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P06


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Digital and distant ethnographies in a time of COVID: what's lost and what's gained? 
Convenor:
Timothy Hall (UCLA)
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Discussant:
Thomas Weisner (UCLA)
Format:
Panel
Sessions:
Wednesday 7 April, -
Time zone: America/Chicago

Short Abstract:

This panel consdier the opportunities and limitations of contemporary digital ethnographies and studies of culture-at-a-distance, during the enforced social distancing and push to online social activities during COVID, with necessary restrictions on in-person interactions and travel.

Long Abstract:

What kinds of ethnographies can we safely and ethically conduct during a pandemic, and what limitations and advantages do they bring? The COVID-19 pandemic has sharply curtailed in-person gatherings, including traditional ethnography, and restricted international and even regional travel. In response, people are adapting video chat platforms to fill in for traditional meetings, celebrations, schooling, and other activities. Many of us are also spending much more time on social media, consuming and creating cultural productions from news to crafting and other forms of self-making. Concomitantly, many individuals whose work or schooling has transitioned to video chat platforms now report burnout, “Zoom fatigue”, and ambivalence about further online participation.

In-person ethnography normally gains insights through observation of chance occurrences in natural settings, engaging our interlocutors’ social networks interacting in daily life, and learning about rules and behaviors that our informants might not think to tell us and we might not think to ask. Ethnography of online interactions potentially misses much of this, while focused interviews are necessarily limited when we cannot participate in interlocutors’ daily lives.

This recalls debates over study of culture-at-a-distance (Bauer, et al. 1956; Benedict 1946; Mead and Metraux 1953), which, like digital ethnographies, often privileges works of high culture or commercial culture, or particular self-presentations of digital creators, rather than their lived, non-digital worlds. This panel invites ethnographers who have worked in both traditional and digital/distant ethnographies to reflect on the challenges, benefits, and limitations of psychological ethnographies in the current situation.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 7 April, 2021, -
Panel Video visible to paid-up delegates