Plunging Online in a Pandemic

It’s amazing how quickly things can change in a few days. On March 11 one of my students asked if I thought the university was shutting down. I’d just been at an event where top university officials were still shaking hands and physical distancing wasn’t yet part of their lexicon. “The university doesn't look like it’s shutting down” I said, “but one never knows. Everything could change tomorrow.” By the 13^th of March Santa Ono had declared all in person instruction was to end and by the 16^th the university was telling students they could fly home and their exams would all be online.  Many faculty had already realized teaching online was very likely on the agenda.  But when the announcement came it was a surprise just the same.

For most of my colleagues teaching ended in April. But I was signed up to teach three courses in our summer semester making me part of the vanguard setting a path everyone else will follow in September (UBC has announced that the fall term is all online). Last September, when I agreed to teach these courses, we envisioned them as a range of small to medium sized in person classes. But with the pandemic I was suddenly teaching three online courses, two of them enrolling more than a hundred students each (way more than we anticipated last fall). The pandemic has brought us into a new space for learning and teaching.

It’s been a major learning curve for me. But having always dabbled in online communications through blogging, video production, and podcasts the technical part wasn’t that daunting.  The hard part is trying to find a way to connect with my students. Despite what is said about the online environment it still has a long way to go to emulate real human contact.

I am so impressed by the students. From Bangkok to Jakarta , Yellowknife to Montreal, Cape Town to  Shenzhen, my students are literally everywhere in the world.  This means I have to think differently about lectures and assignments – all of which have been modified. Lectures are shorter but there are extension materials including online sources and videos. Lectures are recorded so that students don’t have to be present in real time. Assignments and tests are restructured to let students progress at their own pace (to an extent) with sliding deadlines.

But with all of that it becomes clear how problematic our home internet services are. It might be okay to stream a great movie over Netflix, but try an interactive video discussion with a hundred students and you find out who is literally hanging on by thin wire and who has a robust home network.

Disparities in access to good internet services and home equipment is striking. I asked my students who had dedicated work space in their homes. More a third are sharing space, moving from front room to kitchen, patio to bedroom, as they chase after quiet home work space.

I’ve also heard from my students their worries for family and friends in essential services or elders that need care. They have shared worries that come from isolation for those living alone or with roommates who have grown apart.   Then there are those who have lost their jobs and, despite this modest reopening, have been told there is no job for them to return to. For many it’s been pretty grim.

Yet there is, and I know it's a cliché to say it, a really strong base of resilience among these students. At the same time as they face increased pressures, disruptions, anxiety, and fears, they also express joy in having the good fortune to study. They express gratitude for the learning teams UBC has put in place to support their learning.  I may be the public face in the class but there is a team of five working directly with me  (four teaching assistants and graduate research associate) and a host of other support in IT, the library, and our administration making sure that UBC’s learning community continues to thrive no matter where in the world they have scattered to.

I look forward to returning to face-to-face instruction where I can interact with and get to know my students more thoroughly. In the meantime we make the best of it in our shred learning journey.

Responsible Anthropology in the Pandemic

Anthropologists have a mixed legacy of complicity with colonial powers and support for pro-local progressivism. Both strains of anthropology share a desire to travel among 'othered' peoples.  As a guild anthropologists are aware of this intersectional conflict in disciplinary identity and desire.  Neo-Trotskyist anthropologist Kathleen Gough called for anthropologists to subsume themselves in the anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles and, in so doing, transform anthropology. For a brief moment in the discipline's history Gough's call resonated within the discipline as part of a global social movement for justice and the overthrow of propertied elites who commanded the heights of national states.  But as movement after movement was defeated anthropologists turned away from material struggles for change to explore nuance in experimental representations of their research in print and visual media instead.  It was a crisis in the global order of rule that created the opportunity for a progressive social moment in the 1960s & 1970s.  

In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic a similar moment of crisis of authority and the normal is occurring.  We see the effects of decades of privatization, underfunding, and tax cutting in the tidal wave of death sweeping through long term care facilities for our elders. Facilities left to profiteers employing low paid marginalized workers have been the center of the worst effects of the pandemic. The need to throttle the wider economy arises from the same ideas of lean management and finding ‘efficiencies’ in our healthcare system. Here we see our hospitals lack the adequate resilience to respond to a serious crisis without shutting down all other services, pushing people out of care, and then closing the rest of society.

It didn’t have to be this way and it doesn't need to be this way in the future. It will be up to historians to dissect how we got here, but we can all focus on how we should move forward today. There is much to learn from the earlier generation of progressives like Gough.  They argued for a locally relevant anthropological practice that was tied to an emancipatory social justice practice.  It was also an anthropology that was interested as much in making changes in the home nation and communities, as it was oriented to changes elsewhere.  In fact, the most committed of the earlier generation of progressives were far less interested in making professional milestones than in facilitating progressive change at home and globally.

So where does this take us? How can we practice anthropology responsibly in the pandemic? We can start with doing anthropology where we are. It has been the luxury of global travel that propelled the diffusion of the virus globally into a pandemic. Combine global travel with key cultural events – lunar New Year in Asia and Spring Break in North America – and we have a recipe for disaster.  Anthropologists, despite their claims otherwise, perform very much like cruise ship voyagers traveling to hot spots of interest and feel totally empowered to do so. So, step one, stop traveling for research.

Step two – study local. Work where we are, in our own neighbourhoods, networks, and communities of account. Especially in the pandemic this reduces adverse impacts of crossing social boundaries. This also addresses issues of power imbalances that social scientists have identified with middle class researchers heading off to study groups of historically marginalized peoples.

Step three – act locally for social justice. The impacts of the current pandemic are magnified by longstanding historic injustices. Long-term care for the elderly has been driven primarily by a privatized for profit sector that pays poorer wages to people with inadequate job security, the result in the pandemic has been needless early death of our elders. Our hospitals have been managed to run lean at near 100% capacity with over paid specialists at one end and poorly paid core staff at the other the net effect that our hospitals don’t have the resilience or capacity to respond without shutting down society and discharging thousands of people who needed care.

A responsible anthropology in the pandemic would thus be local and engaged in fundamental political, social, and economic changes.

Anthropology in the Pandemic

At the University of British Columbia all non-essential and non-COVID-19 research has been 'curtailed' by the university (link).  There is a specific prohibition on in person research (though a definition of such is assumed, not defined).  I assume in-person research is simply any kind of human subject research wherein the researcher and the research participant are  physically in the same general space.  

Research that can be conducted over the phone or internet can, if approved, be continued. 

I have been trying to find the provincial health order that might have compelled UBC to ban all in person research out right.  My various questions to officials in the research ethics off or the office of the vice-president of research have, to date, gone unanswered.*  It would be useful to know what provincial or federal guidance/order/notice was followed to come to a decision to essentially shut down most kinds of anthropological research. 

My understanding of the provincial (and various associated federal and regional) health orders and guidance notes around physical distancing would suggest that anthropological research could be conducted, as long as the appropriate measures  were followed (personal protective equipment as appropriate, 2 meters distance, etc). Yet UBC has 'curtailed' all in person research, even that which might be in compliance with the orders around physical distancing.

There are many types of anthropological research , of course, but that which my students and I engage in is not driven by structured interviews in which 'informants' are lined up and interviewed like cogs on a conveyor belt.  We engage in a classic kind of research that involves participation, engagement, observation, conversation, and moments of shared silence.  There are types of 'qualitative' research in which the interview is at the core of the project (these kinds of research could be tossed online with minimal disruption). But the heart of anthropological research is more humane, personable, and intimate. It involves actually being there (where ever the 'there' might be). 

I could imagine a number of project one might wish to start up today. 

For example, the fishing industry is currently facing a major slow down and market disruption. This isn't just in BC, it's global. Fleets are being beached, processing workers laid off, markets crashing, all around the globe. One project might involve reaching out to fishermen along our coast to learn and observe how onboard practices may have changed.  Perhaps the researcher might even sign up to join the boat as a crewmember (from what I hear it's hard to hire a crew right now). Fishing (along with hunting and cultivation) is labeled an essential part of the food production chain and thus currently deemed essential in BC.  The only drawback is there isn't much of a market right now given the global shutdown.

My current research involves small teams (one, two or three) working in the coastal alpine. Essentially we are hiking along remote mountain ranges observing mountain goats (filming and collecting biological samples) and then talking with family and friends about what we observed to gain greater understanding of long standing Gitxaała practices within the coastal alpine.

My ‘questioning’ of UBC’s ’curtailment’ includes a concern with the meta level principles/health orders that led to the ban on all in person research and with a more micro level focus on the criteria that would make in person research feasible. I raise the first concern as I think UBC’s curtailment goes beyond the health orders.  I ask the second as I think we need to engage in some curtailment and I am therefore intersted in what criteria we might use to facilitate local in person research.  

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*Update, April 18, 8:30pm: one response was received that referred me to this page and noted that in addition to physical distancing orders, there are restrictions on non-essential travel and concerns with impacts on remote areas. That is reasonable. Remaining to consider are criteria for in person research within one's own locality (thus obviating issues with non-essential travel). Also, travel should not be confused with commuting. Travel implies a notion of journey of some time, whereas commuting is a regular movement from a home to a place of work and back. Commuting is not, from what I can see, prohibited.

There is also a category 'field research' that might apply for anthropological research, however I suspect that the kind of 'fieldwork' envisioned is more of the biological or geological sciences, for example.

One looks forward to a more engaged process that brings in a wide array of disciplinary specialists so that the full range and nuance of 'field' and in-person research can be considered fairly and safely.

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Update, April 19, 5:30am: One further thought - there is a sense to which the university is envisioning faculty's core and primary roles as teachers. This is only one portion of what we do, research (which includes writing and publishing) and administrative functions being the bulk of our work. But the work from home directives focus primarily upon our teaching. That is understandable as teaching is at the core of the university's public face and core 'market.'  Teaching and learning was the publicly disruptive act of curtailment and required immediate attention. But it does underline a perception that research, especially in the arts, is something 'other,' almost a luxury that can be set aside until later.