Digital Public Anthropology and the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

The digital revolution had a paradoxical effect upon public anthropology. On the one hand, it gave public‐minded anthropologists a wealth of tools and platforms with which to reach diverse audiences and create new publics. On the other, it helped to further the ongoing managerialization and quantification of academic labor in the name of efficiency and “public accountability.” In 2020, the COVID‐19 pandemic entered this complex scenario. COVID‐19 transformed the lives of people and organizations worldwide, presenting a host of challenges and opportunities for public anthropologists. This entry explores some of these. It opens with a brief survey of the COVID‐19 public digital anthropology landscape. It then reviews the main themes emerging from the digital responses of public anthropologists to the crisis, namely that lessons from previous medical crises be heeded, the importance of nonmedical knowledge, making inequalities visible, national differences, and the culture wars.