Sarah Turner, ed. Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia

Abstract

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork in Upland Socialist AsiaSarah Turner, ed.Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013, 320p.One of most striking changes observed while working in uplands of Laos over past decade is rapid growth in number of tourists, as ecotourism and minority cultural experiences become increasingly popular. The opening of these areas to tourism seems to indicate that a significant barrier has been removed in socialist countries of mainland Southeast Asia. Recognition of cash income that can be derived from tourism has certainly made region's landscapes and people more accessible to those who are interested. With political stability and economic opening, researchers' access to these regions has also become easier over decades. However, as Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork in Upland Socialist Asia illustrates, challenges to conducting ethnographic research in this region remain formidable.This volume's most valuable contribution is way it unfolds and then fills in framework of dilemma. The chapters are a rich selection of many difficulties that ethnography faces in this region, although authors come at their studies from primarily anthropology and geography. In addition to well-known problems associated with spending extended time in places that are difficult to travel to and lack many of basics that are taken for granted in researchers' home countries, at center of these personal stories is political minefield that one must navigate in order to get approval for, carry out, and maintain relationships within, field-based research within socialist administrative structures of Vietnam, China, and Laos. Here, uplands means minorities, and this immediately puts us in a politically sensitive landscape of extreme complexity. Not only is it difficult for researchers to get there and do their work, but also it is risky and dangerous for local people, including both villagers and officials, to participate in telling of local stories and writing of ethnography.Relationships with officials come out in all stories. In different ways, we learn how quickly loses its salience when we start to approach field, as Communist Party and line ministries often tell us very different things. These two hands of the government frequently do not know what each other is doing, perhaps pointing to an inherent tension between red stamp and gold star. Indeed, fact that there is never one monolithic cannot be emphasized enough in these countries.Neither is boundary between and citizen obvious or reliable. Arriving in village, our informants often become our friends, and may also be official representatives of some part of officialdom. The way we perceive our roles and responsibilities, across personal and professional divide, is a source of ongoing stress. The chapters of this book offer new insights on old question of how one embeds oneself in a community, striving to observe from as close a vantage point as possible, yet struggles to maintain some sort of objectivity in those observations.The 15 chapters of fieldwork dilemma are organized into three sections, which provide an introduction to book's approach, an engaging body of case study reflections, and final discussion of positionality project in this specific region. In Part 1 Heading to Field, Sarah Turner sets stage with Dilemmas and Detours: Fieldwork with Ethnic Minorities in Upland Southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos, introducing us to tradition of reflexive discussion of position of field researcher that has grown and deepened since 1980s. Jean Michaud then provides a review of minority policies in three countries in Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos, taking us through pre-Socialist, core-Socialist, and reform eras. …