Zooming Home and Family Gatherings in Pandemic Times: Ritual, Memory, and Identity
More than Just a ‘Home’: Understanding the Living Spaces of Families
ISBN: 978-1-83797-652-2, eISBN: 978-1-83797-651-5
Publication date: 29 May 2024
Abstract
This study explores the relations between home and family in times of a pandemic, transporting the family away from the family home and, apparently, from the family itself. Specifically, it focuses art, culture, and society by shedding light on the enduring role of family rituals in creating and sustaining family identity while affirming the role of information and communication technology (ICT), in both the construction and reproduction of the family dynamics amid pandemic times. Reflection is taken upon a live-by-Zoom art exhibition opening. Family photo albums and several artifacts are used to show the family history, and, at the same time, the installed objects and surrounding narratives invite others to imagine the artist’s family as well as each audience member’s own family. The opening took place in March 2021, during the second lockdown in Portugal. Methodologically, the chapter draws on data collected through direct observation and autoethnography. Inspired by an arts-based approach, narrative is built on storytelling sociology, while using writing as a method of inquiry and reflexive composition to overcome the limits of the personal narrative. By the end, it is argued that as families “live” at Zoom, family rituals too. Zoom platform reproduces the family atmosphere, opportunities, and constraints. Looking at the art exhibit opening as a family ritual allows one to think about how individuals experienced family gatherings during the pandemic, but also how art might generate such familial intimacies in such exceptional times.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
Ana Rita Silva is immensely grateful to her family and friends for their love and support, and to Sandra Leandro, who wisely supervised her master’s thesis.
Rosalina Costa is pleased to acknowledge the financial support from FCT. This work is financed by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project (UIDB/04647/2020) of CICS.NOVA – Centro Interdisciplinar de Ciências Sociais da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Previous versions of this text were initially presented as oral communications in September 2022 at the IX Meetings of Pragmatic Sociology at the University of Évora, in Évora, and in April 2023 at the XII Portuguese Congress of Sociology held at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and the Center for Social Studies, in Coimbra, Portugal. The authors gratefully acknowledge the organizers and participants of those meetings for their valuable comments and suggestions, as well as for the encouragement to proceed with the publication of a written version of the text so presented.
Citation
da Silva, A.R.N. and Costa, R.P. (2024), "Zooming Home and Family Gatherings in Pandemic Times: Ritual, Memory, and Identity", Costa, R.P. and Blair, S.L. (Ed.) More than Just a ‘Home’: Understanding the Living Spaces of Families (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 25), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 115-138. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-353520240000025006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Ana Rita Nunes da Silva and Rosalina Pisco Costa