When Ethiopia actually reported its first case of COVID-19, the Minister of Health, Lia Tadesse, tweeted out a notice. “Update on Covid-19 in Ethiopia March 15, 2020” began: “Since Ethiopia confirmed the first case of COVID-19 on March 13, 2029, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute has been tracing the contacts of the first confirmed case…” Within hours the mistake had been corrected. It was in fact the year 2020, not nine years in the future, that Ethiopia was reporting its first case. Hiwot (pseudonym), my housemate and friend laughed, rolled her eyes, and said, “Oh Ethiopia.”
For weeks, especially as reports of Italy’s sky rocketing case numbers, and then France’s, and then New York’s, began, anticipation about COVID-19’s entry into Ethiopia carried a hollow fear. There was some hope that this would not really be an African virus. People made jokes that, for once, Africa was a much safer place to be. It was true, as people knew I had family in New York, that it would be much better to stay there.
But there was also a great deal of concern. Hiwot, in particular, seemed to say on a daily basis that Ethiopia was ill-equipped to handle anything of this magnitude. When we talked about it with friends and there was a constant concern that both the state would not be able to provide basic needs, and that other Ethiopian people would not know what to do.
“People don’t know how to wash their hands, to go to the doctor,” she said. “When people, especially old people get sick in Ethiopia, they are afraid to go to the hospital. They are afraid of medicine. They only want to take traditional medicine.” The fact that the first government notice misdated the press release 9 years into the future, heightened the concerns about Ethiopia’s ability to control the disease.
There’s a lot I could talk about in relation to Ethiopia’s place in the global pandemic. I could elaborate on the ways in which the state was vilified before it had a chance to respond, and the potential distrust that in turn led to political unrest in later months. I could talk about how an already existing anti-Chinese sentiment due to mass infrastructural Chinese investment in Ethiopia was further amplified. I could also talk about the growing anti-foreigner sentiment that was unleashed, but had clearly been growing long before the pandemic’s domestic onset. Or the ways American exceptionalism became a diminishing concept as George Floyd’s murder was broadcast on Ethiopian television screens alongside shots of a burning Minnesota. I could also talk about how the notion of an essential worker was being reconfigured amid a response to multi-faceted unrest.
This seminar is about attending to the moment, though, so I’m here to think about how Anthropology can certainly play a role in understanding and responding to this pandemic from the perspective of someone who was in the field when the onset began. I think our discipline does have a role to play, but how, to what extent, and where research should take place, is highly variable.
One way in which we have unique insights to offer is that we can share concerns of people in various contexts that are not otherwise addressed. Also, anthropology can be useful in taking insights that interlocutors share in the ways that they engage with the state, capital, labor, politics, family, and social relationships in a range of circumstances. That the pandemic also affected me as a worker in real time made this very clear. My processing and management of my own anxieties of being concerned about family members, and hearing about family members ailing from the virus while far away in Ethiopia, were importantly marked by the ways Ethiopians prepared for certain forms of uncertainty and strife that I did not. We have a lot to learn and offer by doing research, but being engaged in fieldwork also heightened the sense of importance that needs to come with an inward turn to see how best to be an anthropologist both in the field and within the academy.
Just as workers around the world were getting laid off or receiving insensitive messages about how to maintain productivity, many of us in the field saw circulating options and instructions
for doing anthropological fieldwork without “face-to-face” interactions. To me, it seemed like a cruel joke. Not only did it seem like I was first expected to upend a methodology I spent a year of time drafting through grant writing courses abruptly, but also the recommendations I received were completely unsuitable to my project. A document anthropologists and universities were sharing widely offered ideas like asking interlocutors to participate in online interviews, digital focus groups, online discussion platforms, download smartphone apps to track their days, or use go-pros to film their routines. While I understand some graduate students may be able to take advantage of these technologies if their projects see fit, for myself and I assume many others, they left little to follow.
Not only would this be outsourcing even more of the labor onto my interlocutors, but the suggestions were inapplicable. First, they presumed an access to certain technologies and infrastructures that most are without in Ethiopia. Not only is strong internet nearly impossible to come by, but also a notoriously bad state-run telecommunications company makes it difficult to talk on the phone for more than five minutes without a call being dropped. Secondly, many of my research participants do not have smart phones, and/or lack the literacy both in writing and online platforms and applications to assist my “Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic.” This also means that as, in my case, Ethiopian athletes are up against the uncertainty about the future of their work and income, technological coping mechanisms that simulate “face-to-face” interactions with friends and family are not possible to use here, either.
Further, face-to-face research, always the bedrock of anthropology, is especially the core of my methodology. Asking the women with whom I work to participate in interviews is often intimidating for both of us. For that reason, sharing spaces of intimacy – often in peoples’ homes – has been imperative in order for us to read each other’s body language for emotional cues to both ensures a higher quality interview and safeguard a comfort levels. Even if my interlocutors had the resources to shift to these digital platforms, I would hardly feel comfortable asking them to share intense experiences and stories over Zoom.
My point is not that I nor we should abandon all hope or attempts to continue research. In many circumstances, both research participants and researchers may want to engage during these times. But I do want to underscore that in continuing to work, and in some ways by doing so deeming our work “essential,” can be maintaining a status quo of productivity in a time of crisis. To reiterate, as members of my family fell ill I was simultaneously reading academic critiques about the figure of the essential worker and being urged to continue working through these new and inapplicable means.
As anthropologists we’re incredibly attuned to unintended adverse effects of social distancing. It’s difficult to maintain solidarity and rapport with individuals we cannot see face to face, and who may express themselves completely differently in person rather than over the phone. We know that social relations change dramatically in person, and as someone that keeps in touch regularly with friends across oceans at other times, we know that this time is no different.
Readings:
Adams, Vincanne. “Disasters and Capitalism… and COVID-19.” http://somatosphere.net/2020/disaster-capitalism-covid19.html/
Jaffe, Sarah. “Social Reproduction and the Pandemic, with Tithi Bhattacharya.” https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/social-reproduction-and…
Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMg…
Recommended:
Bhattacharya, T. (2017). “How Not to Skip Class: social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class.” In Social Reproduction Theory, edited by Tithi Bhattacharya. London: Pluto Press.
Borenstein, H. (2020). “‘It can be seen.’ COVID-19’s Disasters for Workers.” http://somatosphere.net/2020/it-can-be-seen-covid-19s-disasters-for-wor…
Klein, Naomi. (2007). The Shock Doctrine. Canada: Random House. http://somatosphere.net/2020/it-can-be-seen-covid-19s-disasters-for-wor…