- Convenors:
-
Timothy Cooper
(University of Cambridge)
Till Trojer (London Business School)
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- Format:
- Panel Discussion
- Start time:
- 20 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how creative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have called for a reconsideration of existing ethical orientations to media, technology, and practice.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers that explore how creative responses to the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic have called for a reconsideration of existing ethical orientations to media, technology, and practice. Focusing on the relationship between creativity, crisis, and their technological mediation requires considering ethics as a reflexive process forged in correspondence with those usually viewed as "other", rather than as the domain of individuality or self-cultivation.
Take, for example, ethnographic filmmakers whose practices are enmeshed in a triangular relationship with their viewers and interlocutors. During the pandemic, streaming services like Vimeo and YouTube have allowed multiple interlocutors to participate in post-production processes despite physical distances in ways which collapse the distinction between participant and audience. Similarly, during lockdowns many social, religious, and life events have had to rely upon other technologies that simulate co-presence, causing many to reconsider the place of social media in ritual practice and to question what constitutes the "being there" of participation and presence.
These are just two examples of the myriad ways in which the ethics of ethnographic representation, collaboration, and participation have been propelled to the forefront of creative and mediated practices by the uncertainties introduced by COVID-19. This panel welcomes papers that foreground reflexive engagements on the relationship between face-to-face practice and its digital mediation and how the pandemic has transformed notions of presence and co-presence. Together we hope to find ways of thinking differently about the place of agency, ethics, and crisis and discuss innovative and creative ways of doing anthropology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Kari Dahlgren (Monash University) Yolande Strengers (Monash University) Larissa Nicholls (Monash University) Rex Martin (Monash University) Sarah Pink (Monash University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes the collaborative potential of videoconferencing, participant video recording, and related insights on digitally mediated co-presence that came out of online ethnographic research on the impact of emerging technologies on domestic practices in Australia.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses an ongoing ethnographic research project which explores how emerging technologies are changing digital-enabled lifestyles across a number of social practice domains in the Australian home, including working, studying and collaboration, entertainment, comfort and care, housekeeping, transport, and energy-related practices involving emerging technologies, platforms and services. Many of these aspects of life, and the role of digital technologies in mediating them, have altered significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the possibilities for participating in and conducting ethnographic research. In order to accommodate the requirements of physical distancing restrictions, we adapted our research methods by replacing face to face ethnography and home tours with video conferencing calls, participant led virtual home tours on smartphones and tablets, and participant recorded videos of household routines. In this paper, we reflect on these methods, the forms of co-presence they created, and especially highlight the potential that emerged as participants were given control of the camera and webcam, and thus influence on the ethnographer's gaze. This created a more collaborative process, while also providing additional insights, such as how participants managed the virtual presence of researchers in their homes. These methods served not only to allow us to continue our research in a time of crisis, but reveal how this crisis has mediated--and been mediated by--emerging digital technologies, and may shape future possibilities for households as well as ethnographic methodologies.
Till Trojer (London Business School)
Paper short abstract:
In the context of my research experiences in Ethiopia and the making of an ethnographic documentary (“Arho”), the primary aim of this presentation is to provoke conversations that allow for an exchange of ideas and visions about what the future of (visual) ethics can, should or must look like.
Paper long abstract:
Insofar as ethnographic practice involves representing others, it always raises political and ethical questions of the power asymmetry between the researcher and the people they are working with. Unfortunately, in the last few years Universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, have moved quickly from seeing ethics as a process that can help think through research, to treating ethics as a form of compliance and subtle form of censorship.
This development raises fundamental methodological and moral questions about consent and responsibilities of anthropologists conducting ethnographic research. If we consider anthropology (ideally) to be a reflexive dialogue, a co-production, and re-discovery of knowledge, how can this help us think about the ethical and political implications of ethnographic research? After all, is this not what participant observation teaches us? To question, rethink, and reflect upon our intellectual abilities and moral resources? How then can make our reflexive practices visible when presenting our work? Furthermore, is moving towards online research and correspondences via social media really “innovative” or are these new methodological approaches just posing more challenges to the key ethical research principles of consent, voluntary participation, and vulnerability?
In the context of my concrete research experiences among pastoral groups in north-eastern Ethiopia and the making of an ethnographic documentary (“Arho”), the primary aim of this presentation is to provoke conversations that allow for an exchange of ideas and visions about what the future of (visual) ethics can, should or must look like.