Red Stamps and Gold Stars
Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia
This flagship volume tackles the dilemmas and ethical debates faced by non-native researchers undertaking ethnographic fieldwork among upland ethnic minorities in contemporary China, Vietnam, and Laos.
Description
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. These challenges can range from how to gain research access to politically sensitive border regions, to helping informants-turned-friends access appropriate health care, to reflections on how to best represent ethnic minority voices. 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.”