Research through Passing in _____ and _____
Chapter
Overview
abstract
Through parallel ethnographic vignettes in Tibet and Iran, which converge at a number of points around questions of national origin, research access, surveillance, and the cutting off of ties to family members and close friends, this chapter considers “passing” in the field as a form of self-redaction. We conceptualize this type of self-redaction as a double-edged sword, simultaneously a protective response to state surveillance, which enables movement through selective erasure, and a form of complicity that reinforces authoritarian state power. Through these vignettes, we also reflect on the contradictions between the ways in which self-redaction may be an ethical choice in contexts where interlocutors do not want to be responsible for the knowledge of fieldworkers’ citizenship status, and the liberal presumptions of Institutional Research Boards about ethics.
