ABSTRACT
This chapter maps out the geographical sites and methodological conditions as well as constraints for researching this book. It discusses the historical context in which uncertainty has become a palpable ethos whereby our understanding of the current socioeconomic and political transformation in China is to be situated. Against this context, Chapter 1 engages with the Western discourse on NGO and civil society and discusses how they are used and bear relevance to the Chinese context. This chapter also describes and reflects on the conditions of my fieldwork, the processes of negotiating access to and locating the field, and my own positionality as a Taiwanese anthropologist. Against the backdrop of an authoritarian regime where civil liberties are limited and state surveillance is in operation, I discuss how I have come to use gossip as an ethnographic practice to foster and manage different levels of trust relationships with my interlocutors. When state surveillance is omnipresent and information is scarce or hard to verify, the practice of gossip becomes particularly crucial for the labor NGOs and anthropologist to navigate the murky waters surrounding Chinese politics.
