Doing (critical) qualitative research in China in a global era

Abstract

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French

Over the last decades, qualitative researchers from the global south have questioned the dominance of the Anglo-American core and the current divide between the core and periphery. Nevertheless, it is unclear how to disrupt the divide. This article advances this endeavour by demonstrating the interplay between Anglo-American domination and a local hegemonic discourse that has perpetuated the core–periphery divide and hindered the development of critical qualitative research (QR) in the periphery. The author conceptualizes the periphery as an incubator that nurtures locally grounded and globally informed qualitative researchers. This demands interrogating the interplay between core domination and local hegemony. Doing so lays the foundation for qualitative researchers in the periphery to explore, and eventually articulate, decentred methodologies and locally situated epistemologies on a globalized platform. Using two case studies of QR conducted in China, the article examines the practices and politics of doing (critical) QR in contemporary China. It discusses methodological and epistemological issues pertinent to decentring QR in a global era.

Keywords

China’s curriculum reform core–periphery globalization of qualitative research Great Leap Forward qualitative research

A quarter century ago, curiosity about qualitative research (QR) in the global south and an awareness of Euro-American ‘ethnocentric’ tendencies prompted the editors of Qualitative Sociology to publish a special issue about the development and practices of QR outside of the core (Reinharz and Conrad, 1988: 9). This attempt resulted in a series of articles about the introduction of QR to the global south from the global north and how specific methods were being employed locally (Bruni and Gobo, 2005; Corradi, 1988; Dzvimbo, 1994; Kato, 1988; Kim and Cho, 2005; Mast, 1988; Oommen, 1988; Puebla, 2000; Schubotz, 2005; Suzuki, 2000; Weil, 2005; Wyka, 1988). In recent years, such writings have emerged as a subfield, Globalized Qualitative Research (GQR), wherein scholars practising and promoting QR in particular regions or countries articulate a collective professional identity by questioning the dominance of the Anglo-American core and the current divide between the core and periphery (Alasuutari, 2004; Atkinson, 2005; Mruck et al., 2005). While they have unanimously used the core–periphery divide as an analytical catalyst to name the domination and to emphasize the relational positioning of the Anglo-American core versus its ‘dominated other’, it is unclear how to disrupt the core–periphery divide.¹

This article advances GQR by demonstrating the interplay between Anglo-American domination and local hegemonic discourse that has perpetuated the core–periphery divide and hindered the development of critical QR in the periphery. I conceptualize the periphery as an incubator that nurtures locally grounded and globally informed qualitative researchers who will be critical to both core domination and local hegemony. Doing so lays the foundation for qualitative researchers in the periphery to explore, and eventually articulate, decentred methodologies and locally situated epistemologies on the globalized platform. Using two case studies of QR conducted in China, this article examines the practices and politics of doing QR in contemporary China. In the article’s title, the word ‘critical’ is placed in parentheses to emphasize the differences between doing qualitative research and doing ‘critical’ qualitative research. The differentiation highlights the practices and development of QR in China, which has interplayed with the unique research tradition of Investigative Research (Diaocha Yanjiu, IR), which originated with Mao Zhedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and is considered a distinct research tradition with Chinese socialist characteristics (Gao, 1987; Yanjiushi, 2005).²

I first discuss issues pertinent to the decentring effort in GQR. I then situate my analysis of the politics of practising (critical) QR in contemporary China where Anglo-American domination intersects with a local tradition of social science enquiry that consists of three research traditions: the quantitative approach, the qualitative approach and Mao’s legacy of IR. My analysis of the two qualitative studies demonstrates the interplay of the global domination and local hegemony. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of this mechanism and future directions of GQR.

Decentring qualitative research in the global south

To identify core dominance in the periphery, scholars have noted the exclusive and restrictive effects of English as the primary, dominant language in the field of QR. English textbooks and scholarly exemplars used in GQR are translated verbatim from the Anglo-American core into local languages. The sheer volume of QR methods, theories and texts developed for an Anglo-American context dominates the publication markets in the periphery (Alasuutari, 2004; Bruni and Gobo, 2005; Kato, 1988; Kim and Cho, 2005). This kind of domination is further perpetuated by sponsorship in the form of external funding that comes to dictate directions of, and substantive issues undertaken in, GQR (Dzvimbo, 1994). Examples used by scholars from the periphery to discuss QR are also considered too foreign to be appreciated by readers in the core (Alasuutari, 2004). Furthermore, Alasuutari points out that the seven temporal, progressive moments described in Denzin and Lincoln’s genealogical account of QR’s development represents an American-centred construct.³ According to Alasuutari, a spatial metaphor is more inclusive and can better capture the diverse paths of QR in the periphery (Alasuutari, 2004).

Even though scholars pursuing GQR have convincingly demonstrated core dominance, it is unclear how to advance GQR so as to dismantle the current divide between the core and periphery. Two propositions regarding this divide are particularly relevant here: Ryen (2011) dismissed the necessity of conceptually upholding the divide, while Alasuutari’s (2004) position is prone to its perpetuation. A seasoned ethnographer from Norway who has carried out extensive fieldwork in East Africa, Ryen argued that the ‘methodological imperialism’ projected in the core–periphery dichotomy is no longer relevant; she argues that qualitative researchers from the core have acquired sufficient methodological insights to refrain from presenting the natives as stereotypical ‘Others’. According to Ryen, the only unanswered question is whether there are unique epistemologies from the periphery that are as yet unknown to the West (Ryen, 2011). This proposition is problematic in that the periphery is upheld as the researched subject of the core. It provides no direction to investigate how the periphery can act as an incubator, nurturing local qualitative researchers in and of its own right. Before investing deliberate intellectual attention to nourish and safeguard this environment, it is unrealistic to expect epistemologies that are unknown in the hegemonic West to emerge and flourish from the periphery. Although Alasuutari painstakingly delineated the mechanisms that have sustained Anglo-American domination, he simultaneously portrayed qualitative researchers in the periphery as simply retrieving, modifying and returning research methods from a ‘toolbox’ of approaches and practices that are presumably created in the core (Alasuutari, 2004). It is therefore unclear how to develop GQR so that in a global era, the core will no longer be the sole knowledge producer and the periphery will no longer simply be the knowledge consumer.

Conceptualizing the periphery as an incubator of knowledge producers requires us to confront challenges and to explore solutions. The two qualitative studies conducted in China that I examine here will illustrate how the interplay of core domination and local hegemony shapes the practices of (critical) QR in the periphery. My analysis is situated in a larger historical context, within which Chinese intellectuals have continued to articulate their voices and negotiate their positions since the mid-19th century. Analysing the persistent tension and interactive effects between global influences and local practices is essential.

Doing qualitative research in the Chinese context

In the global context of doing QR, China is situated in the periphery. The meanings and politics involved in critical QR must be understood within its historical and political context. Sociology, for example, came to China in 1903 with the translation of Herbert Spencer’s book The Study of Sociology. Its introduction was part of the ongoing efforts of Chinese intellectuals (beginning in the 1830s) to address internal turmoil while fending off external attacks and colonial forces from the West (Yan, 2004). These efforts were always anchored by a dual principle: uphold Chinese traditions on the one hand and use Western knowledge on the other. Within this historical and political context, three distinctive social science research traditions developed in China: a quantitative approach; IR, a research tradition that was originally developed by Chairman Mao Zedong of the CCP to identify the roots of sociopolitical problems in rural China in the 1920s (Chiang, 2001); and a qualitative approach. The quantitative approach was introduced in the early 1900s to assess urban poverty and the experiences of the underprivileged as a critique to traditional Chinese elite knowledge (Chiang, 2001; Lam, 2011). The qualitative approach was first used in the 1930s by scholars who had studied outside of China; its objectives were to identify opportunities and formulate policies of urbanization, intent on building a competitive urban-based political economy (Arkush, 1981; Yan, 2004). After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China by the CCP in 1949, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were severely criticized for their imperialist connections and urban-centred bourgeois orientation. They were eventually replaced by IR. While it bears similarities to its antecedents, the particular characteristics of IR as introduced by Mao were, and continue to be, understood as a research tradition with Chinese socialist characteristics. It is credited with bringing about the proletarian revolution of 1949 (Gao, 1987; Mao, 1986; Yanjiushi, 2005) and continued to be used after 1949 as an administrative means of authoritarian rule (Cheng and So, 1983). The use of IR by CCP policymakers and local administrators peaked during the Great Leap Forward (GLF 1958–1962) when the CCP commissioned massive numbers of investigative reports to add legitimacy to its policies (Chao, 1962).

The interplay of IR with quantitative and qualitative approaches in contemporary China centres around three issues. First, since the reintroduction of quantitative social research methods in the 1980s, this approach has come to dominate the social sciences. In this, China is similar to many other countries in the periphery. Qualitative research, as it is conducted in the Anglo-American core, was reintroduced to China in the 1990s but university training in QR is either unavailable or inadequate. Graduate and undergraduate students carry out QR when they lack the necessary statistical skills and/or access to large quantitative data sets, rather than out of an interest in an alternative, non-positivistic paradigm.

Second, QR rests firmly upon the Anglo-American heritage. QR is taught primarily through translated English-language sociological theories and handbooks in research methods. This intellectual environment is not hospitable to locally grounded theorizing. Local scholars are expected to reference Western theories to justify their work; as one Chinese scholar notes, ‘Chinese experiences are relegated as the footnotes of Western theories’ (Cao, 2011).

Third, and paradoxically, IR is still showcased as a research method with ‘Chinese socialist characteristics’. IR bears a certain resemblance to the Western tradition of QR because it relies on in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. However, unlike QR, it is not based on a reflective and analytical framework.⁴ It continues to occupy a legitimized and prominent position in Chinese social sciences in general, and in sociology in particular (Gao, 1987; Shen and Xia, 2006). Epistemologically speaking, it fosters a hegemonic regime that is particularly detrimental to critical QR because unchecked official discourse is widely employed. For example, the CCP rhetoric persistently employs the notion of poor ‘quality’ (suzhi) to attribute societal problems to flawed personal characteristics without considering structural factors (Jacka, 2009; Zhou, 2006) . Such rhetoric is pervasive not only in policymaking and implementation but also in academic research (Jacka, 2009; Zhou, 2006). It is particularly evident in the field of women’s studies. Instead of examining the structural factors that lead to trafficking, women’s unemployment and low political participation, for example, researchers identify the cause to be rural Chinese women’s backwardness, passivity and low ‘quality’. In recent years a few scholars have endeavoured to rewrite or rescue voices of the oppressed from below (Guo, 2013; Li, 2003) and others have worked to carve out intellectual space from within (Shen et al., 2013). Nevertheless, insufficient attention has been directed to challenge IR methodologically and/or epistemologically.

Two cases of QR illustrate the ways in which the intersection of Anglo-American domination and local hegemonic discourse play out in shaping the praxis of QR in contemporary China: one is about QR conducted by students analysing China’s recent Curriculum Reform and the other is about peasants’ resistance during China’s GLF. I decided to explore how QR is practised in the field of education because QR curricula are more developed in this field than in any of the other social sciences in China.⁵ The praxis of QR in education is informative because it captures the working and nuances of a local–global intersection. I also selected the case study about peasant dissent because Mao’s IR was rooted in his study of peasantry and discontent. Under Mao’s directive, during different stages of the GLF various groups carried out extensive IR to assess various CCP policies. This case study provides valuable insights into what it takes methodologically and epistemologically to uncover local realities and how such effort is informative, and could contribute, to decentring QR dominated by the core.

Case study 1: A qualitative enquiry about Curriculum Reform

Policy and research context of the Curriculum Reform

In 2001, China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) issued a circular entitled ‘Guidelines for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education’. This reform called for a shift from the lecture-based, teacher-centred approach to a discussion-based, student-centred pedagogy, requiring the incorporation of both modern technology and local, indigenous knowledge into new curricula, and emphasized the need to balance ‘book knowledge’ with practical knowledge. The reform was designed to ‘bring forth a new generation of high-calibre citizens, people who are competent enough to serve China’s modernisation drive’ (Ministry of Education, 2001: 3). Since 2001, the reform has gathered momentum across China, with an estimated 112 million primary school students learning under the new educational paradigm (Li and Ni, 2011).

In 2008, I selected dissertations and MA theses that used QR methods from the (Chinese) dissertation and MA theses databases using the following keywords: ‘zhixing yanjiu (qualitative research)’, ‘tianye diaocha (field research)’, ‘gean diaocha (case study)’ and ‘shidi yanjiu (empirical research)’. The search led to a total of 154 dissertations and MA theses in education. Ten of them were chosen for analysis in this article because Curriculum Reform was their research topic.

Adopting the American theoretical model

All 10 of these student-researchers argued that simply transplanting Western theories and findings to analyse China’s Curriculum Reform was inadequate. They cited the lack of empirically based Chinese studies as their research incentive and rationale. Despite their argument that Western theories were inadequate, the students nonetheless relied heavily on them in their literature reviews to guide data collection and data analysis, whether their research involved interviews or ethnographic observation. For example, to clarify the roles of teachers in Curriculum Reform, some student-researchers used the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM), developed by Hall and others to evaluate an individual teacher’s cognitive understanding and application of the reform (Chen, 2006; Lu, 2007; Rao, 2005; Yin, 2003). This model was developed in the US and has been widely used for studying the process of implementing educational reform by teachers in the West (Anderson, 1997). Once this model was adopted by the student-researcher, ethnographic work became a positivistic, deductive exercise wherein student-researchers simply applied key concepts from the CBAM to guide their observations and in-depth interviews. In one case, a student-researcher asked his teacher-informants to provide written comments about ‘stages of concerns’, a defining attribute in CBAM, to measure each teacher’s understanding of the Curriculum Reform. Furthermore, he eventually tabulated data he collected into a binary category of yes/no according to criteria laid out in CBAM (Yin, 2003).

This kind of data collection and analytical strategy is problematic. First, the yes/no binary code is commonly used in quantitative research where answers to survey questionnaire items are coded for later statistical analysis. Without a large sample collected through a random sampling strategy, it is meaningless to employ the yes/no binary code to analyse qualitative data. In QR, narratives are typically analysed to capture interactions and social processes at the micro level. Rich descriptions can help clarify teachers’ narratives and thereby reveal their teaching practices and the dynamics and processes of policy implementation. Instead, this student-researcher used questions from the CBAM as standardized filters to structure data analysis. Using those questions to analyse teachers’ narratives is like ‘trimming toes to fit the shoes’, a Chinese proverb once employed to elucidate positivistic logic in a quantitative approach (Hsiung, 2001). Furthermore, by using the CBAM, the student-researchers were assuming that the success or failure of the Reform was dependent upon the individual teacher’s perception and attitude, without questioning whether a model originally developed in the United States to encourage or monitor changes in teacher attitudes is suitable to elucidate China’s Curriculum Reform. Finally, CBAM assumes an individual-centred approach by solely focusing on the teachers. Using CBAM to evaluate the Reform’s success and failure reinforces, rather than challenges, the CCP’s hegemonic discourse, which is known to either blame individuals for social problems or use stereotypes to explain social problems in social science enquiry, as I noted earlier.

Subscribing to the official rhetoric

The uncritical use of imported theory simultaneously renders support to the local hegemonic discourse embedded in IR. This was further evident in ethnographic fieldnotes, which assigned blame to rural teachers for not enthusiastically embracing and implementing the Reform and failed to recognize the structural factors that have disadvantaged them and their schools and students. For example, teachers at rural or lower-tier schools were persistently portrayed by the student-researchers as ‘passive’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘low quality’ (Rao, 2005: 28, 32; Lu, 2007: 25). The following excerpt is rather typical:

By and large, teachers at the school where I conducted my ethnographic fieldwork have shown no strong initiative in implementing the curriculum. Based upon my daily conversations with the teachers and my observations of conversations among the teachers themselves, they really are not interested in the reform. … As I pointed out earlier, although they have followed the requirement to use the new textbooks, there is little change in their teaching style. This type of attitude undoubtedly is detrimental to the implementation of the new curriculum in rural areas. (Lu, 2007: 32, my translation)

It is important to note that the write-up did not include vivid details of individual actions, interpersonal interactions, or processes and outcomes of decision-making to convey what was happening in the community. Instead, the student-researcher included general, conclusive descriptions such as ‘no strong initiative’, ‘not interested in reform’ and ‘this type of attitude’, casting an overall negative impression about the teachers as a group. Most importantly, there was no evidence to suggest that the ethnographer was aware of the evaluative lens that he or she had used in observing and writing fieldnotes to present and represent the teacher. Student-researchers inadvertently de-contextualized the teachers by providing no data to weigh their roles against other factors that have also affected the process and outcome of the Curriculum Reform in rural China. This individual-centred perspective is also evident in the portrayal of students in rural schools; student-researchers simply accepted the negative descriptions provided by teachers.

According to the teachers, students in rural schools were ‘nutty’, ‘unruly’ and ‘not interested in learning’ (Rao, 2005: 38, 41; Lu, 2007: 45). This inadequacy is used by the teachers to explain why it is impossible to carry out new student-centred pedagogy. Together, they demonstrate the same ‘blame the individual’ tendency that the student-researcher exhibited when attributing the failure of Curriculum Reform to individual, passive teachers. Despite the well-known, large-scale rural to urban migration that could explain the disadvantages among many of these children who have been left behind, the student-researchers never consider these factors to be relevant to their analyses.

Discussion

Much of the problem discussed here may initially appear to be the result of inadequate training and underdeveloped QR curricula in the face of a dominant quantitative paradigm, whether it is in the core or periphery. A closer examination reveals context-specific nuances. Anglo-American domination makes it possible and plausible for student-researchers to call upon locally available, translated Western theory to defy the marginal position of QR in relation to a quantitative approach. Such a justification strategy is problematic, not only because qualitative data are quantified into binary codes that are only methodologically meaningful for quantitative data. By employing measurements from a Western model that were originally designed to focus on individual attitudes, structural factors influencing the outcomes of the Curriculum Reform are excluded from investigative consideration. This approach reinforces, rather than challenges, the official CCP rhetoric as entrenched in IR. Thus, my examination of research about the Curriculum Reform in China reveals that the interplay between Anglo-American domination and local hegemonic discourse works at the local level. The interplay has functioned not only to perpetuate core domination but to hinder the use of critical lenses in QR.

The core domination and local hegemony play out differently in the next case study. Wangling Gao’s ethnographic notes reveal his methodological journey and epistemological shift to account for peasant resistance during China’s GLF.

Case study 2: A qualitative enquiry into peasant resistance during the Great Leap Forward

The historical and research context of the Great Leap Forward

The notorious GLF was intended to demonstrate the superiority of Chinese Marxist society over the Western capitalist world. Its specific objective was to move China from socialism to communism by eliminating the market economy and by transforming pre-existing local socioeconomic structures. The CCP organized communes as the basic production units, with communal kitchens established to replace individual households’ reproductive functioning (Chang and Wen, 1998; Li and Yang, 2005). Although these dramatic policy changes failed miserably and resulted in a nationwide famine, the CCP state only reluctantly admitted years later that the famine was primarily the result of mismanagement.⁶ While recent scholarship on the causes and effects does lead to new understanding on the GLF, it provides limited insights about what is needed, methodologically and/or epistemologically, to conduct critical QR in China to disentangle hegemonic discourse in knowledge production and reproduction.

The question ‘Why did not more people die?’ motivated Wangling Gao, a Chinese social historian, to explore resistance and survival strategies of peasants during the GLF. His 2006 book, Renmin Gongshe Shiqi Zhongguo Nongmin ‘Fanxingwei’ Diaocha (Chinese Peasants’ ‘Counter-Actions’ during the Collective) documented not only resistance and attitudes among peasants, but also how he, an intellectual who had spent years in the countryside being ‘re-educated’ in the 1960s and 1970s, came to discover the truth from below. Through his candid, reflexive methodological and epistemological notes, I demonstrate what doing critical QR in China entails.

Discovering ‘truth’ from below – a methodological journey

Like many other urban youths of his generation, Gao considered the village he spent time in as ‘his village’, and local villagers came to see him as ‘one of them’. In the early 1990s, he returned to ‘his village’ to learn how his fellow villagers had managed to survive the Great Famine, what strategies were carried out, why some individuals died and others survived, and why more people did not die.

When Gao first started his project, he only knew two terms associated with resistance and survival strategies among peasants. The first term, manchan sifeng, involved ‘concealing production and privately distributing grain’ – this was carried out jointly by local cadres and villagers to evade taxes and hoard grain for private, local consumption. Coined by the CCP state, manchan sifeng was a well-publicized and politically loaded term associated with the GLF. It was engrained in the criminal code and was widely used and often abused by local officials to punish and suppress local discontent. The second term, tou (stealing), was a colloquial term. When it was used during the GLF, it referred to an individual action of taking collectively-produced grain or vegetables for private consumption. The first term, manchan sifeng, was considered ‘counter-revolutionary’ by the CCP state because of its collective nature. The term tou did not have the same political connotation, but as an everyday colloquialism it was linked with considerable stigma and moral condemnation. The politicized and criminalized connotation of manchan sifeng and the morally condemned term tou meant that neither term was a proper conversational entrée for an ethnographer trying to learn about local survival practices that took place during the GLF.

Gao was extremely anxious when he started his project, knowing only these two highly charged terms. He was not sure how he could even begin a casual, proper conversation with his fellow villagers by asking them whether or not they had committed any ‘crimes’ in order to survive the Great Famine. After repeated visits over the course of several years and extended from his ‘home village’ to villages in other provinces, he came to see how his fellow villagers understood and interpreted their own survival strategies, how they perceived and interpreted their own positions in relation to the state’s top-down control, and what he needed to do as a researcher to understand the layers of meanings, actions and inactions.

Hegemonic discourse, alternative accounts and everyday dissent – an epistemological shift

Gao eventually discovered that there were, in fact, three distinctive terms to describe various forms of survival strategies during the Great Famine. That villagers attached different meanings to each term suggests that Gao’s ethnographic work uncovered previously unavailable knowledge. A closer analysis of his findings identifies thematic issues that are essential to our enquiry into methodological practices and epistemological principles of doing critical QR in the periphery.

Manchan sifeng

As noted above, manchan sifeng was coined by the CCP state during the GLF to crack down on the nationwide practice of villagers evading taxation and appropriating grain. Although these strategies were covertly endorsed by some local officials and considered survival strategies locally, the CCP state denounced them because they contravened the collectivist doctrine. Villagers and local officials charged with engaging in manchan sifeng were prosecuted and severely punished as ‘counter-revolutionary’, a politicized term used by the CCP to attack or indict whoever they considered to have threatened the CCP’s agenda. Abuses and wrongful conviction were widespread at the time. Therefore, the term manchan sifeng still evoked fear and sorrow among fellow villagers decades later when Gao was conducting his fieldwork. Methodologically speaking, manchan sifeng functioned as a hegemonic device that foreclosed rather than opened up any dialogue about survival practices during the GLF.

From tou to gong tou/da tou versus si tou/xiao tou

In contrast, local villagers used the word tou as a root to develop two sets of variants to covertly express their critical positions. The first set, gong tou (official or public stealing) or da tou (grand embezzlement), described non-prosecutable stealing carried out by corrupt officials and local cadres. The other set of terms, si tou (private, covert stealing) and xiao tou (petty stealing), described punishable stealing carried out by peasants.

During collectivization, each individual was allotted a certain amount of grain, vegetables and cooking oil. Gao found that, as the famine worsened and the allotted amount of food decreased, villagers closely monitored what, and how much, the cadres consumed at the collective dining hall. Although the villagers saw that the cadres enjoyed more and better-quality food, they were in no position to challenge such abuses openly. Thus, they used the terms gong tou (official or public stealing) or da tou (grand embezzlement) as an informal indictment of the privileges afforded to the officials. By extending the term tou into gong tou and da tou, the peasants came to name the officials’ corrupt entitlements. These terms were used as a symbolic, verbal indictment of officials by the peasants. In contrast, the terms si tou (private, covert stealing) and xiao tou (petty stealing) described stealing carried out by individual peasants for survival. They were used by the peasants to differentiate what they did from the official ‘public embezzlement’.

One common practice was for peasant families to cook stolen grain secretly at night. Even though this practice was ‘covert’, it was not really a secret. One retired county mayor recalled, ‘at night, smoke came out from every family’s chimney as they cooked the stolen grain’ (Gao, 2006: 4, my translation). One of Gao’s informants described specifically that mainly women and children engaged in such ‘covert’ practices because ‘[if] they did get caught, it would not be too big of an offence, like a “counter-revolutionary” attack or something of that nature’ (Gao, 2006: 5, my translation). Thus, one of the main issues is not how much was stolen, but how such routine theft was deliberately rationalized and de-stigmatized as counter to hegemonic practices. By contrasting the terms gong tou/da tou (embezzlement by officials) with si tou/xiao tou, the villagers were able to appropriate and convert the colloquial term tou from its original stigmatized connotation into a verbal device of critical dissent that assigns dignity and legitimacy to villagers’ survival strategies.

The finding is particularly relevant to the discussion about conducting critical QR in China. It reveals an alternative account of the GLF that incorporates nuanced testimonies retold by villagers not solely as victims of the famine, but also as witnesses of local officials’ corruption. Their critical voices are entirely absent from the CCP’s hegemonic discourse. The state’s terminology of manchan sifeng categorizes villagers and local officials as counter-revolutionary criminals, whereas the terms gong tou/da tou versus si tou/xiao tou reveal how the villagers were appraisers of local incidences. Uncovering the alternative account is essential to subvert and rewrite the CCP’s official story of the GLF.

Zhuawo

The third term, zhuawo, literally means ‘withholding’ or ‘picking up’. During the GLF, the term covers a wide variety of petty acts involving bringing, taking, collecting or picking up produce or grain from the field to one’s home for private consumption. This term was first mentioned to Gao by a fellow villager after he had spent months in ‘his village’. Gao came to learn that villagers would simply ‘go and pick something up from the field’ as needed and that there was no shame attached to zhuawo because ‘no matter how downright honest an individual is, he picks up grain from the field. No one considers it a shameful thing to do’ (Gao, 2006: 17, my translation). Once Gao started using the term zhuawo in conversing with his fellow villagers, the villagers opened up to his questions. He realized that the practice of zhuawo had never been a secret among villagers, and that the term was widely and comfortably used.

Gao eventually coined the concept ‘counter-action’ to capture a wide range of resistance tactics and unassuming survival behaviours among Chinese peasants during the GLF. These tactics ultimately forced the state to modify its agricultural policies, slowly relieving the famine and gradually revitalizing the peasants’ livelihood. Conceptually speaking, the ‘counter-action’ offers an alternative account about how policies evolved to bring the GLF to an end. This critical position challenges the official, benevolent rhetoric whereby Chairman Mao and his aides were portrayed as wise and compassionate leaders whose decision to modify the agricultural policies was led by their concern for the welfare of peasants.

Discussion

Gao’s ‘counter-action’ research highlights three main methodological and epistemological issues pertinent to conducting critical QR in China. First, although for decades Chinese academic researchers have wondered whether peasants ‘tell the truth’ and how to ‘make’ them tell the truth (Fei, 1985; Li, 1933, 1935), insufficient attention has been directed to the process and practices of truth finding; detailed ethnographic accounts on the doing of social enquiry are rarely recorded. In this context, Gao’s ethnographic account is invaluable. His candid notes demonstrate that the key issue in social science enquiry is not about whether or not peasants tell the truth. Instead, it is about how one comes to hear and see a pervasive phenomenon that has never been a secret among the villagers but has never been observed or registered by academics. Discovering truth from below means that academics must first dig beneath local hegemonic discourse to allow memories and vocabulary that have long existed in local communities to make their way into the academic grid of knowledge production. Critical QR is essential to facilitate such an endeavour.

Second, Gao’s research experiences provide an interesting case of the local immersion of the ethnographer. Ethnography often entails turning the academic ‘outsider’ into a local ‘insider’. For Gao and many Chinese intellectuals of his generation, this is a complicated and difficult process. After spending much of their young adulthood in the Chinese countryside or factories, they knew first-hand what it was like to be a peasant or factory worker. Going back to their villages or factories some 20 years later meant revisiting and re-examining their own past. It required a unique kind of reflexivity that is distinctively different from the so-called ‘outsider into insider’ route currently articulated in much of the existing literature of the core. Conducting critical QR in China can not be achieved by simply retrieving tools from the existing ‘toolbox’ presumably created by the core. It requires qualitative researchers to examine not only their relationship with the informants but also their location within the state and in the process of state-building through knowledge production.

Third, Gao’s writing reveals that he has drawn much of his analytical insights from Daoism and other sources of Chinese ideology. While obviously the clandestine tactics identified in Gao’s study are far from outright rebellion, it is not entirely clear how the notion of ‘counter-action’ differs from Malaysian peasants’ resistance documented in James Scott’s classic book Weapon of the Weak (Scott, 1985). The differences and similarities between Gao’s idea of ‘counter-action’ and Scott’s peasant ‘resistance’ became particularly contentious after Scott’s book was translated and warmly embraced by progressive Chinese intellectuals. According to Gao, even though he had carried out his study before Scott’s work was introduced to the Chinese community, he had often been asked about the originality of his work (personal communication).

This is related to the Anglo-American domination, which allows theories and models produced by the core to be exported and taken up in the periphery; rarely do the producer from the core and consumer from the periphery question their applicability (Kato, 1988; Kim and Cho, 2005). Only recently have qualitative researchers begun to pursue issues which are relevant and meaningful to members of locally communities even though they have not been considered important or been theorized about in the core (Benjumea, 2006). The encounter of Gao’s and Scott’s work in China suggests that qualitative researchers doing critical work in the periphery in the global era need to negotiate an intellectual space locally by confronting the interplay between imported Anglo-American theories and local hegemonic discourse.

Conclusion

In this article, I have analysed two qualitative case studies to examine the practices and implications of doing (critical) QR in China in the global era. The case study of Curriculum Reform illustrated that using theoretical models developed in the US actually reinforces local hegemonic discourse, such that personal attributes of teachers and students in rural schools, rather than inequalities between rural and urban areas, were considered obstacles to the reform. Wangling Gao’s methodological journey and epistemological shift illustrate that to account for an alternative story and everyday dissent, Chinese academics must go beyond hegemonic discourse. They also need to negotiate an intellectual space that is currently dominated by theories and studies of the core.

While the core–periphery dichotomy has been used as an analytical concept to investigate the power imbalance between these two spheres, analysis of the two Chinese cases demonstrates the interplay between core domination and local hegemony. It also illustrates the ways in which the periphery is implicated in perpetuating such a divide at the local level. Thus, decentring QR dominated by the core in a global era will involve identifying and disrupting the mechanisms that continue to perpetuate the core–periphery imbalance at the global and local levels. Furthermore, the core–periphery divide will only be truly challenged when the Anglo-American core begins to conceive itself not only as a knowledge producer but also as a knowledge consumer. This is evident where a critique of the genealogy originally developed by Denzin and Lincoln has subsequently led to revision and dialogues across the core–periphery divide (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). While it is premature to articulate exactly what doing QR from the perspective of the global south entails, investing intellectual capital to nurture critical QR in the periphery will pave the way to the advancement of GQR as qualitative researchers from the global south begin to assume engaging roles as knowledge producers in core–periphery dialogues.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The article was originally presented at the ‘(Be-)Deutungsansprüche in qualitativer Forschung’ in Frankfurt, Germany on 5 May 2012. I have benefited a great deal from comments made by Drs Joan Eakin, Margrit Eichler, Phil C Langer and members of the Critical China Studies Group, the Asian Institute at University of Toronto. Critical comments provided by three anonymous reviewers have made the article much stronger. Dr Xuehong Qi and her students from the Nanjing Normal University helped me gather the MA and PhD theses. I appreciate Professor Wangling Gao’s insights; our exchanges have clarified many details of his fieldwork. Hank Zhao has provided wonderful research assistance. Linn Clark and Sherri Klassen’s editorial support has improved this article’s readability. I take full responsibility for the statements made in this article.

Funding

This research was partially funded by Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (USA) RG013-A-11.

Notes

Author biography

Ping-Chun Hsiung is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include gender relations and social change in Chinese societies and the globalization of qualitative research. She is currently studying Mao Zedong’s Investigative Research during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) and Chinese women’s NGOs and local governance.

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