Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Tankut
Tankut is a PhD candidate in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies & Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He holds master’s degrees in Gender Studies and Sociology/Cultural Studies. His current project looks at the governmental, nongovernmental, corporate, and community-based regimes of HIV care in Turkey.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Tankut's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Screenshots of the Field: Viral Loads and the Contagious Potentials of Digital Ethnography
Over the course of the past six months, I have been actively doing fieldwork on HIV care in Turkey on Zoom. Believe it or not, for an anxious person like myself, who to this date did not approach or talk to anyone in the field without being completely soaked in sweat, I have actually been enjoying doing research online. I recognize the “anxieties, challenges, concerns, dilemmas, doubts, problems, tensions, and troubles” that arise from digital fieldwork, particularly given that the quality of being virtual does not guarantee exemption from gendered, ableist, and racialized violence. However, these issues do not exhaust the methodological possibilities and relational potentials of online research, which I address in this blog post. (more…) (read more...)