COVID-19 Resources for Ethnographers:
Institutional Review Board Guidelines and Responses: Please regularly check your university’s COVID-19 Guidelines for Human Subject Research. Here are links to Boston-area IRB Offices: Boston College IRB; Boston University IRB; Harvard University IRB; MIT IRB; Northeastern IRB; UMASS-Boston; and UMASS-Amherst IRB.
COVID-19 Funding Opportunities: Please see the National Science Foundation special grant for COVID-19 research. Also see CU Boulder’s Natural Hazards Center for funding opportunities.
COVID-19 Crowdsourced Online Resource: “Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic," a resources on alternative qualitative data collection, for instance, by using digital methods or phone interviews.
On Ethnography in the Time of COVID-19:
Arregui, Anibal Garcia. 2020. "Viralscapes. The Bodies of Others after COVID-19." Allegra Lab. March 31.Lin, Kevin and Elyse D. Pham. 2020. "Research at the Intersections of COVID-19 Crisis Response." April 30.Lowe, Celia. 2017. "Viral Ethnography: Metaphor for Writing Life." Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 1:91-96.Pacheco-Vega, Raul. 2020. "Fieldwork in the Time of COVID-19: Doing Ethnography During a Pandemic." March 17.Parry, Marc. 2020. "As Coronavirus Spreads, Universities Stall Their Research to Keep Human Subjects Safe." March 18.Sue, Kimberly and Nick Iacobelli. 2020. "Our COVID Museum: Notes from Physician-Anthropologist on the Frontlines of an Evolving Pandemic in Seattle and New York." April 7.
Complementary Data Sources for Ethnographers:
Academic Publishers that have made E-books freely available through Proquest Ebook Central during COVID-19 epidemic
Digital US archives: list of over 250 State and local archives
Digital archives worldwide: extensive list covering digital archives around the world
Global list of online newspaper archives
Harvard Digital Lab for the Social Sciences (DLABSS): free online experimental and survey research for Harvard affiliates
Harvard Maps Collection: high-resolution scanned maps collection (openly accessible to everyone), including links to digitized collections at other institutions
Landgrid: U.S. nation-wide parcel database, freely available for COVID-19 researchers
Social Explorer: tract-level and up American Community Survey, Census data, and more, making cross-tabs and map-making
Exemplary Ethnographic Work (Also) Relying on Alternative Data Sources:
Childress, Herb. 2019. The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their MIssion [interviews, memoir, national data]. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hunter, Marcus Anthony. 2013, Black Citymakers: How the Philadelphia Negro Changed America [historical ethnography, archival data]. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford Press.
Hunter, Marcus Anthony and Zandria F. Robinson. 2018. Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life [oral history, popular culture, literature]. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heatwave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago [ethnography, public records, oral history]. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lane, Jeffrey. 2019. The Digital Street [ethnography, digital ethnography]. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford Press.
Reyes, Victoria. 2019. Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines [ethnography, historical data, legal documents]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sullivan, Esther. 2018. Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans' Tenuous Right to Place [ethnography, historical and spatial analysis]. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Exemplary Ethnographies Dealing with Disasters, Epidemics, Public Health:
Farmer, Paul. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hunter, Mark. 2010. Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press.
Hyde, Sandra Teresa. Eating Spring Rice: The Cultural Politics of AIDS in Southwest China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kamat, Vinay. 2013. Silent Violence: Global Health, Malaria, and Child Survival in Tanzania. University of Arizona Press.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heatwave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
MacPhail, Theresa. The Viral Network: A Pathography of the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Nading, Alex M. 2014. Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Porter, Natalie. 2019. Viral Economies: Bird Flu Experiments in Vietnam. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Wyrod, Robert. 2016. AIDS and Masculinity in the African City: Privilege, Inequality, and Modern Manhood. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Compiled by Aaron Benavidez, Sharon Cornelissen, and Vivian Shaw. Last Updated 04/26/2020.