Abstract

RODRIGUES, Irene. Being laowai: the foreigner anthropologist and the foreigner to Chinese migrants between Portugal and China. Etnográfica [online]. 2012, vol.16, n.3, pp.547-567. ISSN 0873-6561.

During fieldwork, the ethnographer almost always has to deal with the fact of being seen as an outsider by the people with whom he / she has to interact. But in Chinese ethnographic contexts, a nonChinese ethnographer might experience a particular form of the stranger condition contained in the idea of laowai - a native category of alien. Taking as a starting point ethnographic experiences with Chinese in China and in Portugal, this article reflects on the conditions of production of ethnographic knowledge in Chinese contexts, describing and discussing how the category of laowai, having emerged from a specific social, political and historical context, involves the ethnographer in a complex web of relationships, and contributes to the ethnographer’s ambivalent position of both distance and proximity.

Keywords : foreigner; ethnography; fieldwork; unpredictability; China.

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