New forms of home blindness: Rethinking fieldwork methods in digitalized environments

Abstract

Digital Anthropology has in the past two decades emerged as a field that seeks to better grasp experiences of being human within digital technology and culture. However, digital technology is today so entangled in everyday practices that it gives as little meaning to single it out as a specific field of inquiry as it does to leave it out. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway, one of the most digitalized countries in the world, we argue that the ubiquity of the digital re-actualizes classic debates in the discipline on ‘home blindness’ emerging from the methodological challenges of doing fieldwork in familiar surroundings. We argue that building on methodological and analytical perspectives from the home blindness debate can help us better understand what it means to be human in digital environments.