COVID-ized Ethnography: Challenges and Opportunities for Young Environmental Activists and Researchers

Abstract

This article offers a critical and reflective examination of the impact of the enforced 2020/21 COVID-19 lockdown on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with UK-based young environmental activists. A matrix of researcher and activist challenges and opportunities has been co-created with young environmental activists using an emergent research design, incorporating a phased and intensive iterative process using online ethnography and online qualitative interviews. The article focuses on reflections emerging from the process of co-designing and then use of this matrix in practice. It offers an evidence base which others researching hard-to-reach youth populations may themselves deploy when negotiating face-to-face fieldwork approval at their own academic institutions. The pandemic and its associated control regimes, such as lockdown and social distancing measures, will have lasting effects for both activism and researchers. The methodological reflections we offer in this article have the potential to contribute to the learning of social science researchers with respect to how best to respond when carrying out online fieldwork in such contexts—particularly, but not only, with young activists.

Theoretical and methodological approaches to activism during the COVID-19 pandemic— between continuity and change

“…Four studies explored the effect of COVID-19 on activisms using ethnographic methods, a research approach where researchers use engaged observation of people in their cultural setting to produce a narrative account of that setting. Arya and Henn (2021) used auto-ethnography, a method where the researcher's personal experience is used to describe and interpret community experiences, beliefs, and practices. The authors coproduced a matrix of challenges and opportunities of COVID-19 and related regimes of control for young environmental activists and researchers.…”

“…Overall, these studies showed how-while the pandemic did not negatively affect the interest and engagement of activists in these social causes, the health concerns and regulatory restrictions associated with traditional, face-to-face forms of protest led to the proliferation of alternative (mainly online) forms of engagement. In studying environmental activism in the UK, Arya and Henn (2021), showed that the pandemic crisis posed problems but was also a source of new possibilities. For instance, the increased use of online spaces on the one side caused worry about surveillance and police infiltration in the activism activities, but on the other side provided more opportunities for participation for those living in rural areas.…”

“…In one research, interviews were conducted for validation rather than for generative purposes. Arya and Henn (2021) first collected data through ethnographic online observation of young British environmental activists to come up with a matrix of challenges and opportunities they faced during COVID-19. Then the authors conducted three unstructured online interviews to collect critical feedback and confirm that all elements of the matrix had been accurately represented.…”

Online, offline, hybrid: Methodological reflection on event ethnography in (post-)pandemic times

“…In these settings, events offer their heterogeneous groups of participants rare, if not the only, occasions to meet in person, directly interact and recognize each other as stakeholders in the same transdisciplinary action fields. This mode of transdisciplinary exchange and research has changed since March 2020 as we are now observing and participating in virtual events ( Arya and Henn, 2021 ; Howlett, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; Lupton, 2021 ; Vadrot et al, 2021 ).…”

Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainably Developed Society

“…without mobilizing new empirical information). Table 1 summarizes some characteristics of the published manuscripts [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In any case, and whatever the developments in the post-COVID 19 world, it is critical to consider individual and/or collective inequalities of various kinds, and materialized in numerous ways [1,7,[34][35][36].…”