Trouble with social cohesion: The geographies and politics of COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand.

In September 2020, the Centre for Informed Futures (Koi Tū) attributed the success of New Zealand's response to the great lockdown of March 2020 as a triumph of social cohesiveness. In this commentary we examine the use of terms such as 'society', 'resilience', 'nation' and 'social cohesion' in the light of the spread of the Delta variant, and the importance of geography and politics. We conclude that there is a need for a critical engagement with widely touted ideas of social cohesion.