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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.