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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores ethnography in the absence of a physical field, focusing on online sexist violence against Spanish feminists. Embracing a "postdigital" paradigm, it highlights the intertwined nature of online and offline spaces in shaping both feminist networks and research methodologies.

Paper Abstract:

A “traditional” ethnography often opens with the anthropologist's arrival to the field – an opening narrative that plays the crucial role of anchoring that description in the authority-giving personal experience of fieldwork (Pratt, 1986). Whilst contemporary studies to a much higher extent rely on studying “us” (e.g., Nader, 2002), incorporating interactions also within digital domains, the predominant anthropological methodological tool, participant observation, still delineates an enduring presence in physical spaces. But what happens when there is no physical place to study? This paper is underpinned by original ethnographic research delving into the phenomenon of sexist violence in digital spaces, with a specific focus on violence directed at feminists in Spain. The methods employed adhere to a "postdigital" paradigm (e.g., Coleman and Jandric, 2019), transcending the dichotomy of online/offline or analogue/digital, thereby facilitating an exploration of the embedded nature of digital media and associated practices in everyday life through a critical lens. This approach encompasses a diverse array of methods spanning the online/offline continuum. Through exemplifications derived from this research, the discussion deliberates on ethnography in the absence of a discernible physical field. It elucidates how, despite the absence of a conventional "place", physical space and embodiment assume significant roles not only in the experience of harm, but also in the construction of feminist networks and resistance in digital spaces and beyond. These phenomena can be conceptualised as dynamic countercultures evolving along the online-offline continuum, wherein participants concurrently inhabit physical and online spaces, disentangled from the confines of a geographical "place".