The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in physical distancing regulations, disrupting traditional practices of establishing and maintaining social relationships. We draw attention to digital nomadism as a mature case of navigating sociality in uncertainty to investigate how the linking value of materiality establishes social proximity without geographic contiguity through physical, virtual, and imagined practices. Using Miller’s (1987) theory of materiality and triangulating data collected from in-depth interviews and netnography, this study details the material constitution of co-presence with others in physical distance. We propose that consumers oscillate between work—instrumental practices of signaling and curating—and play—emotional practices of belonging and indulging—to experience social linking across different spatial and temporal frameworks.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.