Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Southeast Asia ed. by Sarah Turner (review)

My fieldwork notebooks always have two sides: field notes and personal diary. While I will eventually formally record the field notes for analysis and write them up, I seldom share the diary because I usually find its content too personal, sometimes not directly relevant to the topic. Inevitably, then, I make those materials that directly support the findings and conclusions of the research the focus of my attention. Accountability to the sponsors of research often reinforces that prioritization. However, the fieldwork journey — with all its difficulties, drawbacks and dilemmas — is often very enriching, and discoveries go beyond merely the subject of the research.

Sarah Turner’s edited volume brings the dilemmas of doing fieldwork to the centre of attention. Red Stamps and Gold Stars presents a collection of candid stories of the challenges that researchers encounter during fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia. Issues of sensitivity surrounding research topics often accentuate these dilemmas, which include the problem of limited access — administrative, physical and sometimes linguistic and cultural — to ethnic minorities. Among the factors limiting access are the political context of socialist countries (Chapter Two by Jean Michaud), dealing with political gatekeepers (Chapter Six by Jennifer Sowerwine) and facing censorship and self-censorship (Chapter Eight by Pierre Petit, Chapter Thirteen by Oscar Salemink). They also include stretching the research methods from participant observation to “participant intoxication” (p. 109, Chapter Eight by Pierre Petit); learning how becoming friends with the locals can affect one’s research (Chapter Seven by Christine Bonnin); and making ethical decisions relating to studying and advocating (Chapter Eleven by Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy).

By sharing personal experiences and ethical doubts, the authors — mostly established social scientists working on Southeast Asia — raise the issues of reflexivity and subjectivity in the field. While reflexivity allows the researchers to be more open to the challenges to their theoretical positions that fieldwork would inevitably raise, it can also change researchers and their positions relative to the others in the field. In Chapter Three, Stephane Gros starts this discussion with his feeling of what he calls “fieldwork-verite” (p. 58) — finding himself in the middle of what he had been observing. “Positioning” is a fascinating theme that this volume discusses in different ways. For example, positioning the anthropologist vis-à-vis the studied groups as he or she slowly becomes an accepted member of the community is a fluid process, one subject to various forms of social negotiations. Age, gender, nationality, the ability to speak a (or the) local language and the need to navigate cultural norms are potential challenges that anthropologists and other social scientists face upon entering the field. In Chapter Six, Jennifer Sowerwine fears being rejected as a “Yankee” (p. 103) in Vietnam, but while in Lào Cai province she discovered that “foreignness” can also have advantages and open up opportunities. In Chapter Nine, Karen McAllister experiences the frustrations of the difficulties involved in interviewing ethnic minority women and the challenges of being a female researcher in Laos. She eventually learns to use her “foreign expert” (p. 175) card to become accepted as an “honorary man” (p. 168) in the community. In Chapter Twelve, Sarah Turner gives local research assistants recognition. Playing the role of “cultural consultant” (p. 221), they are often essential to foreign researchers’ understanding of and connection with the local community. Cultural positioning of a researcher is not, hence, limited to her relationship to the studied community; it also includes her relationship to her research assistant or assistants.

Power relations — from reciprocal and potentially exploitive to inherently hierarchical — between the researcher and the studied ethnic groups, as well as their gatekeepers, is another theme discussed in the volume. Making friends, while seemingly natural, can also be a source of ethical concern, as Christine Bonnin argues in Chapter Seven. While bonding in the field may suggest that the relationship between the researcher and informants is one of equals, it...