Engaging bodies and places online - Studying young people’s lifeworlds through phenomenological and online ethnographic approaches

Author(s):

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen(presenting / submitting)Mads Rehder(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 09 A, Young People, Digital Identities and Online Places

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

13:30-15:00

Room:

K4.12

Chair:

Sofia Marques da Silva

Contribution

Research of online interactions may be divided according to two kinds of methodological approaches: on the one hand, those based on data scrapes and big-data and, on the other hand, those building on qualitative ethnographic methods including face-to-face fieldwork with observations and interviews (Postill & Pink, 2012; Pink et al., 2016). In this presentation, we focus on the latter, thus exploring not only online engagements but the interwovenness of online-offline interactions.

In the presentation, we suggest that embodied learning forms the backdrop for young people’s digitally mediated practices. In line with the early studies of Miller & Slater, we approach online engagements as ‘continuous with and embedded in other social spaces’, happening ‘within mundane social structures and relations that they may transform but that they cannot escape into a self-enclosed cyberian apartness’ (Miller & Slater, 2000:5). Through explorations of everyday life embodied practices, we discuss how young people’s embodied and emplaced learning processes unfold in the interwoven space of online and offline aspects of everyday life.

With theoretical point of departure in the philosophical writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and phenomenologically oriented work on embodiment and place (Casey, 1985, 1999; Ehn & Löfgren, 2006; Frykman & Gilje, 2003; Ingold, 2000, 2011; Jackson, 1996; Miller, 2008; Winther, 2006), we discuss how everyday life experiences of young people transgress online-offline distinctions. The presentation focuses on an important concept of thought in the oeuvre of Merleau-Ponty, the sedimentation, and on how this notion has inspired the analysis of our empirical material from settings in which online and offline experiences to various degrees interweave.

Merleau-Ponty uses the term sedimentation to describe how perception, although happening in immediate and spontaneous interactions with an environment, is also based on embodied learning, or sedimented perceptions. Sedimented, bodily memories reach across time, as experiences and practices from the past link the habituated body to people, objects and places in the present (Casey, 1985; Merleau-Ponty, 2012). Sedimentation is to be understood, not as a dense and unchangeable mass, but as traces of past experiences which are constantly changing as they are brought forward in present perceptions. These sedimentations are creating what Merleau-Ponty also describes as a mental panorama we carry with us (Merleau-Ponty, 2012). Thus, sedimentations enable us to bring previous experiences into the embodied perception of the present. Building on Merleau-Ponty, Casey (1999) and Ingold (2011) have suggested that as experiences of actions are sedimented in bodies, human actions are also sedimented in places. Thus, Casey proposes, places and bodies ‘interanimate’ each other (1999:24).

We suggest that an important background for understanding young people’s online interactions are the sedimented individual and social experiences which work as references for their conversations. We unfold this idea through the analysis of empirical material from fieldwork among young people in Kenya and Denmark which aims to illuminate the following questions: how do embodied memories of previous interactions and experiences form the background for online interactions between siblings, friends and agemates? How do individual and communal experiences of materialities and places enter into these interactions? Which kinds of intersecting temporalities are emerging? And how does the combination of phenomenological and digital ethnographic methods expand our understandings of young people’s lifeworlds in various parts of the world?

Method

Our presentation is based on ethnographic material from two different ethnographic fieldworks, focusing on young people in Denmark and Kenya, respectively. The research in Denmark focused on young separated siblings, and how they, in spite of physical absence, were able to experience each other as present in their everyday lives through their use of social media. With a digital ethnographic approach combined with an offline fieldwork, the mediated interactions among siblings on social media platforms as facebook, SnapChat, Skype, HeyTell etc. were studied simultaneously with offline interactions and data-elicited interviews. This research design made it clear that the online interactions were relying on bodily memories of their offline interactions and places, and that they furthermore often involved continuations of offline routines and social dynamics (Rehder, 2016). The research in Kenya explored young people’s educational experiences and their engagements with new livelihood activities and landscape transformations in the Laikipia Province. Digital ethnography was added as a method in the process of fieldwork, as it became clear that many of the young people followed were very active on social media, especially Facebook, via their mobile phones. Debates on social media were in many cases extensions of ‘offline’ political discussions, although in some cases involving participants who were at the time of the discussion not present in the area (Jørgensen 2015). A central theme in many of the debates was land rights and land conflicts in the area, the online statements encapsulating embodied experiences and memories of the landscape, of past land struggles and livelihood conflicts, and of narratives of people, community, land and history. Hence, in both empirical settings, embodied and emplaced memories linked the online and offline ethnographic fields. In both research projects, fieldwork methods and analytical approaches were informed both by phenomenologically oriented anthropological methods (e.g. Ehn & Löfgren, 2006; Jackson, 1996) and by digital ethnographic approaches (Horst, 2012; Mackay, 2005; Markham & Baym, 2009; Orgad, 2005; Pink et al., 2016). During the phases of analysis and writing, we had an ongoing theoretical and analytical dialogue about embodiment and emplacement, in which the rather different empirical focus areas and methods of our research projects provided a stimulating horizon. It is this dialogue that we continue in the conference presentation, with a focus on how embodiment and emplacement figure in young people’s digital engagements.

Expected Outcomes

The concept of sedimentation has encouraged us to explore how experiences of social media are perceived spontaneously while simultanously drawing on the sedimentations that have shaped the habitual body over time. The analysis of the empirical material from Denmark shows that sibling’s bodily memories of each other, physical surroundings and materialities are essential for them to experience a sensed presence through social media, despite a physical absence. Bodily memories of living together are therefore essential for their social media practices and for how the siblings experience being a part of each other’s everyday life. The analysis of the empirical material from Kenya suggests that young people in Laikipia North have built up relations to the land and the landscape of pastures through movements in the landscape, communal struggles about land and through narratives about land relations and fights for land rights. As such, the landscape in Laikipia North contains a number of sedimented histories which animate and are animated by its inhabitants in different ways in different situations, including political discussions in Facebook Forums. Sedimentation allows us to address the learning aspect of experience, as memories of places and people enables the body to perceive a text or an image with the full range of emotions and memories connected to them. Hence, experience always build on learning and will always be subjective, which is crucial for understanding why the qualitative ethnographic approach to studying social media should take up a central role in attempts to understand young people’s experiences of social media. As an important supplement for understanding studies building on big data, we argue that this approach allow for insights into how offline relations to places and people through a temporal stretching must be seen as embedded in every perception of online actions and interactions.

References

Casey, E. S. (1985). Habitual body and memory in Merleau-Ponty. In J. N. Mohanty (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (pp. 39-57): Springer. Casey, E. S. (1999). How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time. In S. Feld & K. H. Basso (Eds.), Senses of Place (pp. 13–50). Boydell & Brewer, Limited. Ehn, B., & Löfgren, O. (2006). Kulturanalyser. København: Nota. Frykman, J., & Gilje, N. (2003). Being There - New Perspectives on Phenomenology and the Analysis of Culture. Lund; Sweden: Nordic Academic Press. Horst, H. A. (2012). New Media Technologies in Everyday Life. In H. Horst & D. Miller (Eds.), Digital Anthropology. London - New York: Berg. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge. Jackson, M. (1996). Things as They Are - New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Jordt Jørgensen, N. (2015). From herders to hustlers : young people's engagements with sand, sustainability and education in northern Kenya : ph.d. dissertation. Kbh: Aarhus Universitet Mackay, H. (2005). New Connections, Familiar Setting: Issues in the Ethnographic Study of New Media Use at Home. In C. Hine (Ed.), Virtual Methods - Issues in Social Research on the Internet (pp. 129-140). London og New York: Berg. Markham, A. N., & Baym, N. K. (2009). internet inquiry: conversations about method. Los Angeles - London - New Delhi - Singapore: SAGE Publications. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.). London and New York: Routledge. Miller, D. (2008). The Comfort of Things. Cambridge - Malden: Wiley. Miller, D., & Slater, D. (2001). The Internet, An Ethnographic Approach. New York: Berg. Orgad, S. (2005). From Online to Offline and back: Moving from online to offline relationships with research informants. In C. Hine (Ed.), Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the internet (pp. 51-66). Oxford: Berg. Pink, S., Horst, H., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T., & Tacchi, J. (2016). Digital Ethnography : Principles and Practice. London: Sage. Postill, J., & Pink, S. (2012). Social media ethnography: the digital researcher in a messy web. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy,(145), 123-134. Rehder, M. M. (2016). Søskendenærvær : et fænomenologisk inspireret studie af unge adskilte søskendes hverdag med afsæt i teknologier, materialiteter og kropslige erfaringer: ph.d dissertation. Kbh: Aarhus Universitet Winther, I. W. (2006). Hjemlighed: kulturfænomenologiske studier. Emdrup: Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitets forlag.

Author Information

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen (presenting / submitting)

University College UCC

Research

København V

Mads Rehder (presenting)

Aarhus University

Coomunication and Culture

Copenhagen

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