“We have to change how we think about the work we’re doing.”
Jeffrey Cohen
08 June 2021
Published: 14 January 2022
Image by Jeffrey Cohen.
Patchwork ethnography helps continue to push questions like, What is anthropology? What does social justice in or through the field look like? In the past several years Jeffrey Cohen has become involved with a project that investigates the digital divide among Bhutanese immigrants. Access to the internet is difficult not only because of technological and financial reasons but also language and refugee status. The project seeks to tell about and address the risks created by the digital divide. Developed with colleagues across his university and from the Bhutanese community, the project involved training Bhutanese students to help carry out data collection and mentor them through the development of their own research goals. The team faced various methodological challenges that highlighted the patchwork nature of their ethnography. With the pandemic, online-based methods didn’t work well for studying the digital divide: their interlocutors didn’t have internet access, and that was precisely the problem they were investigating. They experimented with sharing tablets, but it took a while to figure out the complicated logistics. Moving back to in-person research was easier and as the pandemic eased in the spring of 2021 they welcomed the opportunity to meet face-to-face. Throughout, moreover, the team has had to question what counts as data. The answer to this is sometimes more about anthropology than the data collected, bringing the team to ask how they can enact anticolonial research methods. Surveys suited one of their aims, and so they conducted surveys. They knew they’d miss other things, but it was no longer a question of striving toward some abstracted sense of what ethnography should look like or consist of. They checked their expectations at the door, so to speak. The team thought about their work as imperfect, but still “good enough,” and consistently reflected on what they were working toward. Now in the early stages of analysis, the team is continuing to work closely with the community to develop a series of well-defined interventions that will support well-being and health while mentoring younger Bhutanese people in research.
Jeffrey Cohen is a Professor at the Ohio State University. cohen.319[at]osu.edu