Paper Short Abstract:

The paper argues that unwritten challenges in ethnography of COVID in the Baltics and the concomitant Russian armed offensive in Ukraine since 24 February 2022 may reveal new features of the Lithuania’s risk society that will be useful for the global risk society.

Paper Abstract:

The paper argues that unwritten challenges in ethnography of COVID in the Baltics and the concomitant Russian armed offensive in Ukraine since 24 February 2022 may reveal new features of the Lithuania’s risk society that will be useful for the global risk society. The hot question is: how has the closing of borders caused the physical world to shrink and the virtual world to expand immensely in the countries bordering the Baltic Sea? This question is a source of debate in the anthropology. This is the starting point for the argument of the discussion, which aims to show how the war in Ukraine has affected individual coexistence and social communality in fieldwork. Methodologically, we study this crisis from an anthropological and historical perspective as it is perceived today. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork. The paper discusses the following challenges in the ethnography of COVID and war. How can we help overcome the trauma of being silenced and encourage emic knowledge production “at home”? How can we carry out projects on Lithuanian-Russian border issues without access to ‘normal’ fieldwork methods? What did ethical issues arise in documenting memories and voices of Lithuanian people after the Russian armed offensive in Ukraine?