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Contribution short abstract:

What are the dangers of privileging digital fieldwork during pandemic? We will point to Western centric biases in promoting Digital Anthropology and reasons why in Dagestan – location with universal access to the digital technology and good network coverage – digital ethnography fails.

Contribution long abstract:

Pandemic expanded the anyway growing field of Digital Anthropology (Horst & Miller 2012; Hine 2000), where digital media is used as tools, methods or subject of study. New ideas, methods and reflections about the collected data are discussed and applied also by those who never planed to explore the field of Digital Anthropology. ‘How to conduct fieldwork during the pandemics?’ was the question many anthropologists tried to answer, experimenting with various digital methods and tools. Having experimented ourselves and having failed, we ask: how to, after all, conduct on-site fieldwork during pandemics? What additional problems and dilemmas arise?

In this paper, based on digital and non-digital fieldwork in Dagestan (Russian Federation), we discuss concerns and ethical dilemmas connected with fieldwork during epidemics and ask: what we got wrong with assuming that almost everybody’s life went online? We will point to the wrong assumptions and Western centric biases behind the “surge” to online methods during the pandemics. We will also add to the existing literature skeptical towards online methods by pointing to other (than mentioned before in the literature) reasons why they are not applicable in certain, less evident, contexts. We will conclude with the far-reaching risks of over-promoting/privileging digital fieldwork during the pandemics.