Part 1: Heading to the Field

1 Dilemmas and Detours: Fieldwork with Ethnic Minorities in Upland Southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos / Sarah Turner

2 Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos / Jean Michaud

Part 2: Red Stamps and Gold Stars

3 Blunders in the Field: An Ethnographic Situation Among the Drung People in Southwest China / Stéphane Gros

4 Gifts and Debts: The Morality of Fieldwork in the Wa Lands on the China-Burma Frontier / Magnus Fiskesjö

5 The Fun and Games of Taking Children to the Field in Guizhou, China / Candice Cornet

6 Socialist Rules and Postwar Politics: Reflections on Nationality and Fieldwork among the Yao in Northern Vietnam / Jennifer Sowerwine

7 Doing Fieldwork and Making Friends in Upland Northern Vietnam: Entanglements of the Professional, Personal, and Political / Christine Bonnin

8 The Backstage of Ethnography as Ethnography of the State: Coping with Officials in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic / Pierre Petit

9 Marginality in the Margins: Serendipity, Gatekeepers, and Gendered Positionalities in Fieldwork among the Khmu in Northern Laos / Karen McAllister

10 Field Research on the Margins of China and Thailand / Janet C. Sturgeon

11 Easier in Exile? Comparative Observations on Doing Research among Tibetans in Lhasa and Dharamsala / Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy

12 The Silenced Research Assistant Speaks Her Mind / Sarah Turner

Part 3: Post-Fieldwork

13 Between Engagement and Abuse: Reflections on the “Field” of Anthropology and the Power of Ethnography / Oscar Salemink

14 Textual Desert – Emotional Oasis: An Unconventional Confessional Dialogue on Field Experience / Stevan Harrell and Li Xingxing

15 Red Stamps and Gold Stars on the Margins / Sarah Turner

Contributors

Index