How does digital technology embed social relations? Social media and digitalization are increasingly important dimensions of social interaction. How does this affect and reconfigure privacy, sociality, social boundaries and senses of belonging?
Marianne Gullestad’s classic ethnography Kitchen-Table Society from 1984 describes how norms and values are established among young women during conversations around their kitchen-tables in Bergen, and is a key reference in Nordic ethnography. Inspired by her work, we ask: where are the "kitchen-tables" today? To what extent, and how does digital social media transform private lives?
Inspired by her work, we ask: where are the "kitchen-tables" today? To what extent, and how does digital social media transform private lives?
For further details about subprojects and activities, see the Norwegian project page.
ARTivism - exhibition combining art and etnographic research
ARTivisme was a selection of digital drawings and texts created during Cecilia Salinas’s ethnographic fieldwork among Norwegians with minority backgrounds in the arts and cultural sector. The exhibition could be understood as artistic field notes, exploring questions related to underrepresentation, racism, and the experience of living between different cultures, and it invites reflection on these themes.
Between March and November 2021, Salinas examined the research participants’ use of social media and their experiences of being artists in Norway. The characters in the exhibition express a longing to belong somewhere, in a context where racism, discrimination, and unequal treatment are part of their lived reality.
The touring exhibition ARTivisme opened at Deichman Holmlia on Thursday 24 February 2022, and visited several libraries in Oslo. It was later brought in by the Immigration Appeals Board (Utlendingsnemnda) for the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, held from 20-25 November 2023. A version of the exhibition was presented at the Norwegian Anthropological Conference in Trondheim on 30 November 2023. From 12-15 September 2024, ARTivisme was shown at the book fair in Puerto Madryn, Argentina.