Towards a Feminist Digital Ethnography
Applying feminist digital ethnography across sectors (as an action-research and gender data methodology) is foundational to the transformation of organisations, communities, companies and governments — to meet the challenges of today.
This piece is a write-up of my presentation and contribution to a recent Roundtable on Feminist Digital Ethnography, hosted by The Gender & Sexualities Research Centre (GSRC) at City, University of London on 25th January 2021. Thank you to GSRC for inviting me, and to wonderful co-panellists and participants for a stimulating conversation.
Some of the questions that guided me towards feminist digital ethnography are:
- What does feminist ethnographic research & data look like (and feel like) in a digitally-mediated world?
- How can feminist research at the intersection of online and offline worlds disrupt a reliance on binary thinking in the world — to articulate humanity based on flexibility, and identities “on the move”?
- What can we, as researchers, do to co-create public interest research that creates new possibilities for conviviality (thriving in diversity), in a digital world?
- How can feminist ethnography harness digital spaces and multiple mediums to support self-representation, and gather and tell stories in a way that privileges a “reliable and authoritative process of knowledge production” (Nyamnjoh, 2015a:50), while opening up academia’s traditionally closed publication models?
I thought about these questions day-in and day-out while doing my PhD data collection and thesis writing in 2018. My PhD dissertation, “(Im)mobility, Digital Technologies and Transnational Spaces of Belonging: An Ethnographic Study of Somali Migrants in Cape Town” (Brudvig, 2019) — explored the gendered politics and ethics of being and belonging in a world of mobility and migration where digital technologies have become significant to social organisation and sociality, both within and across borders. Through a case study of Somali migrants in Cape Town, the dissertation investigated the reasons why policies and technologies that were expected to create more fluid movement and more open societies have been met with the hardening of national borders, and a parallel rise in global trends towards anti-immigration, control of identities, social polarisation and fear of difference.
My research involved exploring the role of digital technologies and online spaces in Somali migrants’ experiences of belonging. This involved researching the intersections of physical mobility and immobility — which I termed “(im)mobility”; online and offline spaces; local and transnational kinship networks; and socio-economic and legal factors influencing citizenship and belonging. Navigating this complex topic led me to theoretical and practical questions at the intersections of feminist & digital research methods.
I turned towards the literature on Feminist Anthropology as a way to understand and situate my own practical experiences and concerns about collecting data and conducting research in ways that will not exploit others, and that can actually have a positive impact in public sphere. Feminist Anthropology is rooted in the call for Anthropology to apply a critical lens to the question of women’s agency and the operating of power through structures and mechanisms of control that create, reproduce and uphold gender norms. This involves taking a critical view on questions of political economy, representation, ethics of care and reciprocity, reflexivity and embodiment in research and data collection practices. For me personally, Feminist Anthropology is about shifting knowledge and power paradigms in academic and applied research, towards:
- Imagining the possibilities for knowledge production based on the spirit of co-creation, partnership and collaboration.
- Actively engaging with the politics of data & representation in knowledge production.
- Recognising that, as researchers, we must engage in navigating our own reconfigurations of belonging if we seek to speak about and represent worlds around us.
- Re-thinking the practice of research itself, and how, rather than being extractive, it may effect conviviality, solidarity and collective desire.
Feminist Digital Anthropology/Ethnography is well suited to study both: a) the adoption and use of digital technologies; b) how virtual spaces intersect with power and agency in everyday lives to give rise to new forms of mobility and possibilities for social and political resistance, on the other hand.
Feminist Digital Ethnography was particularly useful to a study of Somali migrants as this approach (conceptually and methodologically) recognises the ways in which identity and belonging is transnational (dispersed online and offline) and “permanently on the move” as a response to unfolding experiences of layers of power, domination and resistance in everyday life, unfolding both online and offline.
Three Key Things to Consider towards a Feminist Digital Ethnography
- “Zooming Out” — Situate the political economy “field of the digital” from a feminist perspective
Ethnography typically investigates the “micro-politics of everyday life” which are influenced by (and embedded in) the broader political economy — including the technology/digital sector. Social life is mediated by structures and processes of power. It is, therefore, essential for feminist digital ethnographers to investigate structural power and political economy of technology, including technical, physical, legal and digital infrastructures to unearth systemic issues. This may involve, for example, digital infrastructures, drivers & barriers to participation online; public and private spaces and sectoral interests (technology and media), history, place-making, power analysis of different actors etc. A political-economy analysis also requires scoping the “offline”, including laws, policies and macro-issues.
In my research, this approach was essential to uncovering analysis and findings on digital citizenship.
“Digital citizenship is becoming increasingly normalised… As society and governmental institutions become reliant on digital technologies, citizens are expected to be and act digitally” (Schou & Hjelholt, 2018:510). The “digital citizen as a new political figure” is “intertwined with relations of power” in the “production of citizen-subjectivity” (ibid). This emergent “form of political subjectivity” is connected to “wider processes of neo-liberalisation and state restructuring” (ibid) — for example the turn towards market-oriented development and individualised (over collective) structures embedded within particular geographies and historical contexts — and through digital technologies. (Brudvig, 2019)
2. Problematising Binary Ontology of Code and Possibilities for Belonging
Digital ethnography challenges traditional “definitions” of a field site/social group of study. It requires the researcher to step away from traditional reliance on ideas of place, community and shared identity factors (such as gender, ethnic or national identity) that are often associated with particular sites as central analytical factors. Research should instead focus on “social and political processes of place-making, conceived less as a matter of ‘ideas’ than of embodied practices that shape identities” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997b:4).
The problem is that categories of identification (nationality, location, gender, race, language, interests etc) are reinforced by technological architectures (e.g. ad-based models, filter bubbles, algorithms). The binary ontology of code (as the language of the internet) defines (or rather restricts/limits) the possibilities for being and belonging, and imagining & understanding social worlds and the lived experience.
Data economy → “Data bodies” = performative power that is generative of power/political subjectivity (state, corporate, community etc)
“The social reproduction of identities and hierarchies (encoded as data) allows little room for individuals to contest how we are coded to belong in this world, and has limited self-determination in defining flexible identities. Through our digital selves, we are programmed into contrived hierarchies with little choice in the matter and limited recourse for resistance” (Brudvig, 2019)
Conceptualising feminist digital research is about positioning mobility and frontier-ness as central to BEING and belonging; acknowledging that we all exist in a world that is “permanently on the move” (Nyamnjoh, 2013). Understanding culture, identity and belonging requires conceptualising identity as flexible (not binary/fixed), at the frontier of change.
Feminist digital ethnography also presents important distinctions and complementarities between big data & thick data, as these approaches lead to diverse epistemological “ways of knowing”, which determine how we come to understand and treat social issues and complex cultural phenomena (as well as social/policy impacts associated with the study data).
3. Deep engagement with the ethics and politics of data & representation in research practice
Feminist digital ethnography must centre research practice in an ethics of care, reciprocity and reflexivity. Ethical considerations involve taking ethnography as a form of political practice; maintaining a “predicament-oriented approach” (Nyamnjoh, 2007b). Reflexivity in the field is critical to “recognising a variety of different ways in which anthropological representations may be engaged with questions of culture and power, place making and people making, resistance and subjectivity (Gupta & Ferguson, 2001:24-5): “knowledge of people grants power over people.”
My PhD dissertation goes into lengthy discussion on this topic (See Chapter 3: Methodological Considerations for a Study of Mobility, In-Betweenness and Digital Anthropology). One practical example of this would be to share personal stories and views in a dialogue with research participants, and situate data as inter-subjective — from the lens and perspective of the researcher/author.
Feminist digital ethnography may be applied as a process-based reflexive exercise to shine the mirror on the researcher and the political economy of knowledge production. This approach begs the questions:
- Who is at the table? Whose voices are missing in this collective endeavour?
- Where does authority come from “to represent”? Who speaks for whom? What is the intention of this research, what is my role? Who stands to benefit from the ethnographic endeavour, and towards what end?
- How do power dynamics and ethics of representation (in research and publishing) reinforce systemic inequalities in public sphere?
My approach to feminist digital ethnography was about re-positioning embodiment and reflexivity in digital spaces.
Taking a reflexive approach to ethnographic research, in general, may involve analysis of the different subjectivities/identities (or avatars!) that researchers embody and strategically adopt (or aim to distance ourselves from) as we enter and strive to understand social worlds, and navigate our own identities as actors wearing multiple/interchangeable hats in new social spaces. Drawing on the work of Judith Okely, research is “a process of physical labour, bodily interaction and sensory learning which constitutes a foundation for the production of written texts.” This necessitates a process of self-reflection, based on:
“Recognising the bodily knowledge from the past that informs interpretations in the field” (Okely, 2007: 65).
“Knowing others through the instrument of the fieldworker’s own body involves deconstructing the body as a cultural, biographical construction through a lived and interactive encounter with others’ cultural construction and bodily experience” (Okely, 2007:77).
Conviviality and processes of engagement: towards co-creation of public interest research through feminist digital ethnography
Ethnographers — as participant observers with an “ear to the ground”— have unique knowledge that should be applied across sectors to facilitate co-creation of public interest research and cultural understanding, particularly in times of social crisis and transformation.
The intersection of digital and feminist ethnography also presents important questions regarding the decolonisation of knowledge production and data both methodologically and analytically.
Feminist digital anthropology is about changing the processes of engagement in knowledge production. It is also about recognising that, as researchers, we must engage in navigating our own reconfigurations of belonging if we seek to speak to and represent worlds around us. This requires researchers to re-think knowledge production itself, and how, rather than being extractive, research may effect conviviality, solidarity and collective desire.
Research for the public good and serving the community of study requires processes of co-creation, participation, inclusion and self-representation. I believe applying feminist digital ethnography as a methodological framework across sectors (e.g. for action-research and gender data) is foundational to practically and actively engage in transformation of organisations, communities, companies and governments — to meet the challenges of today.
Welcome further discussions and collaborations
Find me at: ingrid.brudvig@gmail.com
Twitter: @IngridBrudvig
