O BADANIACH W CZASIE ZAMKNIĘTYCH GRANIC – NOTATKI ETNOGRAFICZNE
ABOUT RESEARCH DURING CLOSED BORDERS – ETHNOGRAPHIC NOTES

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on ethnographic field research and the research areas themselves – both the people living there and the anthropologists and anthropologists. My reflections are based on experience, because I faced the necessity to leave the place of research, which I conducted in March this year in Marneuli Municipality in southeastern Georgia. Since this area was particularly affected by the threat of COVID-19, I had to postpone the planned activities in the field for an undefined future. Due to the extent of the epidemic in the last months, similar problems concern many researchers. I am trying to confront the organizational assumptions of the fieldwork with unexpected events, to which the researcher becomes passive, but still tries to maintain contact at a distance with people I met before. I have based my observations and thoughts in this article on field notes, conversations with selected residents and information provided in the media, and the conclusions are in the form of open reflections. This is due to the fact that at the moment of writing the article there was still a state of emergency in Georgia and Marneuli’s situation was very worrying. More formal conclusions can be drawn in some time. This is reflected in the conclusion of the article, in which I state that the strict preventive measures that have been implemented to stop the epidemic have failed in the area of building understanding between different ethnic and religious groups.

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