Pandemic ethnography: Fieldwork in transformed social space

Abstract

This methodological analysis traces the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on two ethnographic studies in Chicago: a neighborhood fight for affordable housing, and an effort to increase local participation in the 2020 U.S. Census. We attend to the relationship between space and visibility after the onset of the pandemic as methodological and political challenges. Drawing on Haraway's seminal description of situated knowledge, this article explores the changes that the pandemic brought to our situated and partial perspective as ethnographers of political process. To do so, we present fieldwork from both studies before and after they became fully virtual. Finally, we discuss shared emergent methodological implications with a focus on embodiment in fieldwork, the dynamics of access, and the formalization of participation in online venues.