Digital technologies, closeness, and practices of being together in the context of the new normal in Serbia

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, the global community faced a dramatic collapse of everyday life due to the pandemic caused by the emergence of a new coronavirus. The widespread changes in both public and private life led to the breakdown of routines and rhythms of daily life as we knew them, ushering us into a period known as the new normal. One of the main characteristics of life in the new normal has been the requirement for physical distancing and the reduction of physical contacts, or physical isolation. Under these conditions, it has become noticeable that digital technologies have become the primary element and link for establishing and maintaining social connections within the complex network of human sociability, permeating all our social relations and interactions. With this in mind, in this paper, relying on ethnography from a methodological perspective and materially oriented ontology from a theoretical perspective, I will attempt to analyze and present the changes in practices of social connection, specifically the ways in which close social ties (family, friends, and partners) and new social practices and rituals, associated with the increased use of digital technologies under the conditions of the new normal, mutually constitute each other. In this paper, the new normal is perceived as a period of uncertainty and continuous waiting, where waiting is not seen as a form of doing nothing, but rather as activity, as a time filled with a range of different behaviors and emotional reactions, shaped by the changing conditions in which people adapt to liv?, creating new practices and routines in the process, while digital technologies are considered integral and equal elements of social connections and worlds, as well as active and intertwined components of everyday life. This work is based on part of the material collected during field research conducted for the purpose of writing a doctoral dissertation.