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Red Stamps and Gold Stars

Red Stamps and Gold Stars

Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia

Edited by Sarah Turner

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

308 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 20 photos, 8 maps

Paperback
9780774824941
Published: January 2014

£28.99

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Hardcover
9780774824934
Published: May 2013

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors

In the late 1970s and '80s, socialist countries in Asia began reopening their borders to overseas scholars. Today, a growing number of social scientists are embarking on fieldwork in China, Vietnam, and Laos. Red Stamps and Gold Stars brings together all the messiness, compromise, and ethical dilemmas that underscore fieldwork in upland socialist Asia and elsewhere in the Global South.

The volume's contributors – accomplished geographers, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians – foreground the importance of questioning one's subjective gaze and of debating representations of "the other." Reflecting on the realities of fieldwork in socialist regimes and analyzing their positionality and subjectivity in the field, they debate a range of ethical quandaries and the rewards that can be gained from critical reflection. Together, these unique contributions will advance the study of the practice of international fieldwork.

Part 1: Heading to the Field

1 Dilemmas and Detours: Fieldwork with Ethnic Minorities in Upland Southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos / Sarah Turner

2 Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos / Jean Michaud

Part 2: Red Stamps and Gold Stars

3 Blunders in the Field: An Ethnographic Situation Among the Drung People in Southwest China / Stéphane Gros

4 Gifts and Debts: The Morality of Fieldwork in the Wa Lands on the China-Burma Frontier / Magnus Fiskesjö

5 The Fun and Games of Taking Children to the Field in Guizhou, China / Candice Cornet

6 Socialist Rules and Postwar Politics: Reflections on Nationality and Fieldwork among the Yao in Northern Vietnam / Jennifer Sowerwine

7 Doing Fieldwork and Making Friends in Upland Northern Vietnam: Entanglements of the Professional, Personal, and Political / Christine Bonnin

8 The Backstage of Ethnography as Ethnography of the State: Coping with Officials in the Lao People's Democratic Republic / Pierre Petit

9 Marginality in the Margins: Serendipity, Gatekeepers, and Gendered Positionalities in Fieldwork among the Khmu in Northern Laos / Karen McAllister

10 Field Research on the Margins of China and Thailand / Janet C. Sturgeon

11 Easier in Exile? Comparative Observations on Doing Research among Tibetans in Lhasa and Dharamsala / Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy

12 The Silenced Research Assistant Speaks Her Mind / Sarah Turner

Part 3: Post-Fieldwork

13 Between Engagement and Abuse: Reflections on the "Field" of Anthropology and the Power of Ethnography / Oscar Salemink

14 Textual Desert – Emotional Oasis: An Unconventional Confessional Dialogue on Field Experience / Stevan Harrell and Li Xingxing

15 Red Stamps and Gold Stars on the Margins / Sarah Turner

Contributors

Index

Sarah Turner is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University.

Contributors: Christine Bonnin, Candice Cornet, Magnus Fiskesjö, Stéphane Gros, Stevan Harrell, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Li Xingxing, Karen McAllister, Jean Michaud, Pierre Petit, Oscar Salemink, Jennifer Sowerwine, and Janet C. Sturgeon