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06/10/20
 
About
The blog Fieldwork meets Crisis is part of the DGSKA Autumn School, which takes its starting point in the current pandemic moment, which substantially affects our discipline. (Field) research cannot be conducted or changes significantly, the mobility of researchers is limited, physical proximity on-site is replaced by online contacts, planning security gives way to uncertainty. […]
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Natascha Bregy
14/10/20
Migration between Switzerland and Germany:
A comparative study of migration between two culturally and geographically close countries
Introduction In May 2019, I started my research project, comparing migration experiences of German and Swiss migrants to the neighboring country, respectively. The focus of the project was on three aspects: initial migration decisions, current living conditions, and prospects. Both groups mostly consist of well-educated individuals who should have few difficulties integrating into the host […]
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Karoline Buchner
14/10/20
Chasing the Crisis
– on the “Coronification” of anthropological research
Adaptation to new circumstances is a critical skill in times of crisis. Over the course of 2020, singles around the world had to adapt to loneliness, families and roommates to being locked in with each other, so-called non-essential workers to unemployment, whole societies to the “the hammer and the dance” as lock-downs were lifted and […]
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Panitda Saiyarod
14/10/20
Anthropological Research and Responsibility in The Pandemic Moment
Many countries within Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Laos, are currently facing tremendous changes resulted from infrastructure development influenced by the Chinese government. My fieldwork was conducted at the Mekong riverside border towns in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand. It was the border area of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, where several Chinese transnational companies have invested. […]
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Janneke Tiegna
14/10/20
Vigilantism in western Burkina Faso
Research about a crisis and within a crisis
Today one year ago I took part in my first field research in Burkina Faso[1] on behalf of my research project “Local self-regulation for the establishment of security: vigilante groups in Burkina Faso” at the University of Leipzig. The research focuses on vigilantes in the West African state of Burkina Faso. The project compares two […]
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Huajing Yang
14/10/20
Fieldwork Meets Crisis
The Inevitability of Topic Change and Resilience Response of Research Crisis
Efendi restaurant and Christmas tree, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Photo by Yang Zhao, PhD candidate of University of Queensland, Australia. The unexpected epidemic swept the world at the beginning of the year and directly interrupted my research plan. After waiting for several months, I finally decided to choose my plan B in September and change my research […]
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Sara Wiederkehr
14/10/20
From Street Art to Internet
Thoughts on Digital Ethnography
My PhD research[1] on mural street art in Los Angeles (USA) focuses on the relations between urban artivism and the appropriation of urban space, the creation and reshaping of space and history, as well as the limits and scopes of artistic production in the context of political and social crisis. I had planned an intense […]
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Facundo Rivarola
14/10/20
Old Crisis Meet New Crisis:
“(New) Coronavirus”, Digitalization of fieldwork and the Century-old Crisis of Representation in Anthropology
Academic life, often, involves a great deal of “social distancing,” and ethnographic research presents itself an opportunity to socialize beyond the comfort of one-owns working desk. After a year and a half immersed in the isolation of books, theories, and western academic environments, the opportunity to start fieldwork in Paraguay was greatly welcome. In late […]
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Joaquin Molina
14/10/20
Theseus Sailing the Peruvian Mantaro
Figure 1: Laya [andean Priest] Zósimo Tapara Jurado, performing a ceremony in the mountain of Huaytapallana, prior to the Coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Joaquín Molina (author). The Mantaro Valley, crossed by a great homonymous river and located in the central highlands of Peru, has historically been characterized as a unique place in the development of the […]
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Nomazulu Thata
14/10/20
Challenges of ethnographic research in Zimbabwe’s political, economic, and social context amid SARS-Cov-2 pandemic
Abstract The global pandemic is affecting the way we conduct field research: instead of suspending conventional ethnographic field research altogether, alternative methods of research that take social distancing into consideration will be adequately used as a plausible way forward to the social impasse. The topic of my discussion is how I will transform my ethnographic […]
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Benedict Mette-Starke
14/10/20
When is Myanmar data?
The making of data through detachment and attachment
In the ongoing pandemic, news media daily confront their audiences with new case figures, ‘data’ in the form of diagrams and the numbers they are based upon. In this this blog post, I will illustrate how something similar has happened during my research with a freedom of expression focused organisation in Myanmar[1]. This will show […]
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