Appendix

RESEARCH METHODS

In 2014, China’s central state assigned new ecological zoning mandates for municipalities. This book emerged from efforts to understand municipal ecological protection zoning processes. What were its aims? How was ecological land zoned? Once zoned, how was it managed and by whom? What did ecological protection mean for state scientists and urban planners? How did new conservation zones affect people living in these areas? These were some of the questions with which I began.

I started interviewing within my network of urban planners, which I had developed through previous work in China. This took me through Beijing, Chengdu, and Kunming. Through these early interviews, it became clear that peri-urban village land and what municipal government officials called ecological migration were central to processes of making ecological protection areas in municipal regions. At that time, there were no publicly available maps that showed where ecological protection zoning was taking place. So I came to find villages being incorporated into ecological protection areas through government officials who told me of their whereabouts. Over time, I found more sites by talking with villagers. I started conducting interviews in these villages and continued expert interviews with ecologists and urban planners in Beijing. But from 2015 onward I focused primarily on sites in China’s southwest in the cities of Kunming, Chengdu, and Dali.

That year I began visiting resettlement complexes and establishing relationships with ecological migrants. These resettlement complexes became key research sites. Locating resettlement complexes was a challenge. In most cases, resettlement complexes resemble banal high-rise apartment complexes (xiaoqu) ubiquitous across China. I located resettlement complexes through four sources: villagers who knew where they were to be resettled, villagers who refused resettlement but knew where other residents were resettled, government officials who told me the location of resettlement sites, and protests at resettlement sites that attracted my attention.

Conducting interviews in resettlement complexes had its own set of challenges as residents moved through the rhythms of their daily lives. In some cases, many visits were necessary for participants to feel comfortable sitting for an interview. In other cases, residents were immediately interested in participating in interviews. At one site, which residents called the refugee district because of inadequate compensation for rural land and housing, ecological migrants crowded around to tell their stories of transition into what they described as high-rise poverty.

Multiple research affiliations shaped place-based connections and facilitated introductions, which broadened the number of participants.1 The network of government officials, planners, and scientists with whom I conducted interviews expanded. This allowed me, for instance, to conduct interviews with scientists about the historical ecological record for the Lake Dian basin. Research affiliations also brought me in contact with new villages being incorporated into ecological protection areas.

Ultimately, I drew on multiple methods including interviews, participant observation, oral histories, photovoice focus group discussions, and archival work. I carried out fieldwork over a fifteen-month period spanning 2014 to 2017, with additional archival work during 2018–19. Research included 15 villages and 4 resettlement complexes. In total, I interviewed 223 peri-urban villagers, 130 resettlement complex migrants, 90 government officials and urban planners, 15 representatives from organizations involved in financing and managing ecological protection sites, and 23 ecologists. These figures include focus group discussions, in which I interviewed up to five people at the same time. I use pseudonyms throughout to ensure the anonymity of people, places, organizations, and government bureaus. For the same reason, I do not include the exact date of interviews or tabulate an index of interviewees.

It should be clear by now that I did not randomly sample. I asked villagers to introduce me to other villagers, urban planners to introduce me to other urban planners, ecological migrants to introduce me to other ecological migrants, and so on.2 This form of sampling inherently limits the fields of interlocutors. For instance, my sample does not include ecological migrants who moved out of resettlement housing or work as migratory laborers in cities, although, I learned about these experiences through interviews. Similarly, I spoke with many people who were in-between employment or balanced multiple forms of labor across locales. Naturally, my sample includes only those who were willing to speak with me. Some were not interested. Others simply did not have time.

For scientists, planners, and government officials my sample tended toward those who were well-networked and interested in international or comparative perspectives. Regarding government officials, I sampled predominantly from middle-aged men, not because of my sampling procedure, but because the vast majority of government officials in China are middle-aged men. My sample of villagers and resettlement complex migrants is close to gender parity, with a higher number of middle-aged people (fifty and older). I offer two explanations for near gender parity and the age-orientation of the sample. I am a cis-gender male who conducted fieldwork as a single parent with full-time care-giving responsibilities for my daughter Akira (who appears in chapters 4 and 5). While men were comfortable speaking with me when I appeared to be a solo researcher, women were curious to learn about my daughter. When Akira was not in school, she was with me conducting fieldwork in villages, resettlement complexes, and (occasionally) in scientific labs and government offices. I noticed that when Akira was with me some women in villages and resettlement complexes in particular were curious to hear our story. After she accompanied me to research sites, I was often recognized on subsequent visits as the foreign researcher with a child.

The reason that the sample of villagers and ecological migrants is skewed slightly toward middle-age and older participants is due, in part, to the challenges this demographic faces in obtaining employment. China’s laborers have been disenfranchised from the job stability once common during the socialist and early reform periods.3 Significantly, for most jobs in China retirement is mandated at certain ages. Men are often forced to retire at sixty, and women at fifty. The retirement age for female civil servants is fifty-five. When people approach these ages, it becomes harder for them to find jobs. Companies are less willing to hire employees who will retire within a decade. This leaves many people in this demographic struggling to find work, particularly those who would otherwise be engaged in agricultural production but no longer have access to land.

I frequently conducted multiple interviews with participants. This proved particularly valuable for learning about ecological protection zoning practices. Over multiple interviews with government officials and urban planners, contradictory claims and inconsistencies pointed to key ambiguities surrounding urban-rural planning processes and ecological protection zoning. Interviews with government officials and urban planners provided situated views within a complex nexus of governance relations. In the text, I indicate a relative position so as not to reveal identities. My interviews included representatives from urban planning bureaus, environmental monitoring bureaus, environmental planning bureaus, forestry bureaus, land bureaus, and others.

The number of research participants from peri-urban villages and resettlement complexes grew as I spent extended amounts of time in each as a participant observer.4 This method involves extended interaction with individuals and social groups, observing everyday activities, and writing field notes as a reflexive exercise for examining everyday life. In practice, I chose places based on how welcome I was. My appearance as a foreigner made it clear that I was not local, but few had ever met a white person with whom they could converse in Mandarin. In many cases, this generated curiosity, opening a vein for conversation. In most cases, I fielded many questions about myself and my daughter before asking my own. After multiple visits to a site, I became a more familiar face to some. When I received invitations to people’s homes, I accepted them gratefully. I returned to visit those who welcomed me over the years.

In sites where I came to know villagers well, I not only conducted interviews and observations, but also organized photovoice focus group interviews. Photo-voice is a visual participatory method. I adapted the method, however, from a set of rote procedures to a process-oriented method. Photovoice was initially conceptualized as a research method for carrying out public needs assessment with emancipatory and empowering potential.5 Through the process of taking photos and discussing them collectively in focus groups, participants identify mutual needs and experiences. Three core principles underlie the method—give voice to communities, especially those underprivileged and without representational apparatuses to communicate needs; utilize photographs and focus group discussions to promote critical dialogue on community issues; and connect communities with those that have a direct role in governance. I conducted photovoice in two villages with representatives from an environmental bureau. It became clear during the focus group discussions, however, that many felt constrained voicing their thoughts in the presence of researchers from the environmental bureau. In response to this observation, I conducted follow-up open-ended interviews with and without photos.6

My approach to archival work was iterative. Identifying key scientists and texts across the natural and social sciences unfolded alongside twenty-three interviews with ecologists. I determined which scientists and texts to focus on by triangulating between interviews and close readings of works from the early 1900s to the present. I considered the relevance of the texts in historical context and in relation to contemporary scientific practices. The materials I focus on, particularly in chapters 1 and 2, took shape through this process. With this epistemological orientation, I aim for what Amartya Sen calls positional objectivity, where the objectivity of knowledge is necessarily dependent on the position of the observer.7

Finally, a word on the presentation of the findings. I write in a peripatetic ethnographic style to emphasize my process-oriented approach to research. This style of exposition integrates data, collected through multiple research methods, into an intersubjective narrative through which the argument unfolds. This parallels what Michael Burawoy calls the “extended case method.”8 The extended case method examines the in-depth workings of social processes through a single location or site. Like the extended case method, I draw out relational processes and outcomes over time. In contrast with the extended case method, I query multiple sites and triangulate across reflexive methods to identify key processes and relations. In writing, I emphasize the interactive component of field research, as well as the fact that I am representing people’s ways of knowing, acting, and experiencing, which I learned about through extensive social interactions. My approach emphasizes commonalities shared across research sites, while holding in tension the indeterminate nature of processes and outcomes.

In sum, this work is the product of multiple methods grounded in interpersonal engagements. I encountered far more people and heard far more stories than I could include in these pages. I aim to present the findings in a way that situates myself as a researcher and reflects the affective character of social interactions during fieldwork.