Haptic mediations: Intergenerational kinship in the time of COVID-19

Abstract

During the COVID-19 crisis, living in lockdown and observing social distancing rules have become an integral part of everyday life. In this article, I offer some auto-ethnographic reflections on the increased use of ICTs within families and particularly across generations. Using vignettes relating to communication with my one-year-old granddaughter and my 92-year-old mother, I consider what it means to have the haptic dimensions of kinship relations stripped out and replaced by technologically mediated connection. By way of conclu-sion, I consider the relationship between the ‘magic’ of ICTs in interpersonal communication on the one hand and Marshall Sahlins’ notion of mutuality on the other.