The Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University has posted on its Facebook page an announcement that may be of interest to TU students of ethnography, anthropology, sociology, history, medicine and health sciences, and related fields:
How can digital ethnography connect the diverse experience of the difficult times of people around the world?
An invitation to follow the platform, collect and diffuse ethnic reflections on the history of people’s experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic, produced by the Center for Digital Anthropology, University College London (UCL).
Anthropologists, with a focus on presenting aspects relating to the use and use of technology and digital media as part of adapting to different conditions and limitations which result from this major outbreak.
TU students interested in this project are cordially invited to find more information at this website.
As TU students know, the TU library owns a number of useful books about digital ethnography.
Digital ethnography, also known as cyber-ethnography, virtual ethnography, or online ethnography, is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction.
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. The word derives from terms in Ancient Greek meaning people and writing. Unlike ethnology, ethnography investigates cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. So ethnographers will ask people how they feel about what is happening to them.
Ethnography is also a type of social research involving the examination of the behaviour of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members’ own interpretation of such behaviour.
As a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation—on the researcher participating in the setting or with the people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these in their local contexts.
Among subjects discussed in the COVID-19 pandemic project produced by Center for Digital Anthropology, UCL:
- Using online media to search and share information about outbreaks
- Adaptation to social isolation
- The blurred line between care and surveillance (surveillance)
- Online education
- Managing feelings in close relationships
- Fighting problems and a moral value system in an epidemic situation
Students are invited to consider the following goals of the survey, as a way of continuing to learn about people even if we cannot meet as many people as before the pandemic:
Collecting COVID-19 | Anthropological Responses
How does the current coronavirus pandemic affect people across the world? This website aims to be a repository of documentation evidencing the experience of COVID-19, with a particular focus on the role of digital technologies in responding to the crisis. It is sourced from students, researchers, healthcare workers, and indeed anyone who wishes to participate.
This resource can be used by anyone wishing to understand how people are using and repurposing social media, digital data and digital infrastructures, to respond to the rupture and reorganisation of everyday life during the current pandemic.
We are interested in documenting the new forms of work, education, healthcare, art, culture, exercise, self-care, family life, friendship, political organising, travel, and anything else that you think is important. We hope to use this archive as a platform to think across different experiences, in order to gain insight into how people are adapting their everyday lives, and how this will change over time. Please submit your contributions here.
The site will also archive responses to the Anthropological Responses to COVID-19 project. This initiative will bring together anthropological research on six key topics with each topic allocated a specific fortnight. For details of this project, visit the Anthropological Responses page. To participate in this project, please contact g.murariu@ucl.ac.uk.
This platform has been organised by the Centre for Digital Anthropology at UCL (see the About page for further information). Thank you for your time and contribution, and we hope that this site becomes a way to connect across our different experiences at this difficult time.
To begin our conversation, we invite you to reflect on the following questions: ‘What is the main challenge COVID-19 has posed in the community you’re working with or are a part of? How are people responding?’ and “what aspect of your experience is important to document?” We will adapt the questions as we go along, and we are open to your suggestions – feel free to suggest topics on the Contact page.
Please use the form below to submit text and images (we are working on enabling other media), give your post a title, and try to use existing categories or tags, as well as creating new ones, to organize your submission.
Among submissions already posted on the UCL website is a report on Online Education: Special Needs Education in Japan During the Coronavirus:
Schools in Japan have struggled with moving classes online. Out of the OECD countries, Japan ranks the lowest in utilizing technology for schoolwork outside of the classroom. Many schools simply weren’t prepared and did not have the technology to quickly begin online education . Despite the struggles, a number of elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as universities, have implemented online classes. Recently, many prefectures have lifted their state of emergency and schools are reopening. Some university students report being happy to go to classes on campus again. But other universities remain closed. A mother in Osaka Sayama told me that her son’s university in Tokyo has yet to reopen. He is currently living at home, taking university classes in his pyjamas…
Another report is on Online Education: Studying during the Coronavirus Pandemic:
In the Netherlands, like in other countries, schools and universities have been closed since mid-March 2020 to contain the spread of coronavirus. This unusual circumstance also affects the learning process for all students, including international students who come all the way to the Netherlands to pursue higher education. A lot of Indonesian students are debating whether they should stay in the Netherlands or return to Indonesia since the universities are closed and classes are online now. Some of their parents want them to return home while some are urged by their universities to stay in the Netherlands since they might open the universities again soon (which will not happen for now, at least until September)…
Still another essay is on Responses to Social Isolation: The Power of Bingo During COVID-19:
As lockdowns impose physical distancing, communities are imagining new ways to connect, and there is one surprising, shared tactic communities across the world are using to bolster social ties: bingo. Stories of bingo play during the pandemic abound online. Neighbourhoods across England have joined together to play bingo in the streets, with many offering cleaning supplies and toilet paper as pandemic-coveted prizes. Young housemates in Amsterdam called bingo through a megaphone to the retirement community across the road, where older adults eagerly played from balconies. And Matthew McConaughey announced bingo by Zoom for residents quarantining at The Enclave, an assisted-living community in Round Rock, Texas. As more videos of bingo games emerge from India to Spain, the game’s global popularity in this pandemic becomes increasingly clear…
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)