Methods, Moments, and Ethnographic Spaces in Asia

by Nayantara S. Appleton Victoria University of Wellington (Editor), Caroline Bennett Victoria University of Wellington (Editor)

Overview

Asia is changing. Socio-political shifts in the world economy, technological advances of monumental scales, movements of people and ideas, alongside ongoing post-colonization projects across the region have created an emerging Asia – one confident and assertive of its place in the contemporary geopolitical sphere. As political and economic powers reassert Asian sovereignty in opposition to perceived Northern dominance, and dramatic and rapid development in the region shift the relationship between the centre and the periphery, new renderings and imaginations of hierarchies of identity and power come to the fore. This changing environment leads to emerging challenges for anthropologists working in the region: both those who have been working there for years, and new scholars entering the field.

This volume considers these changes, and the implications of this on our practice. By focusing on Asia as a site of enquiry, the contributors to this book discuss tensions and opportunities arising in their ethnographic fieldwork in light of a changing Asia. Drawing on personal reflections on Asia’s global positioning in this contemporary moment, the contributors consider how fieldwork is being negotiated within the changing dynamics of anthropology in the region. This book then, is a discussion on the shifting landscape of field sites and the resultant emerging research methodologies, and is aimed at those who are already deeply immersed in fieldwork as well as those who are seeking ways to undertake it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538152652
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2024
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.96(w) x 8.99(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Nayantara Sheoran Appleton is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Caroline Bennett is a Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

Asia and Ethnographic Methods: An Introduction - Nayantara S. Appleton and Caroline Bennett

Part I: Reflexively Re-Reading the Field

Chapter 1: Astronauts of the Western Pamirs: Mobility, Power and Disconnection in High Asia - Till Mostowlansky

Chapter 2: Re-searching and Re-positioning the Self and the Field: Investigating the Nation-State Through Narratives from the Borders - Rimple Mehta and Sandali Thakur

Chapter 3: Violence From Another Angle: The Cold War and Contemporary Cambodia - Caroline Bennett

Chapter 4: Infrastructures in Karachi: Processes and Practices of Ethnography in Urbanity - Sarwat Viqar

Part II: Thinking Across Space and Time

Chapter 5: “The Child as Method?”: Paradigm Shifts, Positionality, and Participatory Methods for Researching Children in Asia - Kathie Carpenter

Chapter 6: Comparison as Method in India and Papua New Guinea - Lorena Gibson

Chapter 7: The Bali of Anthropology and the Anthropology of Bali: Research in a Fast-Moving Part of Asia - Graeme MacRae and Lee Wilson

Part III: Notes on Positionality

Chapter 8: “We Have Always Been Cosmopolitan”: Towards Anthropologies of Contemporary Complexity in Japan - Paul Hansen

Chapter 9: A Feminist Ethnographic Practice in Contemporary India: Pitfalls and Potentialities - Nayantara Sheoran Appleton

Chapter 10: Identity Politics, Fieldworkers, and Globalisation: A Japanese Company in Hong Kong as a Fieldsite - Yi Zhu

Chapter 11: Comprador, Translator, or Cartographer? Thoughts on Methodological Positions - Jia-shin Chen