{"id":79874,"date":"2025-02-10T13:07:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T13:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/ethnography-when-you-cant-go-there\/"},"modified":"2025-02-10T13:07:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T13:07:26","slug":"ethnography-when-you-cant-go-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874","title":{"rendered":"ethnography when you can’t go there"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

In my capacity as a fellow in our faculty research center, I’ve been doing a
\nlot of support work for the unexpected shift to learning-at-a-distance.\u00a0
\nAt my uni, very few of us have experience teaching online.\u00a0 The faculty
\n(generally) aren’t especially enthusiastic, and there hasn’t really been a lot
\nof institutional support.\u00a0 So, I wasn’t surprised when most of the
\nquestions I was fielding took the form of: “I do X in my class.\u00a0 How
\ncan I do X online?”\u00a0 Not surprised because that’s the ideological
\nframe distance education has relied upon: an exact homology between offline-
\nand online teaching, with the physical classroom replaced by the discussion
\nboard, the lectures by videos.\u00a0 But actual online courses (not our band
\naid efforts to stitch together something in a few days) are structured very
\ndifferently than their physical counterparts.\u00a0 The best classes maximize
\ntheir digital affordances and don\u2019t try to simply “reproduce”
\nface-to-face education.<\/p>\n

Something similar has happened with ethnography.\u00a0 I have read dozens of
\nsemi-panicked posts: if I can’t go into the field, perhaps I can go into the
\ndigital field?\u00a0 Well – there have been several, thoughtful posts from
\ndigital anthropologists on this sentiment, including a recent one in GeekAnthropologist.<\/a>\u00a0 Reading these, though, I can’t help but notice that these
\nwould-be digital anthropologists don’t really want to be digital at all.\u00a0
\nAnd they’re not really proposing digital anthropology.\u00a0 If you’re studying
\nthe lives of people in their (physical) communities, can you really do digital
\nanthropology?\u00a0 In other words, if people are undertaking online\/offline
\nlives (whether under quarantine or not), are those lives best understood
\nthrough digital anthropology?\u00a0 Or are you talking about what my colleague,
\nMatthew Durington, and I have called “networkedanthropology<\/a>“?<\/p>\n

In networked anthropology, we acknowledge the skein of digital and physical
\nconnections in people’s lives, and we try to recognize and enable the
\ncapacities of people to represent those lives through networked,
\nmedia platforms that make sense to them.<\/p>\n

In a quarantined world, what’s
\nmissing from the social scene?\u00a0 With regards to the production of
\nethnography, at least one element is missing: the anthropologist.\u00a0 But
\nonly that.\u00a0 Even without the anthropologist, social and cultural life
\ncontinue.\u00a0 And more than that–the documentation and theorization of
\nsocial and cultural life continues as people record and comment on the things
\nthat happen in their lives and in their communities.\u00a0 In this sense,
\nnetworked anthropology is about capitulation–perhaps we really weren’t that
\nimportant anyway?\u00a0 But we can certainly help people in their own efforts
\nto represent and communicate their identities and communities, and this is, I
\nthink, what (at least some) of our colleagues should be doing.<\/p>\n

Last summer, we worked on a project in a small neighborhood in Baltimore
\nundergoing rapid gentrification that was leading to the displacement of a
\nlong-standing community of African American residents.\u00a0 Collaborating with
\nchildren at a community center, we helped them (co)produce maps, photographs,
\nvideo and audio interviews that we put together for an app tour, an exhibit and
\na performance.\u00a0 It was a great project to work on, and the article that we
\nare submitting on this includes all of them as co-authors.\u00a0 In light of
\nour present pandemic, and in the interest of protecting communities from us, it occurs to me that we (me and Matt Durington) didn’t really
\nneed to be there at all.\u00a0 Sure – we needed to talk to people and see what
\nthey were up to.\u00a0 In the end, though, the images and interviews are
\nproduced by people in the community.\u00a0\u00a0 My point: if we never actually
\nstepped foot in that neighborhood, that would not make it digital
\nanthropology.\u00a0 We would just be doing networked anthropology –
\nanthropology with people who were physically (not virtually) in their
\ncommunities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know when the infection rates and death toll of the pandemic will
\nsubside.\u00a0 But it seems likely that we will not be able to undertake our in
\nsitu research for some time.\u00a0 Even if we can go into the field, it may be
\nin fits and starts, with pandemic flare-ups mandating our social distancing
\nonce again.\u00a0 But just because we are not in situ doesn’t mean that people
\nin the communities where we work aren\u2019t in situ!\u00a0 By now, we are all used
\nto that peculiar hypocrisy in anthropology that decries colonization and its authorizing
\ngaze, but that still seems to insist on presence in order to undertake
\nanthropology.\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps enough of
\nthat?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my capacity as a fellow in our faculty research center, I’ve been doing a lot of support work for the unexpected shift to learning-at-a-distance.\u00a0 At my uni, very few of us have experience teaching online.\u00a0 The faculty (generally) aren’t especially enthusiastic, and there hasn’t really been a lot of institutional support.\u00a0 So, I wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[7825],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-79874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-ethnography"],"yoast_head":"\nethnography when you can't go there - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ethnography when you can't go there - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In my capacity as a fellow in our faculty research center, I’ve been doing a lot of support work for the unexpected shift to learning-at-a-distance.\u00a0 At my uni, very few of us have experience teaching online.\u00a0 The faculty (generally) aren’t especially enthusiastic, and there hasn’t really been a lot of institutional support.\u00a0 So, I wasn’t […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-10T13:07:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/ScreenShot2020-04-11at2.49.34PM.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"ethnography when you can’t go there\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-02-10T13:07:26+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\"},\"wordCount\":763,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/ScreenShot2020-04-11at2.49.34PM.png\",\"keywords\":[\"ethnography\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Anthropology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79874\",\"name\":\"ethnography when you can't go there - 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