I find inspiration in anthropologist Ulf Hannerz’s characterization of ethnography as ‘the art of the possible’ and take from it the idea of doing the best with what you got. During this time when physical distancing is not only mandatory, but also compassionate, the ways in which we have tended to proceed in setting up and facilitating our fieldwork have been dealt a serious blow. The steps we take to develop relationships with field partners while hanging out, talking, and observing in the field have been disrupted. And opportunities to learn more, interview, and document perspectives, expressions, and stories have become less than ideal.
From my couch I recently attended a final class presentation of an undergraduate course in ethnography through an online videoconferencing platform. The course set out in late January to work with food justice organizations in Baltimore and produce a podcast by its end. Students were planning to document related places and conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews with staff, community leaders, and activists…then, come mid-March, they had to “shift gears,” as the course’s professor aptly put it.[1] And with great agility, the students did just that: they turned the ethnographic lens inward to their own families, homes, and neighborhoods to document the various roles food was playing in and near their lives – from its scarcity in stores, and transforming backyards into gardens, to learning traditional recipes from elders, and eating with distant relatives on religious holidays via Skype.
However, for some who have been planning to begin – as well as continue – fieldwork during these months (and beyond), the prospect of shifting gears can be daunting and disappointing, compounded by an unnerving uncertainty of how the pandemic will unfold. In general, this shift entails a move from the physical world of once-unmasked faces, gestures, handshakes, and hugs to one of telephone and/or web-based video communication. With this can come a loss of “intimacy” and “vivid details,” as my friend Nicole King[2] recently shared, where the benefits of being together – the human connection at the heart of ethnographic engagements – are diminished. Nicole is in the stages of a research project where building rapport with potential interlocutors remains ongoing, with some relationships starting from scratch, and although her methodological path centers on interviews, she recognizes all else that is lost by not being there. She explains:
One of the first steps in the process is to find a place the interview participant/s feel comfortable. Sometimes this is their home or office, etc. This process helps me understand the person I am interviewing in new ways. I prefer to interview in the field and many people feel most comfortable in their own spaces… and being invited in is a privilege and a window into the person’s life in an intimate way. I am able to ask questions about the place where we are doing the interview. I often ask people to define and describe where we are. As we know, how a neighborhood or space is defined is important and culturally significant. While we do have a contrived background online that may tell us something, it is not the same.
As we strive to create the conditions, founded on trust, where our field partners can guide us into their bodies of knowledge in their words and on their terms, what are the mechanics of shifting gears? Or, in the spirit of the art of the possible, how can one carry out ethnographic research while remaining physically distant?
In addition to a wealth of scholarship on ethnographies conducted in virtual worlds, where the use of digital/online technologies for participant observation and interviewing is most appropriate, there are some interesting qualitative studies of physical-world, sociocultural phenomena that were undertaken from a distance due to the impossibility of being there