also to the social processes through which people respond to crisis.
The principal contribution of this study lies in conceptualizing the pandemic as a process of lifeworld disruption and reconstruction. This perspective moves beyond descriptive accounts of illness or lifestyle change and highlights the social mechanisms through which individuals restore order, meaning, and continuity under conditions of uncertainty. The findings further suggest that resilience is not simply an individual attribute but a socially embedded process emerging through networks of trust, care, solidarity, and collective meaning-making.
These results underscore the importance of institutional trust, transparent communication, and community participation in responding to large-scale crises. Effective policy responses should therefore engage not only with technical and medical aspects of emergencies but also with the lived realities of citizens and the social processes through which resilience is generated within local communities.