Essay prompt: evaluate the appropriateness of three urban research methods discussed in class for your proposed dissertation topic.

Introduction: Methodological criteria of LGBTQ investigation

Contending with the histories, vulnerabilities, and subjectivities of the LGBTQ experience at times demands a divergence from what is perceived as an institutional given. In evaluating queer geography, we must also queer—as a verb—methodology. Additionally, conducting research in a country that still holds significant structural stigma toward the queer community requires a unique set of considerations. 

My dissertation aims to understand: 

• How Chengdu’s unofficial reputation as China’s most queer-friendly city supports the municipality’s globalized urban aspirations via tourism

• And how the increased visibility from tourism concentrated on queer urban spaces might make those places susceptible to violence—symbolic or otherwise.

To support my analysis, I will evaluate violence on queer urban spaces in Chengdu by referencing the framework of critical geography (Devine and Ojeda, 2017; Oswin, 2008) that “draws on critical theories of race, gender, and post-colonialism, as well as geographical concepts like space, place, territory and uneven development” (Devine and Ojeda, 2017: 606). Therefore, methodological decisions must be conducive to uncovering the intersectional nature of identity and space. I propose the following quality criteria for my methodological approaches:

1. Queer-compatible: The main focus of this research is on “the production and consumption of ‘gay space’ in cities” (Bell and Binnie, 2004: 1807) by tourists and locals alike. Methods have to uncover what is sometimes meant to remain hidden while respecting the safety and dignity of the community under research. 

2. Remote-ready: Since China closed its borders to most visitors in 2020, there are logistical challenges to conducting research as a non-resident foreigner. Methods must produce verifiable, reliable, and rich data, despite my inability to be on site.

3. Nuance-forward: This project favors approaches that are receptive to capturing nuance that is ever-present in queer conditions while still leaving “room for serendipity and new, unexpected discoveries” (Dubois and Gadde, 2002, cited in Björner, 2013: 210-211). 

One major caveat is that methods have the capacity to blur with each other. In our GY452 class, methods have been segmented from each other relatively neatly. In my research, I will be an agent of that blurring process. This essay makes a case for lifting elements of one particular approach to reify and ‘queer’ another. Namely, I will be evaluating how particular forms of archival research can reinforce the digital methods of (social) media review, and how particulars forms of ethnographic research can reinforce semi-structured interviews. 

Not archival but evidentiary: institutional power, what gets kept, what doesn’t get shared

In a traditional sense, archives are evidence of power and perceived importance: “archives are established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society” (Schwartz and Cook, 2002: 1). What institutions take the time and resources to retain is telling; it communicates values. Given that my research seeks to understand the nature of Chengdu’s queer community and its relationship to tourism, archival research in a conventional sense is not likely to be appropriate. 

Communist China’s relationship with its queer population seems to hover between structural disavowal (Burkhi, 2017: 1286) and “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion” (Engebretsen, 2008). Despite homosexuality being decriminalized in 1997 and depathologized in 2001, the attitudes of officials and society at large have not positively shifted such that archives are likely to have prioritized preserving evidence of queer life. China also has a restrictive relationship with record sharing in general. As Minami (2017) states: “China seems determined to rewrite the past on its terms, and it all starts in the archives.” This quote is in reference to restricted access to the Foreign Ministry Archives, but there have been other instances where institutions restrict academic access, especially around topics that might be deemed controversial, like the Nanjing archives (Sharma, 2014). Lastly, queer tourism in Chengdu is a relatively recent phenomenon, coinciding with the rise of social media: “‘Chengdu’s reputation as a gay capital only came about in the digital age’” (Qian, 2016b). The topic does not have the longevity typically associated with content that makes it to the archives—at least not yet. 

Of course, this critical review of archival method’s applicability takes a very straight-track approach, asking very specific things of an archival source when the key to good archival research is “approach[ing] that question indirectly in your reading of archival records” (Ward, 2013: 30). Although relatively remote-research-friendly, traditional archival research does not satisfy the other quality criteria. However, some of the considerations central to the archival method are relevant to my project. Namely: 

• The traits of “interpreting and deriving meaning from other people’s representations of various sets of circumstances” (Scott, 1990: esp. 28–35, cited in Ward, 2013: 30)

• The need to critically evaluate the undisclosed ideologies embedded in a ‘primary’ text when those texts were created for non-research purposes

• The value of aggregating evidence that exists outside of the researcher’s generation or imagination 

These offer a launching pad for considering new ways to use archival methods to ‘queer’ digital methods.  

Investigative digital methods: (social) media review and the records we share with others

Digital media reviews and archival approaches overlap. In fact, current Social Media Archiving (SMA) practices are approaching web content as archivable. This involves some of the same problematics as archiving in general—namely, who decides what is worth keeping and who is managing the resources for the archive’s upkeep (see Vlassenroot et al., 2021). But by and large, web content, and social media content specifically, is perceived as a step towards democratizing and improving the accessibility of a cultural legacy. “Technology has brought to much of the world a true ‘digital commons,’ creating a virtual public square that scoffs at geographical boundaries and seems to resist the ravages of time” (Carnegie Reporter, 2019). 

The involvement of social media in the everyday lives of people across the world makes this doubly relevant: the digital mediates the daily. China’s online queer community feeds/manifests the physical since it is often easier to be queer first online, then in person: “The growth of online communities alongside physical venues has helped LGBT people in Chengdu to build connections, representation, and visibility” (Qian, 2016b). Using a (social) media review will dig into this relationship of how the digital informs/transforms the urban, specifically in the realm of tourism.

In China, social networks like Bilibili have a reputation for being a relatively safe space for queer content creators (Song, 2022), even though recently, there has been harsher crackdowns on LGBTQ content (Zhou, 2021). My research will take a geographic look at and evaluate content surrounding queer Chengdu on popular Chinese platforms such as Bilibili, Weibo, and Tiktok/Douyin. It will also conduct a broader media review for content on YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and articles. The aim is to discover how tourists to Chengdu gain access to, share, and reflect on Chengdu’s queer culture and spaces, and how locals in the Chengdu queer community respond to tourists in their spaces.

In this vein, this method meets the criteria of queer compatibility because it is a medium where queer individuals—tourists and locals alike—generate their own records with the specific intention of sharing those records. As a researcher, this enables a more robust co-production of knowledge: the stories that the queer community tells about itself get placed at the fore. It is appropriately nuance-forward because individuals respond to and report on very individualized circumstances within their lives, leaving lots of room for spontaneous discovery based on the threads of shares, comments, responses, reposts, etc. Lastly (perhaps obviously), reviewing digital content is remote-friendly, given its desk-based nature. Combining the (social) media review with the aforementioned archival principles will make it richer for critically evaluating these digital footprints in the larger, sometimes unstated but understood context of China’s policies and societal attitudes towards its LGTBQ community. 

Ethnographic adjacent: short-term study, deep reflexivity 

The imperative of reflexivity spans social research, but it is especially present when it comes to investigating queer contexts. As Misgav (2016: 275) puts it: “sensitivity to the power relations between researched and researchers and the demand for self-reflexivity by the latter had a particular influence on queer research and methodology.”

Even though length of time as a requirement for good ethnographic research has been debated (Geertz, 2008; Atkinson and Hammersley, 2007), a longitudinal approach is not possible for this project given the time restraints. I am also unable to immerse myself in situ and enact the participant observation that is so traditional to the method (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1998). Ethnography, however, is a highly dynamic methodology, with dozens of understandings of what it constitutes (Atkinson and Hammersley, 2007; Cerwonka and Malkki, 2014). This includes digital ethnography (which in itself means many things to many researchers (see Abidin and De Seta, 2020: 4–8), broadly defined as “a method used to study societies and cultures in the digital space – on the Internet, online, without a necessity to travel” (Góralska, 2020: 47). Within that broad definition, others like Underberg & Zorn (2013: 10, cited in Abidin and De Seta, 2020: 7) prioritize the engagement and active participation of the researcher in specific online spaces and communities. For my project, the goal is less to participate in one particular online community but rather to observe and coagulate sentiments, interactions, and reports from across a variety of platforms and actors in order to paint a holistic picture of the interaction between queer locals and queer tourists in Chengdu. 

However, principles on reflexivity informed by ethnography can support this project when it comes to engaging participants one-on-one. My positionality as a remote, Western (and Western-educated), lesbian, graduate researcher conditions my access and relationship with any participants. Unlike an in-person research effort, rapport will be established differently. I intend to commit to “a methodological dedication to digital ethnography and the wish to push its self-reflexive drive beyond the sanitized disclaimers of good conduct, and towards intimate (and at times provocative) confessions” (Abidin and De Seta, 2020: 12). This will help me achieve one of my research goals of uncovering the intersectional nature of identity and space when interacting with participants. 

Friendship as (queer) method: digital, semi-structured, snowball-sampling interviews

When communities are marginal, information is often passed along friendships with the intention of ensuring privacy and safety (Qian, 2016a: 777). When investigating how queer urban space gets discovered, encountered, used, and (potentially) abused in tourism, following a friend-to-friend logic makes sense in the context of how queer networks already function. Informed by ethnographic principles, my positionality as both an insider and an outsider on this topic (a queer person, but not a queer Chinese person) motivates me to enter my target participant pool through friendships of my own. This serves to build on the pre-existing rapport between friends: if participants trust their friends and their friends trust me, that may work towards mitigating the effect of talking to a relatively unknown researcher about potentially sensitive topics online, no matter how digitally native we are.

“It is time to realize that there is now a generation for whom using the Internet may be an obvious, sensible, unproblematic thing to do, and the old debates about whether the Internet is, in itself, good enough for qualitative research may have been overtaken by events” (Hine, 2013: 118). At risk of boxing both myself and my participants-to-be into a stereotype, we’re likely to be naturalized when it comes to engaging with people on the internet. Some researchers have found that sometimes participants are more forthcoming when engaged online as opposed to face-to-face (Deakin and Wakefield, 2013, cited in Gray et al., 2020: 1294). Semi-structured interviews for this project will primarily take place over messaging services (WhatsApp, WeChat, and sometimes email). In addition to the convenience this provides as a cushion for my Chinese language skills and circumventing the need to transcribe interviews, it also has the benefit of feeling like a naturalized form of conversation. As one respondent in Voida et al.’s (2004: 1347) paper on instant message as an interview method reported: “During our [instant messaging] conversation I was sharing information freely with you, as if I were talking to a colleague, but not as if talking to an interviewer.” This approach will support my intention to pursue ‘Friendship as Method.’

Tillmann-Healy’s (2003) proposal of ‘Friendship as Method’ was founded on research she did that focused on a gay community. It is a method grounded in feminist approach, “in promoting communitarian ethics, and in both reflexively attending and actively resisting hierarchical separation between researcher and participants” (732). Combined with snowball sampling’s feminist roots (Noy, 2008), running digital, semi-structured, snowball-sampled interviews meets my established criteria because it fits within the pre-existing logic of queer networks and information handoffs. It allows room for nuance because “through authentic engagement, the lines between researcher and researched blur, permitting each to explore the complex humanity of both self and other. Instead of ‘speaking for’ or even ‘giving voice,’ researchers get to know others in meaningful and sustained ways” (Tillmann-Healy, 2003: 733). Lastly, while this method’s remote friendliness is provided mainly by its digital nature (emails, instant messages, video chats), it is also enhanced by the fact that I am building on the pre-existing trust that exist in friendship networks I will be navigating. Participants and I will not necessarily have to meet in person in order for there to be an in-built structure for rapport.

Conclusion: Concretizing academic imagination

One of the core problematics with this project is that I have not visited my site of study before, nor will I be able to before it is concluded. The evidence I collect and generate as a researcher is done through a filter of academic imagination—meaning it is informed by literature and the accounts of informants but not anchored in my own on-the-ground experience. This does not delegitimize the value of the work, but it reinforces the importance of practicing active academic listening. Active listening is commonly understood as listening to understand, not to respond, but as an academic, it is my role to respond. The situational context of this project necessitates that I prioritize the voices of those who’ve ‘lived it,’ and work to legitimate the subjectives of their experience with my methods. This also serves to shuck some of the academic elitism that can sometimes be tied up in methodological practice, where only the researcher has the training/validity/authority to reinterpret the lives of others (Honan, 2014: esp. 1–3). The goal is not to reinterpret—queer communities have had plenty of geographic scholars (among others) reinterpreting, decontextualizing, and, some would argue, perverting their experiences (Knopp, 2007). Instead, by queering methodology, I endeavor to take steps toward working in the service of the community I study, understanding them on their own terms.

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