Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the obstacles of conducting a remote ethnography during the summer of 2020 with smallholder farmers in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, to show how the food system is already being changed from within, despite the lack of recognition and proper planning from decision makers.

Paper long abstract:

What is in fact ethnography? In 2012 John L. Jackson was already aware of the intersections between ethnography and the new digital modalities of sociality and intimacy. However, 2020 has brought these issues to the forefront as we, as ethnographers, were confronted with the obstacles of conducting our fieldwork in person. For months we endured quarantine and had to grief what many consider to be the basis of our professional identity: participant observation. Eventually we pulled ourselves together and realised that remote ethnography was not new, that social media platforms had been documenting and providing outlets for political struggles (Barassi 2013; Bonilla & Rosa 2015), just like digital media have been central to “cherish beliefs, ritual practices and modes of being in the world” (Coleman 2010: 487).

Based on interviews conducted over the phone and on Skype with farmers in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, this paper presents ethnographic data collected during the summer of 2020 in order to show how several small-scale businesses managed to feed the confined city dwellers. Although the concern for these farmers dealings is practically absent from planning policies, they relentlessly operate in the territory, crossing administrative divisions and responding to social and economic demands.

We conclude that qualitative methods are decisive for capturing responses during the pandemic (Teti, Schatz & Liebenberg 2020) and to better understand the implications of reflexive ethnography in the construction of ethnographic emplacement and knowledge (Pink 2008), even if our research needs to be done remotely for the time being.