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

Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Figures vii
4. Acknowledgments ix
5. Heading to the Field
6. Dilemmas and Detours: Fieldwork with Ethnic Minorities in Upland Southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos 1
7. Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos 22
8. Red Stamps and Gold Stars
9. Blunders in the Field: An Ethnographic Situation among the Drung People in Southwest China 43
10. Gifts and Debts: The Morality of Fieldwork in the Wa Lands on the China-Burma Frontier 61
11. The Fun and Games of Taking Children to the Field in Guizhou, China 80
12. Socialist Rules and Postwar Politics: Reflections on Nationality and Fieldwork among the Yao in Northern Vietnam 100
13. Doing Fieldwork and Making Friends in Upland Northern Vietnam: Entanglements of the Professional, Personal, and Political 121
14. The Backstage of Ethnography as Ethnography of the State: Coping with Officials in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic 143
15. Marginality in the Margins: Serendipity, Gatekeepers, and Gendered Positionalities in Fieldwork among the Khmu in Northern Laos 165
16. Field Research on the Margins of China and Thailand 185
17. Easier in Exile? Comparative Observations on Doing Research among Tibetans in Lhasa and Dharamsala 201
18. The Silenced Research Assistant Speaks Her Mind 220
19. Post-Fieldwork
20. Between Engagement and Abuse: Reflections on the “Field” of Anthropology and the Power of Ethnography 241
21. Textual Desert – Emotional Oasis: An Unconventional Confessional Dialogue on Field Experience 260
22. Red Stamps and Gold Stars on the Margins 280
23. Contributors 287
24. Index 290