Working the hyphens in contemporary China: reconsidering researcher-participant relationship in an authoritarian state

Abstract

This article explores the methodological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Drawing on a long-term project conducted in China, I discuss how my interaction with the participants was mediated by the pervasive state power. This phenomenon adds a new layer to the question “can the subaltern speak,” and calls for a refined understanding of the researcher-participant relationship. Borrowing insights from recent anthropological studies on the state and Abrams’s state effect theory, I propose to move away from a static, western centric, and territory-based conceptualization of the state, and treat it as a culturally and historically specific structuration, in which researchers and participants are engaged. In this way, researchers can intentionally work against the normalizing state power yet still work with their participants. This approach leads to a more deliberate understanding of the methodological and ethical responsibilities of researchers in the process of structuration.

Keywords:

• Researcher-participant relationship
• authoritarian state
• fieldwork
• research ethics
• othering
• state effect
• structuration

Notes

1 Big-character posters (dazibao) were hand-written posters using large characters and hung on walls during the Cultural Revolution. It became a versatile communication tool used to circulate ideas, criticize political enemies, advance sophisticated debates, and express satires.

2 Hershatter (1993) points out that China’s communist regime has sponsored the articulation of the subaltern group’s interests since its establishment in 1949. Giving voice to the subaltern group was understood as a major task of the historiography in socialist China. Suku, then, could be considered a standard method for the subaltern to voice themselves, a method that was endorsed by the state.

3 Max Weber, just like many other classic theorists, is subject to differential contemporary interpretations: The predominant neo-Weberian account emphasizes the role of bureaucratic rationality in the formation of the modern state whereas relegates culture to the domain of the “society”; the most recent post-Weberian interpretation calls for scholars to pay more attention to the historically grounded and culturally specific nature of Weber’s theorization of the state, which identifies culture as a contributing factor in the process of state formation (Lottholz & Lemay-Hébert, 2016). Sharma and Gupta launched their critique based on the neo-Weberian interpretation.

4 Some literature in the field of China Studies takes the Chinese socialist state as a totalitarian state and the late-socialist, post-Mao state as an authoritarian state (Brown, 2012; Schurmann, 1973; White, 2009). The distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism lies in that the former is considered as a way of domination that the state controls almost every aspect of the social and political life, whereas the latter emphasizes the state’s tight grip of political/public power without necessarily intruding into people’s private life. More recent studies have shown that the social realities in China can be hardly fit into these neat categories (Madsen, 1999; Walder, 1986). The deductive distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, in the case of China, is blurring, porous and non-clear-cut.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pengfei Zhao

Pengfei Zhao (PhD, Indiana University) is an assistant professor of qualitative methodology in the College of Education at the University of Florida. She works on a wide spectrum of philosophical, social, and methodological theories to formulate a praxis- and social justice-oriented qualitative research methodology. In her empirical work, she primarily uses ethnographic, narrative, and action research approaches to conduct studies in both China and the United States.