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Ethnography in the Time of COVID-19: Vectors and the Vulnerable
Abstract
We examine the choices, dilemmas, and opportunities confronting ethnography at a moment in which face-to-face interaction is deemed dangerous and prohibited by many university human subjects committees. As scholars who have examined vulnerable seniors through intense engagement, we recognize that our presence can spread disease, just as we might become infected by those very informants. Yet, ethnography serves a necessary role in charting the conditions of the vulnerable and identifying points of intervention. The COVID-19 virus and its effects on research might truncate the granular observations that have made ethnography such a profoundly incisive method in the short term, but it may also permits reflection and methodological innovation that can contribute to both theory and policy. In this vein, our unwanted hiatus provides an opportunity to work on longstanding concerns such as ethnographic transparency while simultaneously advancing innovative new styles of research. Whether we seize this opportunity remains uncertain.
... In general, visibility in public spaces was favoured by all of the participants, but there was a lack of unanimity on the question of the importance of visibility in online spaces. Indeed, Fine and Abramson [54] in their reflections of the challenges to ethnographers, claim that the online world cannot be conflated with the physical world, arguing that 'to say the physical and digital are interchangeable or produce similar analyses is a methodologically indefensible false equivalence' (p. 4). ...
... Despite the personal nature of the discussions here, this was necessary to share in this article as others may be experiencing similar tensions around what to share with their participants and how to share those experiences outwardly to the academic community. Fine and Abramson's [54] work has been particularly important in aiding self-reflection in this context. They write about the dilemmas and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic on ethnography, stating: 'If there is one profound truth about ethnography, it is that intimacy, and not distancing, is crucial'. ...
... Fine and Abramson raise concerns in their reflections on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which they perceive as likely to result in fundamental ethical and practical challenges for ethnographers [54]. In this context, how researchers-and, in particular, ethnographers who have been removed from their field sites-conduct their research is of great concern. ...
This article offers a critical and reflective examination of the impact of the enforced 2020/21 COVID-19 lockdown on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with UK-based young environmental activists. A matrix of researcher and activist challenges and opportunities has been co-created with young environmental activists using an emergent research design, incorporating a phased and intensive iterative process using online ethnography and online qualitative interviews. The article focuses on reflections emerging from the process of co-designing and then use of this matrix in practice. It offers an evidence base which others researching hard-to-reach youth populations may themselves deploy when negotiating face-to-face fieldwork approval at their own academic institutions. The pandemic and its associated control regimes, such as lockdown and social distancing measures, will have lasting effects for both activism and researchers. The methodological reflections we offer in this article have the potential to contribute to the learning of social science researchers with respect to how best to respond when carrying out online fieldwork in such contexts—particularly, but not only, with young activists.
... Qualitative contributions are especially relevant for checking common behavioral assumptions in epidemiological models (Palinkas 2014), foreseeing unexpected outcomes of health and safety restrictions (Bascuñan-Wiley, DeSoucey, and Fine 2022;Siu 2016), uncovering the needs of vulnerable populations and medical and task forces (Chafe 2017;Godbold et al. 2021;Huang et al. 2021), and helping engage communities and stakeholders in building public health and social interventions (Abramowitz et al. 2015). The nuances that depth descriptions, local knowledge, and interpretative analyses provide on people's experiences and meanings allow decision-makers and health authorities to design and implement action plans tailored to specific population groups, especially those affected disproportionately by the pandemic and its economic, social, and health consequences (Averett 2021;Fine and Abramson 2020;Power 2020). ...
... Direct contact with individuals and families is infeasible mainly because of government and safety restrictions (Fine and Abramson 2020;Howlett 2022). Prolonged lockdowns and limitations in the movement of people make it impossible to reach families and their members in their "natural" social contexts. ...
This article presents original findings from a longitudinal qualitative study on
changes in individual and family life associated with safety and health measures
implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic in three regions of Chile. We developed a methodological approach based on multimodal diaries in a mobile application, in which participants submitted photographs and texts to express changes in
their daily lives under residential confinement. Content and semiotic visual analyses
show a significant loss in instances of collective recreation, partially compensated
through new personal and productive activities performed at home. Our results suggest that modal diaries serve as potential tools to capture people’s perceptions and meanings as their lives go through exceptional and traumatic times. We assert that using digital and mobile technologies in qualitative studies could allow subjects to actively participate in the co-construction of fieldwork and produce quality knowledge from their situated perspectives
... In this vein, patchwork ethnography also builds on feminist and decolonial concepts pertaining to ethnography (Abu-Lughod 1990; Stacey 1988) and strives towards inclusivity (Günel et al. 2020). Additionally, the possibilities of when, if and should researchers return to physical, long-term fieldwork have also been questioned, both within the manifesto and elsewhere (Chambers 2020;Fine and Abramson 2020;Günel et al. 2020;Johnson 2022;Podjed 2021;Scerri et al. 2020). Despite COVID-19 amplifying the need to approach fieldwork differently, it has been claimed that patchwork ethnography, conducting 'research at a distance' and moving away from what is classified as 'traditional' has been used and questioned by researchers long before the pandemic began (Blum 2020: para. ...
... Lack of access, world changes due to COVID-19 and personal issues made the prospect of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in-person and long-term virtually impossible, as is increasingly becoming the experience of many anthropologists (Blum 2020;Fine and Abramson 2020;Góralska 2020;Johnson 2022;Podjed 2021;Serekoane et al. 2021;Watson et al. 2021;Watson and Lupton 2022). Through patchwork ethnography, we were able to take a peek behind the patchwork curtain, exploring death and the body in Adelaide. ...
Patchwork ethnography is a viable methodological and theoretical approach. Fieldwork can be accessible, achievable and accommodating of both personal and professional circumstances and responsibilities of the researcher, and external factors such as living within a COVID-19 world. In this article, we explain patchwork ethnography and showcase how the methodology was implemented during the first author's PhD fieldwork conducted in 2020–2021 relating to peeking behind the physical and metaphorical curtains of the death industry to understand the handling, management and conceptualisation of the dead human body in Adelaide, South Australia. We demonstrate how field sites were constructed and discuss the methodological tools utilised to produce an ethnographic experience. We also question the ongoing viability of notions of ‘traditional’ fieldwork practices.
... The COVID-19 pandemic -in addition to unsettling the world along with health and societal systems -confounded the best laid research plans. New ethical paradigms, institutional policies and life pressures arose, challenging and often scuppering the work of scholars, ethnographers in particular (Fine and Abramson, 2020;Góralska, 2020;Lobe et al., 2020;Newman et al., 2021). At the same time, contemporary ethnographers have for many years been wrestling with the conceptualisation of 'impact' in their work, particularly under evolving funding frameworks. ...
... This is no less true in the context of a pandemic. While mindful of the need to safeguard both people and research itself, some commentators have challenged assertions that innovative forms born of the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered interchangeable with or equivalent to field-based participant observation (Fine and Abramson, 2020). In reimagining the ethnographic approach through MIME, we have attempted to retain the ethnographic principles of 'understanding informants' life-worlds and their situated practices and lived local realities' (Varis, 2015: 56). ...
The understanding of what ethnography looks like, and its purpose, is continuously evolving. COVID-19 posed a significant challenge to ethnographers, particularly those working in health-related research. Researchers have developed alternative forms of ethnography to overcome some of these challenges; we developed the Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) adaptation to ethnography in 2021 to overcome restrictions to our own research with hospital doctors. However, for ethnographic innovations to make a substantial contribution to methodology, they should not simply be borne of necessity, but of a dedicated drive to expand paradigms of research, to empower participant groups and to produce change – in local systems, in participant-collaborators and in researchers and the research process itself. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using MIME, involving collaborative remote observation and reflection with 28 hospital doctors in Ireland from June to December 2021. After reviewing literature on ethnography in COVID-19 and general epistemological developments in ethnography, we detail the MIME approach and illustrate how MIME presents an evolution of the ethnographic approach, not only practically but in terms of its reflexive shift, its connected and co-creative foundations, and its ability to drive change in research approaches, participant life-worlds and real-world improvement.
... (Nelson 2020, quoted by Christin 2020 If there is one profound truth about ethnography, it is that intimacy, and not distancing, is crucial. (Fine and Abramson 2020) What does it mean to do fieldwork if there is no field to work on? (Christin 2020) ...
... Also, data from surveillance cameras, Zoom-like platforms and other technologically mediated modes of interaction may fruitfully be examined (Fine and Abramson 2020). But care is needed: as Fine and Abramson add (2020: 4), 'to say the physical and digital are interchangeable or produce similar analyses is a methodologically indefensible false equivalence' . ...
The claims of qualitative research are often based on being physically present in a setting and the ability that gives to record interactional features unavailable to quantitative research. In a medical context, this can involve a number of scenarios which include observing medical encounters or interviewing patients.The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has made such co-presence impractical. This short paper discusses ways around this problem. It also demonstrates that, in a digital age, being ‘present’ in the ‘field’ needs to be reconsidered.
... Certainly, discussions of social scientific research ethics have proliferated over the past decade on topics as far-ranging as social movements in democratic and non-democratic contexts (Blee and Currier 2011;Gillan and Pickerill 2012;Wackenhut 2018); medical and health care (Anspach and Mizrachi 2006;Bosk 2008); migration (Bloemraad and Menjívar 2022); capitalism (Hoang 2022); policing (Stuart 2016); and research in the wake of COVID-19 (Abedi Dunia et al. 2023;Fine and Abramson 2020). Yet historical research on violence (and historical 1 Importantly, as archival studies scholar Michelle Caswell (2016) notes, historians and archival studies scholars are rarely in conversation with one another. ...
In recent years, social scientists have “(re)discovered history” by visiting archives, collecting documents, and analyzing their findings to address concerns about the causes and consequences of violence. Nevertheless, social scientists frequently appear at their archives with little to no training on the methods and ethics of archival research as they increasingly rush to examine primary historical records. This has resulted in a dearth of discourse on how the practice of historical research influences the outcomes of our analyses. Our article, as a result, employs findings from research on political violence in sociology and political science, as well as insights from history and archival studies, to introduce three broad ethical concerns related to politics, interpretation, and harms and benefits that, we argue, have methodological implications for historical social science. These methodological implications are too often ignored in historical social science, but we contend they are necessary to consider prior to and during archival research, as well as afterward when analyzing data, in order to ensure that the results of that research are valid, reliable, and ethical despite the constraints involved in working with historical evidence. We also discuss contemporary conflicts and how data collection on violence influences our understanding of the past. The objective of this article is to identify and address the primary challenges that social scientists who work with archives encounter, as well as to advocate for increased transparency in archival research.
... A growing body of literature now reflects on the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for conducting qualitative research and offers insights into the benefits and drawbacks of remote methods [1]. Some scholars tried to adapt qualitative research projects to the conditions imposed by COVID-19 pandemic, providing insights into the use of online forms of inquiry to ensure social distancing and limited human contact [14][15][16][17][18]. Although there is a growing body of literature on digital ethnographic approaches in the Global North [19], there is a paucity of studies on its application in understanding urban dynamics in the Global South, particularly in researching urban vulnerabilities among hard-to-reach populations. ...
This paper presents insights on conducting urban research amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the adoption of digital ethnography as an innovative and flexible approach. Drawing from an expanding body of literature on fieldwork among 'hard-to-reach' populations during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, we share our experiences from a study on the socioeconomic impacts of mandatory lockdowns on poor urban residents in Harare, Zimbabwe. Our research highlighted several methodological benefits of digital ethnography, including its non-intrusive and non-intimidating nature, cost and time efficiency, ability to increase participant diversity, assurance of respondent safety, research flexibility , and the generation of impactful data. Unlike traditional immersive ethnography, digital ethnography proved adept at navigating the complexities of the 'global' , 'local' , and 'trans-local' dimensions of contemporary urban research subjects. However, this approach also presents several ethical challenges. These challenges include obtaining informed consent, ensuring confidentiality and anonymity, participants' potential misunderstanding of the research context, the risk of exacerbating stress during crises, and respecting privacy in digital spaces. Urban researchers must carefully consider these ethical issues before undertaking their studies. In conclusion, virtual environments have become integral to modern life and represent essential avenues for urban researchers, particularly during periods of limited physical interaction and when studying populations that are difficult to reach in person but more accessible online. Further, the adoption of digital ethnography, extends beyond the necessity imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It reflects an ongoing evolution in ethnographic practices, adapting to the realities of a digitally connected world. We suggest that urban researchers should think of digital ethnographic ethics from the point of view of reciprocal and mutual collaboration with participants. With this thinking, urban research subjects become co-participants and co-researchers rather than subjects of exploitation in the expanding and complex digital space.
... Interviewing and ethnography-which have long taken embodied interaction and physical co-presence as a standard-are at a crossroads (Fine and Abramson 2020). Given the incessant health risks of COVID-19, researchers must consider the ethics of inperson projects and fashion creative solutions. ...
Sociology’s focus on sociality and co-presence has long oriented studies of commensality—the social dimension of eating together. This literature commonly prioritizes face-to-face interactions and takes physical proximity for granted. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 largely halted in-person gatherings and altered everyday foodways. Consequently, many people turned to digital commensality, cooking and eating together through video-call technology such as Zoom and FaceTime. We explore the implications of these new foodways and ask: has digital commensality helped cultivate co-presence amidst pandemic-induced physical separation? If so, how? To address these questions, we analyze two forms of qualitative data collected by the first author: interviews with individuals who cooked and ate together at a distance since March 2020 and digital ethnography during different groups’ online food events (e.g., happy hours, dinners, holiday gatherings, and birthday celebrations). Digital commensality helps foster a sense of co-presence and social connectedness at a distance. Specifically, participants use three temporally oriented strategies to create or maintain co-presence: they draw on pre-pandemic pasts and reinvent culinary traditions to meet new circumstances; they creatively adapt novel digital foodways through online dining; and they actively imagine post-pandemic futures where physically proximate commensality is again possible.
... In the context of data from telemedicine or remote delivery contexts, for example, questions of who may have been excluded from the available recordings because of a lack of access to technology or an appropriate space in which to use that technology need to be considered alongside any analysis. At a more fundamental methodological level, elsewhere in his piece Silverman quotes Fine and Abramson (2020), who make the point that the position that 'the physical and digital are interchangeable or produce similar analyses is a methodologically indefensible false analysis' . Silverman uses this quote as part of an argument that we should not consider data gained from a virtual ethnography as easily transposable with that from face-to-face fieldwork, a view with which I absolutely concur. ...
... COVID-19 has created ethical and practical challenges for in-person ethnography at a time when on-the-ground observations are direly needed to understand the pandemic's impacts on vulnerable populations (Fine and Abramson, 2020). Visual ethnography, the use of images to study society (Banks, 2018), may be particularly useful in helping researchers explore the nuances of people's lived experiences from afar (Gubrium, 2009;Liebenberg, 2018). ...
This MSc dissertation explores the impacts of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food security of displaced Syrian farmworkers in Lebanon and northern Syria, drawing on remote visual ethnography and household surveys.
... Current literature shows us that fieldwork during the pandemic needed to balance the virtues and "the dangers of our presence in the field" (Fine and Abramson 2020:1). Fine and Abramson (2020) report on the challenges of conducting ethnographic studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. They suggest that although research methods differ, the sociocultural, religious, and/or political context wherein these studies occur is important. ...
... Dovremo aspettare. Per un altro verso, non è necessario aspettare che la pandemia finisca per affermare che l'etnografia e la ricerca qualitativa possono sopravvivere, specialmente se qualcuno fa ricerche persino in un momento in cui i contatti personali sono impossibili o molto complicati (Bracke et al., 2020;Fine, Abramson, 2020). In generale, il lockdown ha ridotto la possibilità di vedere, ma ha rafforzato la capacità di ascoltare. ...
... Differences & Opportunities. The intimacy with the end user through contextual immersion is crucial but, due to the pandemic, face-to-face communication and close physical proximity are prohibited; video-ethnographers risk spreading the disease or becoming infected during data collection (Fine and Abramson, 2020). Face masks and other protective equipment are important safety measures, but they may obstruct the elicitation of rich data on non-verbal communication and implicit behaviours. ...
This is a research-based commentary on the Technological Forecasting and Social Change article (Sakellariou et al., 2020) "From user insights to foresights: Applying video-based ethnographic narratives and user innovation in NPD". The commentary provides the new context of the Covid-19 pandemic and innovation. It synthesizes and categorizes the respective findings of forty-five peer-reviewed studies (published in the first twelve months of the pandemic outbreak) to show how Covid-19 has impacted innovation at the process level (from idea generation to going to market); the place (infrastructures and emerging technologies); the product (outcomes with physical or non-physical boundaries) and the people (methods of elicitation of user needs). Next, the commentary critically discusses the differences and opportunities for the data collection and analysis of the video-ethnographic method during the current pandemic, the contributions of the method in the new innovation context and its future outlook.
This study aimed to examine the acquisition of Roman alphabetic script among young children within a bilingual (Arabic and English) educational environment employing a language separation pedagogical approach in Muscat, Oman. Data were collected utilizing participant observations, video recordings to capture the interactions of three children and the instructive practices of the teacher, and teacher interviews, in order to explore the efficacy of this model. The findings of the study indicate that children demonstrate proficiency in script composition in their second language (Roman-English) through engagement in diverse classroom activities, including mathematical and artistic pursuits. Despite prevalent negative perceptions associated with language separation methodologies, our findings suggest its potential effectiveness in facilitating second language acquisition and literacy development. Implications of the study’s outcomes are discussed, along with avenues for future research inquiry.
The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted research. In this article, we explore the opportunities and challenges presented by the pandemic to a group of researchers using video-reflexive ethnography (VRE) – a methodology used to understand practices, grounded in: exnovation, collaboration, reflexivity, and care. To understand how the pandemic impacted researchers using VRE, we facilitated two focus groups with 12 members of the International Association of Video-Reflexive Ethnographers. The findings suggest the pandemic exacerbated existing methodological challenges, yet also provided an opportunity reflect on our own practices as researchers, namely: accessing sites, building relationships, facilitating reflexive sessions, and cultivating care. Due to public health measures, some researchers used insiders to access sites. While these insiders shouldered additional burdens, this shift might have empowered participants, increased the salience of the project, and enabled access to rural sites. The inability to access sites and reliance on insiders also impeded researcher ability to build relationships with participants and generate the ethnographic insights often associated with prolonged engagement at a site. In reflexive sessions, researchers had to learn how to manage the technological, logistical, and methodological challenges associated with either themselves or participants being remote. Finally, participants noted that while the transition to more digital methodologies might have increased project reach, there needed to be a mindfulness around cultivating practices of care in the digital world to ensure psychological safety and protect participants data. These findings reflect the opportunities and challenges a group of researchers using VRE had during the pandemic and can be used to stimulate future methodologic discussions.
In this reflection, I contextualize my own experiences conducting educational ethnography in a synchronous online kindergarten classroom during the COVID‐19 pandemic. I highlight how conducting research in online classrooms transforms ethnographic research methodologies and concepts such as the field site. I offer four suggestions, derived from my experiences and guided by an un‐sited approach to this hybrid online field site, to conceptualize a more fluid approach for studying online schooling in general.
Background. *e COVID-19 pandemic and government-led interventions to tackle it have had life-changing e2ects on vulnerable
populations, especially rural and urban slum dwellers in developing countries. *is ethnographic study explored how the
Ghanaian government’s management of COVID-19, socio-cultural factors, infrastructural challenges, and poverty in6uenced
community perceptions, attitudes, and observance of COVID-19 prevention measures in Ghana. Methods. *e study employed
focused ethnography using in-depth interviews (IDIs), focus group discussions (FGDs), and nonparticipant observations to
collect data from an urban slum and a rural community as well as from government o:cials, from October 2020 to January 2021.
*e data were triangulated and analyzed thematically with the support of qualitative software NVivo 12. All ethical procedures
were followed. Results. *e Ghanaian government’s strategy of communicating COVID-19-related information to the public,
health-related factors such as health facilities failing to follow standard procedures in testing and tracing persons who came into
contact with COVID-19-positive cases, poverty, and lack of social amenities contributed to the poor observance of COVID-19
preventive measures. In addition, the government’s relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, community and family values, beliefs,
and misconceptions contributed to the poor observance of COVID-19 preventive measures. Nevertheless, some aspects of the
government’s intervention measures and support to communities with COVID-19 prevention items, support from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and high knowledge of COVID-19 and its devastating e2ects contributed to positive attitudes
and observance of COVID-19 preventive measures. Conclusion. *ere is a need for the government to use the existing community
structures to engage vulnerable communities so that their concerns are factored into interventions to ensure that appropriate
interventions are designed to suit the context. Moreover, the government needs to invest in social amenities in deprived
communities. Finally, the government has to be consistent with the information it shares with the public to enhance
trust relations.
The reception of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in camps has become a common phenomenon in Europe, discursively linked to the historical ‘crisis’ of mass movements towards the region. Camps and irregularity are two key issues in understanding the special impact that the COVID‐19 pandemic has had on migrants and refugees. This article explores connections between the ‘campization’ of migrant and refugee reception and the current debates for and against migrant regularization in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic in Southern Europe (Spain and Italy). The analysis uses qualitative methodology based on multi‐site ethnographic fieldwork (pre‐COVID‐19 pandemic); informal remote interviews with migrants and refugees; and analysis of political, media and legislative discourses.
El objetivo principal del artículo fue analizar el uso de tecnologías de comunicación digital en las prácticas de solidaridad desarrolladas entre migrantes venezolanos en la ciudad de Quito, Ecuador. La metodología aplicada se basó en entrevistas a profundidad y análisis de contenidos en grupos de WhatsApp. El trabajo de campo fue realizado entre junio de 2020 y marzo de 2021. Para el muestreo se empleó una estrategia no probabilística (snowball sampling). La naturaleza cualitativa del estudio no permite generalizaciones estadísticas. No obstante, los resultados obtenidos caracterizan las prácticas de solidaridad digital en grupos con lazos sociales fuertes (familias) y débiles. Las conclusiones indican que, en las familias transnacionales la solidaridad digital se basa en sentidos de co-presencia que facilitan el cumplimiento de obligaciones morales, la generación de economías de cuidado y el soporte emocional; mientras que, en grupos sin conexiones previas la solidaridad se construye mediante comunidades digitales en espacios masivos e impersonales.
Studia empiryczne w obszarze socjologii sportu cechuje ponadprzeciętna trudność realizacji in situ, objawiająca się chociażby ograniczonym dostępem do materiału badawczego i ograniczoną możliwością jego porównań. Jak zauważył w swym klasycznym już opracowaniu Klaus Heinemann (1989), problemy te wynikają (a) ze zróżnicowania modeli nowożytnego sportu i form jego społecznego zakorzenienia oraz (b) ze specyfiki organizacji sportowych – obecnie polifunkcyjnych, działających nieraz w skrajnie odmiennych środowiskach społecznych. Celem artykułu jest prezentacja wybranych problemów metodologicznych zaistniałych w toku etnograficznego oglądu amatorskich klubów piłkarskich działających na obszarach wiejskich w Polsce. Autor podejmuje również próbę odniesienia doświadczeń wyniesionych z realizacji tego przedsięwzięcia do sytuacji postpandemicznej. Artykuł może być tym samym potraktowany jako głos w dyskusji nad użytecznością instrumentarium jakościowego w studiach nad współczesnym sportem.
Achieving high rates of COVID-19 vaccination has become central to a return to normalcy in a post-pandemic world. Accordingly, exceptional measures, such as the regulation of immunity through vaccine passports and restrictions that distinguished between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, became a feature of vaccination campaigns in certain G7 countries. Such policies stand in tension with recent supranational European Union policies that seek to build inclusion and trust through engaging minoritised groups in vaccine campaigns. To explore this tension, we present novel ethnographic data produced with migrant and Roma communities in Italy. Our evidence suggests that under restrictive measures, many within these groups initially described as ‘vaccine hesitant’ have accepted a vaccine. Yet, rather than indicating successful civic engagement, we find that vaccine acceptance was tied to deepening mistrust in science and the state. Considering the structural socioeconomic, historical and cultural elements informing people’s vaccination choices, we propose a shift in emphasis towards equitable principles of engagement.
The literature on digitalization and accessibility changes to public transport in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is limited. This paper reports on the urban public transport measures against COVID-19 launched by a Spanish transportation operator, TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona), to ensure safe journeys where digitalization of services have been intensified. This study responds to the current trend whereby transport operators are quickly digitalizing their transportation services as a response to COVID-19. The outcome of the research is to apply contemporary academic theory to assist transportation managers in designing and enhancing transportation services for this group during the COVID-19 pandemic. While transport operators have improved their services to better address the needs of PwD, these changes are far from universal in approach. At the end of 2020, as part of an academic–industry collaboration with a Spanish transportation operator, 12 PwD, six transport staff members, and two representatives of two disability advocacy associations took part in an inclusive urban transportation research project in the city of Barcelona using the service-dominant (SD) logic co-creation process with PwD through a comparative approach. Specifically, we assessed the value outcome perceived by PwD in their Metro experience when resources resulting from the co-creation process were digital (Study 1) and when they were a combination of digital and non-digital (Study 2). To examine the PwD experience, a qualitative methodology was employed that incorporated online focus groups, ethnographic techniques and post-experience surveys with participants. Study 2 indicted better outcomes and explained how ensuring the appropriate combination of digital and non-digital resource allocation for PwD can improve the public transport experience. Our findings can be used by public transport policymakers for enhancing accessibility to improve public transport experiences during and after the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing digital and non-digital resources.
This article outlines and demonstrates the practice of troubleshooting as a method. We argue that as an interdisciplinary, collaborative, digital-hybridized and adaptable approach, troubleshooting provides an ethical opportunity to explore the experiences and outcomes of (older) people living with connected home technologies in ways that deliver novel and meaningful research insights. Our discussion draws on the experience of a project that worked with ageing people (70+) to tailor and explore their experiences with smart home devices to support their independence and wellbeing. A personalized suite of digital voice assistants (DVAs), robotic vacuum cleaners, smart lights, kettles and switches were installed into the domestic spaces and routines of 23 households and 33 participants living in rural Australia. The project team developed a methodological framework, which took an unplanned and innovative turn in response to the physical distancing challenges brought by COVID-19 lockdowns, with the social connectivity offered by the devices trialled, and the creative digital living skills between the project team and its participants. We conclude by identifying future areas of research at the intersection of smart technologies, aged care services and the home as a site of research and of ongoing methodological design.
From the collection of diaries according to a specific questionnaire frame filled by volunteers (project called “Récits Confinés”), this article questions the representation of time and space in the particular context of the two confinements of spring and autumn 2020. The March 2020 confinement was characterized by the deceleration of daily routine rhythm with limitation on movements, interruption of transportation to go to work or to school and a multiplicity of social times limited to the domestic sphere: professional time, learning time, domestic time, free and leisure time. Through our anthropological approach and sociology of everyday life, our article shows that confinement time can be perceived either as an appeasement time (far from daily rhythms and movements sometimes endured) but also as a time of tensions, in the household or within the same person, according to the season. Confinement leads to using the temporality of the event differently: going back to the past; contemplating the passing of time; speeding up daily actions; reconfiguring routines in order to “succeed” this novel social experience. Confinement time is also the time of rupture (daily and professional rhythms) which announces a renewal, a contemplated time, a moment to step back and take stock.
Multi-sited research has become a quality criterion for ethnographic research. This applies especially to studies on forced migration. Here, a site is often equated with a state, where researchers are usually required to be physically present. In this article, however, we ask: Must multi-sited research necessarily be multi-national? Do researchers have to be physically present at all sites? By discussing ethnographic material collected with forced migrants in Malta, we demonstrate that multi-sitedness is viewed in too narrow terms when site is equated with the nation-state. Adopting this approach also obscures refugees’ lived realities, their patterns of movement and their often truncated mobility. Instead, we carve out an understanding of multi-sited ethnography within one locality, introducing the concept of un-participated sites to include sites researchers are not able to physically visit. While the inaccessibility of sites is often inherent to ethnographic studies, it is all the more relevant for migration research.
We theorize that the social conditions surrounding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic have the potential to increase the importance of families for health and widen existing inequalities. We suggest three primary tenets important for understanding families and health during COVID‐19. First, risks of specific COVID‐19 outcomes and other health problems are unevenly distributed across families. Second, how families impact health during the COVID‐19 pandemic is conditional on public policies, organizational decisions, and concurrent events. Third, many health inequalities driven by racism, sexism, classism, and other oppressive societal forces are amplified during COVID‐19, but the extent to which this is occurring is shaped by families and by the public policies, organizational decisions, and concurrent events that also impact families and health. As health disparities continue to emerge from this pandemic, we call on researchers and policymakers to pay attention to the multiple ways that families matter.
Against the background of recent methodological debates pitting ethnography against interviewing, this paper offers a defense of the latter and argues for methodological pluralism and pragmatism and against methodological tribalism. Drawing on our own work and on other sources, we discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of interviewing. We argue that concern over whether attitudes correspond to behavior is an overly narrow and misguided question. Instead we offer that we should instead consider what interviewing and other data gathering techniques are best suited for. In our own work, we suggest, we have used somewhat unusual interviewing techniques to reveal how institutional systems and the construction of social categories, boundaries, and status hierarchies organize social experience. We also point to new methodological challenges, particularly concerning the incorporation of historical and institutional dimensions into interview-based studies. We finally describe fruitful directions for future research, which may result in methodological advances while bringing together the strengths of various data collection techniques.
The medical profession has invested untold treasure in quantifying bodily processes, and excellence in the quantified biological sciences has long been the surest route to professional fame. Yet the profession also recognizes that success in the healing arts requires a grasp and appreciation of narrative and culture. Culture shapes biomedicine in at least three ways, all of which may be interrogated through ethnography. First, biomedicine has imbued the provider–patient relationship with special cultural status, and ethnography can provide insights into the nature of this relationship (which has been variously interpreted as a necessary component of a functional society, a hallmark of occupational power, or an aspect of boundary work by a knowledge profession). Second, biomedicine recognizes that health is shaped by culturally mediated behaviors that typically occur outside the clinical setting and are thus beyond providers’ immediate apprehension and control. Ethnography can provide insights into these behaviors. Finally, the scale of contemporary biomedicine (healthcare spending accounts for one-sixth of gross domestic product) has produced complex cultural institutions. Ethnographic insights are needed to characterize the organizational culture of medicine and improve the practice of healing.
This introductory chapter examines the methodological and practical challenges that comparative ethnographers face. It begins by discussing both the promises and potential pitfalls of comparative field research. It then moves to an examination of how ethnography’s unusually diverse set of traditions provides both unique challenges and possibilities for comparative social science. The chapter proceeds to chart the various ways in which ethnography’s historically diverse traditions translate into divergent approaches to comparison in contemporary research. This is followed by an overview of the structure of the volume, which explains how each of our contributors’ chapters advances comparative ethnographic methodology. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why acknowledging, maintaining, and utilizing ethnographic pluralism, rather than pushing for a single catch-all approach, can benefit both individual scholars and the field of ethnographic methodology more broadly.
In this chapter, eminent ethnographer and cognitive sociologist Aaron Cicourel shares insights gleaned from using ethnographic methods for the past six decades. In conversation with Corey Abramson, Cicourel addresses a number of important issues about both the practice of comparative ethnography and the academic contexts in which it takes place. Cicourel argues for attentiveness to an often-overlooked strength of comparative ethnography—the way cross-site ethnographic comparisons can be used to chart not just variation, but comparatively invariant aspects of human behavior in a way that captures real-time, localized behavior and language use. Cicourel explains how his approach consequently draws upon diverse traditions ranging from cognitive linguistics to behavioral ecology to produce a more integrated form of comparative sociology that encompasses multiple levels of social and physical reality. In the process, Cicourel proceeds to voice his current position on topics including approaches to comparison, ecological validity and levels of analysis, language use, the historical connection of his approach to ethnomethodology, team science in contemporary academia, analogical and digital approaches to inquiry, the role of theory, and what he hopes future ethnographers will learn from his career.
cloth • $39.95 ISBN 9780674743953 256 pages • 5 tables The End Game How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years Corey M. Abramson " Abramson brings a qualitative eye to a topic we have mainly known through statistics—mortality rates, actuarial estimates, and life expectancies. With a refreshing perspective, The End Game brings us close to what people experience as they age, making clear not only that 'aches and pains' are shared across the board but also that access to resources matters enormously for how people manage those difficulties. The book dispels stereotypes over and over; his elderly respondents work to maintain their image, laugh at their failing memories, and smoke marijuana. The book is a terrific contribution to our knowledge of how people actually experience inequality in their later years. "
This paper explores the ethnographic technique of the focused revisit-rare in sociology but common in anthropology-when an ethnographer returns to the site of a previous study. Discrepancies between earlier and later accounts can be attributed to differences in: (1) the relation of observer to participant, (2) theory brought to the field by the ethnographer, (3) internal processes within the field site itself, or (4) forces external to the field site. Focused revisits tend to settle on one or another of these four explanations, giving rise to four types of focused revisits. Using examples, the limits of each type of focused revisit are explored with a view to developing a reflexive ethnography that combines all four approaches. The principles of the focused revisit are then extended to rolling, punctuated, heuristic, archeological, and valedictory revisits. In centering attention on ethnography-as-revisit sociologists directly confront the dilemmas of participating in the world they study-a world that undergoes (real) historical change that can only be grasped using a (constructed) theoretical lens.
This article argues for a distinctive form of participant observation which I label peopled ethnography. I contrast this to two alternative ethnographic approaches, the personal ethnography and the postulated ethnography. In a peopled ethnography the text is neither descriptive narrative nor conceptual theory; rather, the understanding of the setting and its theoretical implications are grounded in a set of detailed vignettes, based on field notes, interview extracts, and the texts that group members produce. The detailed account, coupled with the ability of the reader to generalize from the setting, is at the heart of this methodological perspective. This form of ethnography is most effectively based on the observation of an interacting group, a setting in which one can explore the organized routines of behavior. I demonstrate the use of peopled ethnography through my own ethnographic investigations, contrasting this approach with classic works from other approaches.
WHEN EVERETT HUGHES TAUGHT ME at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s, we were trained in Participant Observation (PO), although we also called it fieldwork. We were already aware, however, that PO was an umbrella word covering several combinations of participation and observation and that different combinations were relevant for different studies and study sites. I was attracted to PO because I saw it as a method I could use to understand parts of American society other than the little bit in which I was personally involved. Later, I realized that it was particularly useful for elaborating, explaining, and even debunking the findings of the quick-and-dirty legwork on which journalists must base their feature stories about American society. Perhaps even more important, PO could supply empirical findings about little known or stereotyped populations, particularly those outside the mainstream. Partly because of these virtues, the books and articles using PO are often about topics of general as well as sociological interest. When they are also well written, they are sometimes read by the general public. When favorably received and widely read, they are immensely helpful to sociology’s reputation, which in turn helps us obtain the resources without which we cannot long survive as teachers or researchers. PO is still my preferred method. I also consider it the most scientific, because it is the only one that gets close to people. In addition, it allows researchers to observe what people do, while all the other empirical methods are limited to reporting what people say about what they do.
Ethnographers have long been unhappy with the review of their research proposals by institutional review boards (IRBs). In this article, we offer a sociological view of the problems associated with prospective IRB review of ethnographic research. Compared with researchers in other fields, social scientists have been less willing to accommodate themselves to IRB oversight; we identify the reasons for this reluctance, and in an effort to promote such accommodation, we suggest several steps to reduce the frustration associated with IRB review of ethnographic research. We conclude by encouraging ethnographers to be alert to the ways the procedural and bureaucratic demands of IRBs can displace their efforts to solve the serious ethical dilemmas posed by ethnography.
- Achim Edelmann
- Tom Wolff
- Danielle Montagne
- Christopher A Bail
Edelmann, Achim, Tom Wolff, Danielle Montagne, and Christopher A. Bail. 2020.
"Computational Social Science and Sociology." Annual Review of Sociology 46: in press.
The Unexpected Community
- Arlie Hochschild
- Russell
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1973. The Unexpected Community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters
- Steven Lubet
Lubet, Steven. 2017. Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters. Oxford University
Press.
Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto
- Barbara Myerhoff
Myerhoff, Barbara. 1980. Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among
Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto. New York: Touchstone.
Representation, Responsibility and Reliability in Participant Observation
- Martín Sánchez-Jankowski
Sánchez-Jankowski, Martín. 2002. "Representation, Responsibility and Reliability in Participant
Observation." Pp. 144-160 in Qualitative Research in Action, edited by T. May. London:
Sage.
Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University; he is the author of Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education
- James E Gary Alan Fine Is
- Johnson
Gary Alan Fine is James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University; he is the
author of Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education
(University of Chicago Press, 2018). His current ethnography is a study of senior citizen political
activists.
Abramson is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, author of The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years
- M Corey
Corey M. Abramson is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, author
of The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years (Harvard University Press, 2017) and
co-editor of Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography (Oxford
University Press, 2020).
Beyond Text: Using Arrays to Represent and Analyze Ethnographic Data
- Corey M Abramson
- Dan Dohan
Abramson, Corey M. and Dan Dohan. 2015. "Beyond Text: Using Arrays to Represent and
Analyze Ethnographic Data." Sociological Methodology 45(1): 272-319.