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- Convenors:
-
Patricia Bluteau
(Coventry University)
Joshua Bluteau (coventry university)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 20 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Covid has made it difficult to conduct traditional ethnographic research, yet provided numerous contexts worthy study. This panel discusses conducting anthropology during Covid, offering new methodological approaches and demonstrating the richness of anthropological research during a pandemic.
Long Abstract:
This panel calls for anthropologists, medical anthropologists and their partners to engage with the phenomenon of Covid and ask questions as to the placidness and purpose of anthropologists within a pandemic. Papers that question how inherently social anthropological methodologies can be adapted to respond to periods of enforced distance and isolation will be welcome. As will papers that report on the use of anthropological or quasi-anthropological methods by others. Papers that engage with the anthropology of health and pandemic more generally will also be considered.
We particularly welcome collaborative submissions from colleagues working with non-anthropologists using ethnographic, quasi-ethnographic or autoethnographic methods that have explored alternative approaches to anthropological research during the pandemic.
Through a consideration of methodological flexibility in the period of pandemic this panel hopes to embrace the creativity and dynamism of responsive anthropology. Offering hope for the future and embracing the scope of anthropological endeavour as a means of investigating hard to reach spaces.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 20 January, 2022, -Federica Manfredi (University of Torino (Italy))
Paper short abstract:
How can ethnographers explore experiences of social isolation in "fine grained details"? Ethnographically based on an experimental practice-methodology, this paper reports preliminary results of a research realized during pandemic isolation in Italy and Portugal during 2021.
Paper long abstract:
Covid-19 imposed dramatic changes on human life on a global scale, moulding behaviors and sociality in order to contain the spread of Covid-19 virus. New conditions visibilized and increased old inequalities: differences for the access to resources (as the internet connection, laptops or PCs), cut off millions of people from online interactions, while others intensified so much screen-based activities that the neologism "Zoom Fatigue" was coined to express the new efforts for the social performances in virtual spaces.
This paper is interested in discussing a practice-based ethnography developed in virtual Italy and Portugal during 2021 about practices individuals address to themselves. How the body perception and the acts of body cares were influenced by pandemic restrictions and the over-exposure to screens?
Research's results suggest that measures to limits Covid, such as home-isolation, use of masks and social distancing, affected how we think the body and we take care of us in order to enhance our social performativity. Pandemic shaped new human experiences and cultural behaviors connected to the biology of the virus and of the humans: this paper presents visual material co-created with research-partners offering the chance to unfold the embodiment of old inequalities and new strategies based on post-colonial and Eurocentric models of excellence.
This paper originates from a doctoral project (FCT grant SFRH/BD/131914/2017), in cooperation with «EXCEL», supported by Foundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (grant PTDC/SOC-ANT/30572/2017), Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa - PI Chiara Pussetti.
Jennifer Louise Creese (University of Leicester) John-Paul Byrne (Royal College of Physicians of Ireland) Niamh Humphries (Royal College of Physicians of Ireland)
Paper short abstract:
We describe a novel ethnographic method, Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME), developed when COVID-19 prevented traditional ethnography on the work of hospital doctors in Ireland. We reflect on using this evolved ethnographic method to explore lived experiences collaboratively in new ways.
Paper long abstract:
Hospital-based ethnography is a well-established method for medical anthropology. However, the effects of COVID-19 – restrictions on hospital access, heightened workloads for doctors, and a highly transmissible virus – have made hospital-based ethnography practically and ethically unfeasible during the pandemic. Faced with a lack of traditional access, we were forced into a decision about our research – stop the project? Drop the ethnographic component? Or evolve ethnography to a new form, drawing on technology already pervasive in medicine itself?
In response, we designed a Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) method to gather observations and reflections from doctors practicing in Irish hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants describe and reflect on their experiences of day-to-day work in WhatsApp conversations with researchers every few days across 12 weeks. The resulting data, while following an ethnographic lived-experience approach, may invite criticism – is it ethnography, in the sense that we as a discipline traditionally understand, evaluate and value it? On one hand, it is missing the traditional observational “thick description” of ethnographic data. On the other, it still follows core principles of “learning ethnographically” (Varis, 2015) about hospital doctors' work, and incorporates a “distributed reflexivity” (Bieler et al, 2020) unpacking the challenges of work in the Irish health system collaboratively with interlocutors.
In this paper, we outline our novel MIME method and reflect on developing and undertaking the method, addressing questions of its legitimacy as a “real” ethnographic method and the insight it brings into professional experiences and cultures of healthcare work.
Elizabeth Elliott (World Health Organization, Lao PDR Country Office) Sengchanh Kounnavong (Lao TPHI) Shogo Kubota (WHO) Ounkham Souksavanh (None)
Paper short abstract:
Community engagement in Lao PDR effectively utilises participatory and anthropology-based methods to empower locally-driven planning for COVID-19 responses and essential healthcare. Shifting the national public health approach from unidirectional to inclusivity involves challenges and negotiations.
Paper long abstract:
Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed public health high on national agendas whilst highlighting that this sector alone cannot be responsible for ‘health’. This is particularly apparent in Lao PDR, where an under-resourced, inconsistent and aid-dependent state healthcare and governance system serving a diverse and dispersed population creates challenges for sustainable and locally-driven action. However, Lao implementors are aware that the key to mitigating impacts of COVID-19 lies not in top-down directives but the active engagement of communities in decision-making through increased trust. Shifting away from these habitual patterns therefore requires a change in approach.
A community engagement initiative (CONNECT) designed by WHO and the Lao PDR Ministry of Health combines ethnographic and participatory methods to explore community perspectives and capacities, leading to concrete plans for COVID-19 responses and essential healthcare. Activities such as “Orange Tree” have practical and symbolic value in building and representing agency and relationships. This paper dissects the impacts, reactions and shifts in perspective among community members, health staff and local authorities, arguing this approach is effective in empowering context-specific actions requiring minimal resources and breaking the user-service provider dichotomy.
However, for sustainability, this approach must become institutionalised and requires collaboration across sectors and disciplines. From an anthropological perspective, this also poses dilemmas and necessitates compromise and negotiations. Can a non-homogenous ‘community’ be inclusively represented and their real priorities reflected in a plan which also answers specific public health outcomes? Are government staff able to step outside their hierarchy and re-position themselves as facilitators and listeners?
Joshua Bluteau (coventry university) Patricia Bluteau (Coventry University)
Paper short abstract:
Covid has come to be treated as a mythic disease. Alongside other well known illnesses such as Cancer or Aids, Covid has acquired cultural capital and disrupted traditional notions of body and care. This paper examines the role of digitisation in this phenomenon.
Paper long abstract:
When Covid first became known to the general populous in the UK it was something that was happening abroad – and othered accordingly. When the first cases were reported in the UK, skepticism reigned, and cases were likened to Flu. However, it did not take long for COVID to gain a cultural classification as something more than a mere seasonal illness. As the first pandemic within a post-digital world, the use of social media and other forms of digital communication dissemination have helped to transform covid into a mythic disease. The authors of this paper consider how digitisation has contributed to the transformation of ill people into dangerous bodies and asks what role public health messages have in this shift. Drawing on ethnographic vignettes gathered from an adapted form of immersive cohabitation, this paper comments on the impact public health messaging has on the crafting of cultural notions of illness and the effect this has on individual’s lived experience.