Red Stamps and Gold Stars


Book Description

In the late 1970s and ’80s, socialist countries in Asia began reopening their borders to overseas scholars. Today, a growing number of social scientists are embarking on fieldwork in China, Vietnam, and Laos. Red Stamps and Gold Stars brings together all the messiness, compromise, and ethical dilemmas that underscore fieldwork in upland socialist Asia and elsewhere in the Global South. The volume’s contributors – accomplished geographers, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians – foreground the importance of questioning one’s subjective gaze and of debating representations of “the other.” Reflecting on the realities of fieldwork in socialist regimes and analyzing their positionality and subjectivity in the field, they debate a range of ethical quandaries and the rewards that can be gained from critical reflection. Together, these unique contributions will advance the study of the practice of international fieldwork.




Traders in Motion


Book Description

Markets and traders in Vietnam are on the move, literally and figuratively. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions among small-scale traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials within contemporary Vietnam and across its borders.




Medicine and Memory in Tibet


Book Description

Only fifty years ago, Tibetan medicine, now seen in China as a vibrant aspect of Tibetan culture, was considered a feudal vestige to be eliminated through government-led social transformation. Medicine and Memory in Tibet examines medical revivalism on the geographic and sociopolitical margins both of China and of Tibet�s medical establishment in Lhasa, exploring the work of medical practitioners, or amchi, and of Medical Houses in the west-central region of Tsang. Due to difficult research access and the power of state institutions in the writing of history, the perspectives of more marginal amchi have been absent from most accounts of Tibetan medicine. Theresia Hofer breaks new ground both theoretically and ethnographically, in ways that would be impossible in today�s more restrictive political climate that severely limits access for researchers. She illuminates how medical practitioners safeguarded their professional heritage through great adversity and personal hardship.




Reclaiming Diasporic Identity


Book Description

The Hmong diaspora radiates from Southeast Asia to include far-flung nations like the United States, New Zealand, and Argentina. Sangmi Lee draws on the concept of diasporic identity to explore the contemporary experiences of Hmong people living in Vang Vieng, Laos, and Sacramento, California. Hmong form a sense of belonging based on two types of experiences: shared transnational cultural and social relations across borders; and national differences that arise from living in separate countries. As Lee shows, these disparate influences contribute to a dual sense of belonging but also to a transnational mobility and cultural fluidity that defies stereotypes of Hmong as a homogenous people bound to one place. Lee’s on-the-ground fieldwork lends distinctive detail to communities and individuals while her theoretically informed approach clarifies and refines what it means when already hybrid and dynamic identities become diasporic. In-depth and interdisciplinary, Reclaiming Diasporic Identity blends ethnography and history to provide a fresh consideration of Hmong life today.




Development in Spirit


Book Description




Doing "Gong Culture"


Book Description

This book shows how the efforts of various actors in 'doing Gong culture' contribute to preserving the intangible heritage of ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Tran's research challenges the conventional perspective that views heritagization as a process of cultural appropriation in which local heritage practitioners become cultural 'proprietors', who in UNESCO's view differ from 'culture carriers'. He shows that local artists actively engage with other actors in the 'heritage community', thus contributing to the performance of a 'living' image of the 'Space of Gong Culture' on the heritage stage. In this intangible cultural heritage, practically, all actors are 'culture carriers'. "Drawing on long-term fieldwork and placing the focus on human interaction, Hoai Tran paints a very subtle and sophisticated picture of the 'heritage community' and its actors in Vietnam's central highlands. By investigating who is acting in and on the space of gong culture, with what motivations, interests, intents or desires, how they are doing so and how effectively, this book arrives at new ways of thinking about 'heritagization' in Vietnam." Gábor Vargyas, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest Hoai Tran received his PhD from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2020. He is currently a lecturer and researcher at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.




The Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork


Book Description

This handbook offers epistemologically and ontologically important personal accounts of academic and professional researchers having long-term intensive, comprehensive and ethnographic fieldwork in various social settings and versatile regional contexts across the globe. The accounts are cross-disciplinary including anthropology, sociology, geography, political sciences, gender studies, forestry and environmental studies, economics, and international relations. They are also trans-regional, covering the globe including South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. The book offers a comprehensive portrait of multifaceted challenges that social researchers experience while doing fieldwork in various social settings. The accounts provide both challenges of doing fieldwork in the 21st century and the ways how to address/redress them in the field by complying with the codes of ethics, and the politics of fieldwork. Readers will benefit from the handbook by understanding methodological issues from both disciplinary relevance and regional specificity across time and spaces.




Stories from an Ancient Land


Book Description

No detailed description available for "Stories from an Ancient Land".




The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and Beyond


Book Description

This book conceptualises the ongoing hydropower expansion in Southwest China as a socio-political and transnational project transcending the construction of dams. Chapters in this volume are organised around three sections spanning hydropower and resettlement governance, rural livelihoods, and international relations connected to China’s hydropower expansion. Dam projects of various scales are analysed as infrastructure projects that shape peoples’ livelihoods, the environment, and China’s relations with Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.




The SAGE Handbook of Research Management


Book Description

The Handbook of Research Management is a unique tool for the newly promoted research leader. Larger-scale projects are becoming more common throughout the social sciences and humanities, housed in centres, institutes and programmes. Talented researchers find themselves faced with new challenges to act as managers and leaders rather than as individual scholars. They are responsible for the careers and professional development of others, and for managing interactions with university administrations and external stakeholders. Although many scientific and technological disciplines have long been organized in this way, few resources have been created to help new leaders understand their roles and responsibilities and to reflect on their practice. This Handbook has been created by the combined experience of a leading social scientist and a chief executive of a major international research development institution and funder. The editors have recruited a truly global team of contributors to write about the challenges they have encountered in the course of their careers, and to provoke readers to think about how they might respond within their own contexts. This book will be a standard work of reference for new research leaders, in any discipline or country, looking for help and inspiration. The editorial commentaries extend its potential use in support of training events or workshops where groups of new leaders can come together and explore the issues that are confronting them.