THE OPERATION OF POWER IN PANIC BUYING DURING CORONA OUTBREAK

Abstract

ABSTRACT Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has become a trending topic nowadays because it has affected the life of many people all around the world. One of the events during Corona outbreak is panic buying. During the pandemic, it is revealed that power is omnipresent which means that it operates everywhere in many forms. To analyze how power operates, the writer uses the theory of power by Foucault (1980) since a number of his writing are applicable as it connects not only power and knowledge but also power and truth. In his book, Foucault (1980) denoted that knowledge is power and when there is power, there is resistance and they are all connected. In order to analyse how power operates, qualitative research methodology was conducted to find the meaning behind it so that the research finding will be more related to real life. The whole series of panic buying begins with the lack of knowledge about Covid-19. When people realize that Covid-19 is not just an ordinary flu and think that the government did not take this seriously, they started not to believe what the government had said and it led to resistance.The results show that power does operate in panic buying during the corona outbreak although nowadays, there have been some changes regarding the Covid-19.