Accepted Panels

This panel explores the ways in which digital technologies have impacted our lived experiences, in some areas irrevocably, in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns of various kinds resulting from that.  Anthropological studies of digital technologies and cultures have shown their ability to open new frontiers for groups hitherto excluded from partaking in the discourse of empowerment or development. At the same time. we also know that digital technologies can widen the chasm and reinforce hierarchies between and within communities. In taking the call for anthropologists ‘to be involved right across the spectrum’ (Miller and Horst 2012:11), this panel looks at ethnographically grounded studies that have examined the extent to which digital technologies have allowed for new affordances to come forth and/or made everyday lives more challenging and exclusionary (Ray 2022). This panel seeks papers that look at how digital applications have transformed interactions between various stakeholders- such as health care providers and patients, teachers and students, the state and citizens of ‘smart’ cities, producers and the audience of OTT platforms, and WFH model and its impact for employers and employees, to mention a few. The ‘intrinsically contradictory’ (Miller and Horst 2012) nature of the digital worlds will be the main focus of this panel. Empirical data- from urban and rural, home and away, among young students and older patients, local and foreign language programmes- using ethnographic methods will enrich our understanding of what it means to live in the digital era.