Projects
Since launching the MPI’s Department of Economic Experimentation in 2021, I have devoted most of my time to developing an approach to anthropological research. This approach identifies research questions and theorises materials by focusing on what the people in the subject group are concerned with in their everyday lives. Their concerns may be about increasing pressure, excessive competition, the polarisation of public opinion, or a sense of powerlessness. These concerns are subjectively experienced social contradictions. They cannot be readily unpacked by applying conventional categories such as poverty or marginalisation, and thus require new theoretical explanation. In turn, the concerns sensitise researchers towards the most problematic aspects of the phenomenon in question, and guide them to generate insights that are meaningful to the subject group.
By working with colleagues, I aim to discern similar concerns and themes across our ethnographic case studies, reveal social contradictions that are less evident in particular instances, and explicate generalisable methods, concepts and frameworks of analysis. My own research activities in the department, a few examples of which are listed below, can be more accurately described as developing “lines of thought” than the carrying out of “projects”. None of the activities has a fixed timeframe, field site or budget, as conventional projects do. These lines of thought seek to theorise ethnographic data from diverse sources – my own and others’, existing and new – around common concerns and to raise new questions. In doing so, I will also explore methods of co-researching with relevant publics.
“Suspension”
My project on “suspension” started as a response to the feeling among many Chinese that, in constant search of better life opportunities, they have become powerless in confronting problems in the here and now. I used “suspension” to describe this dilemma in 2014. The term was quickly adopted in social media, with people typically using it to give a critical account of their own life circumstances. The leap of the term from academia into society encouraged me to pursue it further: what are the political economic and the cognitive frameworks behind this feeling of suspension? Will the concept help us to analyse other social domains, for example, the world of academia, in which scholars who feel under constant pressure to publish suspend engagement with their surroundings?
“The Nearby”
The project “The Nearby” emerged in a similar way as how the idea of “suspension” evolved. In a 2019 interview, I asked whether the “disappearance of the nearby” in the Chinese public mind has distorted the way in which people see the world. As social media has become the dominant source of information and means of communication, public perception tends to be preoccupied by the very far (e.g. abstract nationalist sentiments) or the very close (the individual self). The failure to appreciate how social life is concretely constituted may contribute to the polarisation of public debate and a sense of powerlessness in daily practice. Within a year of the interview, at least four art exhibitions with “The Nearby” in the title had been organised across China. I felt obliged to explore further: what material forces are emptying out the meaning of the nearby? Is it e-commerce, property relations, grassroots governance, social media, or all of them? What might happen if the nearby plays no role in how we organise our daily life and social understanding? How can we bring the nearby back into the public consciousness and public life? Started in early 2022, this project explores these questions through regular group discussion and art workshops.
COVID Mobility
I am also adopting the common concerns approach to reflect on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the Mobility Lab. People in different parts of the world seem to be worried more about social fragmentation than the virus itself. Faced with the common existential threat, societies have become more divided, and public trust has weakened. By examining China’s restrictions on mobility as a case study, this project explores mechanisms that lead to social decay – the dissipation of social solidarity, both before and during COVID. This will hopefully help to envision possible means of social repair – that is, actions taken by ordinary citizens to change their living conditions in the absence of immediate systemic transformation.
The Question Consciousness
In developing the common concerns approach, it is important to examine how social concerns have shaped academic questions in practice. The project of The Question Consciousness invites researchers in the Global South to reflect upon what research questions they have asked, why, to what effect, and how they can develop a meaningful intellectual agenda. Through a series of workshops and collective writing exercises, we seek to make research in the Global South both more organically linked to local concerns and at the same time globally relevant. I hope this will help young Southern scholars to emerge as global thinkers.
My own research activities will be constantly developing, but they will all feed into my overall endeavour, which is to cultivate a style of thinking in the department, and advocate a particular type of research praxis globally. This type of research starts with common concerns in identifying questions, analyses data according to how research respondents problematise their own experience, brings together affect and political economy in theorisation, and, finally, communicates with multiple publics throughout the research process.