Collecting COVID-19

Institution

UCL (University College London)

Country

Globally (we received contributions from around the world)

Type of Study

This website aims to encourage anthropologists around the world (including PhD students) to use their ongoing contacts with their research participants to help keep the world informed about different local circumstances and responses, from which others could then learn.

Methodology

Crowd-sourced digital ethnography of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Key Focus of Study

The focus of the 'Collecting COVID' Project has been to document anthropological responses to the unfolding pandemic, as seen through the eyes of many diverse communities and populations working with anthropologists or anthropology PhD students worldwide - these included everyone from a community of Catholic Benedictine monks in England to interviews with lower-middle-class young men in the western Indian city of Pune, through to the materials circulated on the web in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and many others. The aim of the project is to shine a light on how the pandemic is affecting local communities in ways that are not always highlighted in mainstream media but also to highlight the creative and ingenious ways in which people from all around the world, whether from a small town in Ireland or a housing estate for the elderly in Singapore, have adapted to 'the new normal', finding new ways of showing affection, getting an education, finding answers to moral questions or supplementing the loss of their primary income during the lockdown. The site had two parts: the 'Digital Ethnography' section, where people could fill in a form and submit their ethnographic research, much of which was carried out digitally. The other part of the website, 'Anthropological Responses', asked anthropologists to dedicate 2 weeks to a different research question and take time to write a report trying to answering that specific question. The questions ranged from the topic of the fine line between care and surveillance to online education. The answers were then summarised and the summaries posted on social media every two weeks. The contributions were extremely valuable and in some cases highlighted very specific, local problems that many people are unaware of, such as the persecution of the Rohingya refugee population in Malaysia and their treatment during lockdown or the difficulties faced by Leipzig's homeless population after a 'contact ban' was issued in the country. Most of all, the initiative demonstrates anthropology's unique potential to produce unique types of knowledge that can contribute to contemporary topics in the context of a lot of debate on the pandemic being conducted from a political, technological and/or economic perspective. The World Health Organization itself has spoken about anthropologists making an increasingly valuable contribution to understanding the dynamics and intricacies of global pandemics, and this collection of local ethnographic reports shows how this can be done.

Key Stakeholders

Members of the public interested in local responses to the pandemic; Anthropologists; Those interested in digital ethnography; Policymakers wishing to know more about how the response to COVID-19 has affected ordinary people's lives; Those interested in STS (Science and technology studies); Other social scientists

Sample size

We received around 100 contributions from different countries around the world although some people sent in multiple contributions. Each documents a different topic/facet of the COVID-19 crisis.

Timeframe

Three months - April to end of June 2020

Funding Institution(s)

No funding institution - although the people working on the website are affiliated with the UCL Centre for Digital Anthropology, this is not an initiative that benefited from funding but something done in addition to other work.

Date data expected

07-Jul-20

Status

Complete

More information contact

g.murariu@ucl.ac.uk