Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of online and distant ethnography and proposes an approach using Ecological Momentary Assessment. This paper pushes ethnographers to consider alternate ways of collecting biocultural data of interest to psychological anthropologists.

Paper long abstract:

The challenges of the year 2020 have forced anthropologists to seriously reconsider traditional fieldwork. In the United States and around the world anthropologists are grappling with our past and our future as a place where safety and health are achieved for all. This paper discusses approaches to doing fieldwork at a distance. Based on fieldwork conducted before and during the pandemic, this paper will discuss what psychologists have been struggling with for years, how to get data that matches up with the “real world”. Having done research which “studied up” by examining the pharmaceutical industry through advertising schemes, and more “traditional” fieldwork with substance users, this paper will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of digital and distant methods. Specifically, this paper will discuss the types of data that are well captured and what is missed. Additionally, this paper will propose an approach using Ecological Momentary Assessment to capture biocultural data, from a distance. In this approach, the participant becomes the ethnographer, using accessible technology and employing thick description in order to detail psychological and ethnographic data of interest. This rethinks the positions of the ethnographer and participant but gets at quality, fine-grained data that traditional ethnographic techniques aim to capture. Beyond the methodological, it pushes us to reconsider the future of ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on research closer to home and the potential applied outcomes of such work.