Doing fieldwork the Chinese way: a returning researcher's insider/outsider status in her home town

Abstract

Insider/outsider status has been recognised in geographical literature as an important aspect of positionality on which researchers should reflect critically. Based on my fieldwork experience in Dali, southwest China, this paper articulates an account of the co‐existence of ‘insiderness’ and ‘outsiderness’ during the research process in a way that adds nuance to scholarly challenges to conceptions of insider/outsider status as an oppositional binary. I touch on several dilemmas that arose over the course of my fieldwork in my home town, such as working with local research assistants, ‘encountering’ a Western supervisor in the field and interviewing local people. I argue that interacting in the field with people from different ethnic, professional or socioeconomic characteristics dynamises a researcher's insider/outsider position, bringing his or her in‐between position to the fore. In this paper, I highlight the tensions and negotiations arising from my experience of in‐betweenness in Dali. I also point out several particularities of doing fieldwork in China by referring to Chinese ways of thinking and communication, and analyse how insiderness complicates the research process with particular regard to China. Finally, I conclude that working in the field is not only a process of data collection, but also a process of learning ‘who I am’.

“Home sweet home?” Struggles of intracultural “betweenness” of doctoral fieldwork in my home country of Jamaica

“…This is a middle ground – a place of “betweenness” which creates a sense of discomfort for the researcher (Dwyer & Buckle, ; Mascia‐Lees et al., ). This border, which is also called the insider/outsider status, is broadly premised on the similarities between the researcher and the researched (Zhao, ). An Insider is traditionally understood as a person with “a lived familiarity with the group being researched" (Griffith, , p. 361).…”

“…There are debates surrounding which position is better (Zhao, ), but there remains the notion that conducting research from the vantage point of the insider is the more fruitful, seeing that common grounds between the researcher and the respondents are likely to result in greater acceptance. As noted by Suwankhong and Liamputtong (), the insider has the particular advantage of being close to the researched, thereby gleaning greater understanding of the social or cultural issue being studied.…”

“…For this reason, the experiences of graduate students returning to their homeland for fieldwork and how the blurred boundaries of multiple roles shape fieldwork need a stronger presence in the literature. Zhao () tells of her challenges, from a geographical perspective, of being an outsider and an insider when she returned from Canada to her homeland of China to conduct fieldwork and the ways in which her interaction with various groups of people in the field dynamised her fieldwork and helped her to discover her identity as a researcher. In addition to Zhao (), other researchers reporting their experiences include Ite (), who returned from the UK to pursue doctoral data collection in Nigeria, and Mandiyanike (), who struggled with “betweenness” on returning to his homeland of Zimbabwe to conduct doctoral studies.…”

“…“ Farin ” (“foreign”) is the Jamaican word for “overseas.” Little did I know that spending under two years in a foreign country would have influenced my speech and mannerism in noticeable ways. Instead of saying “mommy,” for example, I was saying “mom” and instead of “children,” “kids.” Here goes the notion that fieldwork helps the graduate researcher returning to their homeland for fieldwork to answer the question of “who am I?” (Zhao, ), or better yet, “who have I become?” Fieldwork for such a category of researchers should be considered as a ray of light that reveals the subtle influences of time in a developed country on the international student.…”

Me again: Fieldwork, practice and returning

“…There has been an increasing self-awareness among geographers about how the politics of research is affected by the institutional and geographical positionality of academics, particularly in instances of researchers based in the North studying the South (Madge, 1993;Potter, 1993;Sidaway, 1992Sidaway, , 1993, and the knowledge production that results from these uneven power relations (Jazeel, 2014;Jazeel & McFarlane, 2010). Further reflections have delved into the complexities within these positionalities (and the intersections between them), affected not merely by the North-South divide, but also aspects of class (Gillen, 2012;Griffiths, 2017), gender (Bondi & Domosh, 1992;England, 1994;Gillen, 2015;Kobayashi, 1994;Mandel, 2003;Rose, 1997;Staeheli & Martin, 2000), sexuality (Cupples, 2002;Kaspar & Landolt, 2016), race (Berg, 2012;Faria & Mollett, 2016;Kobayashi, 1994;Peake & Kobayashi, 2002;Pulido, 2002;Schein, 2002), and personality and emotional connection to the field (Laurier & Parr, 2000;Moser, 2008;Widdowfield, 2000), among others.…”