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This article explores the methodological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Drawing on a long-term project conducted in China, I discuss how my interaction with the participants was mediated by the pervasive state power. This phenomenon adds a new layer to the question “can the subaltern speak,” and calls for a refined understanding of the researcher-participant relationship. Borrowing insights from recent anthropological studies on the state and Abrams’s state effect theory, I propose to move away from a static, western centric, and territory-based conceptualization of the state, and treat it as a culturally and historically specific structuration, in which researchers and participants are engaged. In this way, researchers can intentionally work against the normalizing state power yet still work with their participants. This approach leads to a more deliberate understanding of the methodological and ethical responsibilities of researchers in the process of structuration.

Working the hyphens in contemporary China: reconsidering researcher-participant relationship in an authoritarian state