„Wojna idzie”. Autoetnograficzne studium praktyk proksemicznych w czasach zarazy

Abstrakt

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish government introduced a number of restrictions related to the use of public spaces. During a two-month period – from March to April 2020 – the authorities implemented provisions regulating “social distance,” imposing relevant limitations, introducing the obligation to cover mouth and nose, restrict- ing movement in public spaces, limiting the number of people in shops, public facilities and public transport, and later either eased or lifted those restrictions. An ethnographic study of the consequences of these restrictions, i.e., their social impact, requires both special approach and tools. In this paper, I present my efforts to develop such an approach, based on the combination of insights from Edward T. Hall’s proxemics and Marc Augé’s non-place theory, as well as phenomenology of the body and autoethnography. Based on autoethnographic notes, I present the outcomes of my endeavor – the description of my embodied experience of pandemic restrictions in non-places.