Research-based blog launched by CATS students

As the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, fraught with the new challenges and concerns posed by a shared yet unequally distributed crisis, students at the Heidelberg University
Institute of Anthropology (IfE) have started a project to scrutinize this moment of crucial historical and social changes. Under the guidance of 
Prof. Christiane Brosius and
Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky (
HCTS Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology), they co-authored a blog called "Alltag in Corona Zeiten/Everyday Life in Corona Times." The purpose of this joint venture is to take a deeper look at the ways in which various transformations came to be coined as the “new normal” through the lens of Visual and Media Anthropology.

You can access the blog
here.

The blog is the outcome of the online class on "Everyday Life in Corona Times: An Introduction to Visual and Media Anthropology," which was held at the Institute of Anthropology in the Summer Semester 2020. The course was based on an interactive format and allowed students to explored concepts such as solidarity and democracy, open and regulated societies, global inequalities, and mobility in public as well as digital spaces. “How can we as ethnologists investigate these social developments?"—starting from this question, the students familiarised themselves with the methods of digital and media ethnography (Facebook, Whatsup, Twitter), ethnographic photography and film-making (e.g. photo albums, video diaries), and visual ethnography.

The thematic sections of the blog are organized around the three main themes that constituted the research agenda of the seminar—namely,
“Homing”, “Public and Urban Space”, and “Democracy and Surveillance.” Of central importance in the debate are ideas of power and representation, identification and belonging, (self-)surveillance and (self-)control, as well as the role of images and other media (photography, film, video, maps, drawings, audio recordings).

Responsible for this initiative were
Prof. Christiane Brosius and
Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky, both based at the
HCTS Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology.

Heidelberg University hosts four professorships in Anthropology: two at the
Institute of Anthropology, one at the
the South Asia Institute, and one at the
Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. Since 2019, the four professorships are all under the directorate of the 
Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) and jointly coordinate the BA and MA courses in Anthropology at the same institution.

To get in touch with the blog authors, please contact
alltagincorona@gmail.com or use the blog´s
contact form.