Fieldwork in a Low-Trust (Post-)Communist Society

Abstract

Doing successful fieldwork is difficult (Atkinson, et al.). This chapter discusses the particular challenges involved in conducting non-authorised fieldwork on guanxi practices in Chinese organisations in three different Chinese cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao. To get data on a sensitive topic, I had to learn and practise the various roles and skills necessary to establish my own guanxi connections. This involved gift-giving, befriending through banquets, socialising and Karaok with people from different background and regions. Gaining access and establishing trust are universal problems in conducting ethnographic field studies. The greater the sensitivity of the research topic, the more is the challenge of gaining information from respondents. Furthermore, the actual interview process is a complex form of social interaction taking place between the researcher and interviewees, involving a subtle interplay of roles and a reading of visible and invisible signals that constitute a complex situation (Weinberg, 2002).