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- Convenors:
-
Elisabeth Hsu
(University of Oxford)
Gillian Chan (University of Oxford)
Sonora English (University College London)
Yasmynn Chowdhury (University of Oxford)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 19 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Research on and during a pandemic is mired by limitations. This panel brings together medical anthropologists who have worked on different aspects of COVID-19. The sessions will focus on the inequalities observed in COVID-19 and the methodologies employed by anthropologists researching the pandemic.
Long Abstract:
The round table will focus on the: 1) the inequalities observed amidst the pandemic and, 2) methodologies employed by anthropologists researching the pandemic. In our first session, we explore the inequalities observed when a critical gaze is turned on the intersectional dynamics of gender, class and race as played out across the globe in Brazil, India, and the UK, tracing these differentiated experiences in care institutions, the digital landscape, and the wider population. In the second, we discuss the diverse and creative methods employed by anthropologists amidst COVID-19, in China, Pakistan and the UK, and the fraught positionality of the anthropologists observing, researching and being themselves enmeshed within the pandemic.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 19 January, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Confronted by limitations related to ethnographic research amid the COVID-19 crisis, I deploy complementary methods to present a street-level view of people’s perceptions towards the pandemic in Pakistan.
Paper long abstract:
Based on 18 months of language-competent long-term fieldwork from the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 up until vaccine rollout in August 2021, my research explores perceptions of the pandemic through the narratives of urban and rural dwellers in Lahore and Multan, two of Pakistan’s cities that were severely affected by the pandemic. Impeded by the pandemic to conduct ethnographic research due to multiple lockdowns in the country, I deployed alternative methods, such as telephonic and online interviews, online and in-person observations, and triangulation with surveys to collect 97 responses during the first 15 months of my fieldwork. However, owing to vaccine provision to all age brackets around June 2021, I transitioned to ethnographic research in the final 3 months and gathered data through 33 semi-structured interviews and participant observation. In this round table, I will discuss how I adapted my research methodology during the COVID-19 crisis to arrive at one of my findings entailing differences in perceptions towards the pandemic among the urban and rural poor who—contrary to popular research suggesting that poverty and poor health are proportional—believed that the outbreak did not physically affect them. For them, COVID-19 was a “disease of the rich” due to the following reasons: not following Islamic principles, improper diets and lack of immunity, “soft” lifestyles, and fear of death. Additionally, I will zoom in on how Pakistan’s socio-political history informs the perceptions of the rural and urban poor.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation offers preliminary thoughts regarding the roles of ordinary urban residents who volunteer at the frontline defence in a Beijing residential community. I suggest that their participation leads to the active production of the "sentinel posts" (Keck 2020) during the epidemic outbreak.
Paper long abstract:
It is widely accepted in China that the anti-COVID fighting depends on collective efforts of individuals of the whole country. However, Chinese people's active participation at the individual level in the COVID prevention and control is not self-evident. This presentation seeks to shed light on what ordinary urban residents can contribute to by volunteering at the frontline defence in a neighbourhood community (shequ). Drawing on my short-time participant experience working as a anti-epidemic volunteer and semi-structured interviews with six long-term volunteers at the neighborhood community where I live, I will offer some initial thoughts regarding the roles of anti-epidemic volunteers. I suggest that by performing jobs such as monitoring of incoming visitors, patrolling main entrances of xiaoqu, maintaining a visitor log and identifying potential 'virus carriers', their participation may produce what Keck (2020) has described as the sentinel post during the epidemic outbreak.
Paper short abstract:
We explore how methodological challenges that emerged in our collection of COVID-19 illness narratives from 60 interlocutors reveal social tensions and inequalities inherent in pandemic interactions, and the fraught positionality of the anthropologist both researching and experiencing the pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
The illness experiences of individuals living the COVID-19 pandemic are often lost to the hegemonic sociopolitical and epidemiological narratives that have dominated emerging landscapes of COVID-19-related knowledge. Seeking to bring these perspectives to the fore, we elicited illness narratives of everyday individuals through a mobilization of digital methods and snowball sampling. These methodological approaches presented challenges revelatory of the social tensions and inequalities inherent in pandemic interactions as well as the fraught positionality of the anthropologist. While the limited socioeconomic diversity of our participants and failed attempts at interviewing frontline staff reflected the bias inherent in snowball sampling, it also revealed deeper social inequalities relating to differential digital accessibility and the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on essential workers. Unwillingness of participants to disclose potential sources of COVID-19 transmission during snowball recruitment and interviews further highlighted the moral inclinations and affective relationships coloring lived experiences of COVID-19 as an illness and a pandemic. Additionally, the dynamic, multidimensional positionality of the anthropologist, as both researcher and social contact, produced both social tensions and avenues of insight into salient aspects of intersubjectivity and relationality identified by our participants as important to their lived experiences of COVID-19.