Quarantine Life Is Stillness and Dialogue: A Reflective Autoethnography During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

This reflective autoethnography uses writing, photos, and audio recordings to present my 14-day quarantine in times of COVID-19 from arriving in China, meeting my handler, developing relationships through online chats, to helping others out in a Chinese hotel. This article serves as a reference for people in quarantine to fight against the fear, frustration, and depression that can arise from being isolated. Experiencing friendliness during these struggles, especially some of the self-inspiration and encouragement that can be stimulated by friendliness, will support us to change the way we think, live, and deal with difficulties, not just now but in future.

To Vaccinate or Not? Decision-Making in the Time of COVID-19 Vaccines

“…My documentation process started a couple of days before vaccinations for my age group opened in South Africa. I have never done an autoethnography before but was inspired by the work of Shiyu Zheng (2021) who used this method to capture her experience of quarantine during the pandemic. Journaling does not come naturally to me; in fact, this was rather challenging as I struggled to separate my researcher voice from my "inner self."…”

Logged in While Locked Down: Exploring the Influence of Digital Technologies in the Time of Corona

“…Thus, while the primary focus of our paper is on exploring the way life in the time of corona is influenced by the use of digital technologies, we also want to signal in the direction of larger social issues, global as well as local. Doing so situates our paper in conversation with several other contributions in this special issue among them Torres (2020), Irwin (2020), and Zheng (2020), all of whom grapple with similar concerns about how it may be possible to promote an affirmative agenda emphasizing kindness, social justice, and ecological sustainability in the face of hostility, despair, and disconnect. To that end, we try to illustrate how the use of digital technologies has affected the experience of reality, that is, the world, and (trans)formed thinking as well as social relations, that is the Self and the Other, in the time of corona by cultivating the kind of autoethnographic writing that may be characterized as “an ‘autoethnography to come’ that is endlessly expansive, inventive, and creative” (Gannon, 2018, p. 21).…”

The Liminality of Loneliness: Negotiating Feminist Ethics and Intersectional Affectivity

“…In order to capture some of these methodological complexities and enable this process, we agreed to exchange written creative and intellectual reflections, of our personal experiences. This follows an approach identified (useful here and now) as collaborative auto-ethnography (Roy and Uekus, 2020) and increasingly used to explore pandemic experiences (Raimondi, 2021;Zheng, 2020). This exchange then led to deeper and more critical discussions around the literature, how it links to experience, and contextual issues.…”