On Critical Proximity: Distance, Difference, and Digital Sociality

This paper considers the extension of digital connectivity into remote areas, especially the kinds of geographically out-of-the-way sites that have long characterized ethnographic fieldwork about the environment, arguing that this phenomenon calls for a critical re-examination of the role that the notions of distance and difference have played in shaping the discipline. The kinds of frequent, distance- and difference-bridging social interactions that digital-social spaces enable, we argue, trouble the ideal-type of far-off field-sites populated by radically different interlocutors. Putting the authors’ field research in Uganda and Bolivia in conversation with our lived experiences as Xennial ethnographers and digital media users, the paper examines three themes: how digital connectivity is changing “the field” and fieldwork; how the ubiquity of digital technologies is changing the relationship between “the field” and “home”; and how ethnographers can position their research in academic settings where digital data is increasingly prevalent and powerful. While the extension of digital sociality across these spaces limits “critical distance,” we suggest that it productively enables “critical proximity” - a situated ethnographic stance which rests not just on engagement with our interlocutors across time and place, but also responsiveness to the kinds of claims-making that digital social interactions uniquely enable.