While Big Data is fairly commonly known, "Big Fieldwork" remains unheard of to most people.
As the proponent of the Big Fieldwork research concept, I am also its practitioner for decades. For that reason, ANBOUND's researches encompass a wide range of topics from the observations and analyses of the Midwestern United States, European reforms in the last century, and Central Asia studies of this century. The concept of fieldwork research was certainly not created today. An old Chinese proverb says, if rendered literally, "(one should) read ten thousand books, and travel ten thousand miles". This means that conducting both fieldwork or on-site research and textual research are equally important.
Within public policy research in China, the most unique aspect is its practical research method, particularly in the context of Chinese culture. In the writing of Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi, dated to approximately 3rd century B.C.E., it is mentioned that "sages deliberate yet do not argue about the records of the kings of past ages, as they are recorded in the canons of Spring and Autumn". The phrase used for "recorded in the canons" in the original Chinese text here is "jingshi", which also carries the connotations of "to administer", in the sense of "practical activities to construct and shape the rules and regulations of politics, society, morals and ethics". The phrase "jingshi" was later expanded to the expression of "jingshi zhiyong", which means the pragmatic, practical use of knowledge. Hence, we see practicality is of central importance in traditional Chinese Confucianism. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Confucian scholars such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Wang Fuzhi mentioned the importance of national economy and people's livelihood and other social realities, which laid a solid foundation for achieving harmonious family, ruling the nation efficiently, and ultimately bringing peace to all.
In modern Chinese history, Mao Zedong also acted as an advocator of investigation and research as a scientific method, something that he practiced for lifetime that laid the foundation for him and other Communist leaders in their leadership in China. About 90 years ago, Mao conducted an in-depth and systematic social survey in Xunwu County of the Jiangxi Province, and produced the Xunwu County Report in 1930. "No investigation, no right to speak" had become a maxim of Mao after the period when he conducted practical researches in Xunwu County. In Mao's essay "Oppose Book Worship", he emphasized that "we must at all times study social conditions and make practical investigations" as well.
Mao spoke at the August 7 Conference, stating that his Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, his most influential essay, had an impact in Hunan, but has not on the central region. It was the same essay that attracted the attention of the Comintern. On May 27 and June 12, 1927, translations of the essay were published in the Russian and English editions of the Comintern's official magazine. This was Mao's first essay to be introduced internationally. It was also the first essay in the magazine that reflects the Chinese people's views on major issues of the Chinese revolution. At that time, the peasant problem was not only present in China, it was also an unresolved issue in the international communist movement. The editor's note of the English version of the Comintern magazine thought the essay to be the clearest among the English publications on rural conditions in China at that time, while the Marxist philosopher Nikolai Bukharin considered it to be concise and intriguing.
It is worth noting that the development of these pragmatic traditional Chinese scholarly methods related to social environment and public policies is a dynamic process. Today's research method has shifted from focusing on single individuals to fieldwork that emphasizes normativity, then to one that gives attention to systematicity and greater space. Big Fieldwork is then the expansion of the total-system and the total-space of field research.
Fieldwork is most maturely applied in anthropology. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski for instance, if one does not consider his personality flaws and merely looking at his academic methodology, remains the pioneer in anthropological research based on fieldworks. It is after him that fieldwork has become the most prominent feature of anthropology. In modern anthropology, accusing a scholar of not conducting sufficient fieldwork is tantamount to accusing him or her as an unqualified scholar, or the scholar's academic works are not exactly professional.
In terms of fieldwork research in anthropology, academic methods have become more scientific and refined. The abstraction and refinement of local perspectives and practices, the setting of identity premises, and open or non-open frameworks have all been injected into fieldwork research, making it to be possess more and more scientific value and implication.
If the fieldwork of anthropology is the reflection one's own culture through researching on different cultures, then its spatial aspect is human. Later the field research in sociology has been further developed, and today it can be considered that various social spatial aspects such as ethnicity, culture, history, internet, social class, lifestyle, and industrial categories are all the expanded world of the Big Fieldwork, and these are all fields of scientific research. The major goal of scientific research has gone from pursuing the grand and macroscopic "universal truth" to paying attention to reality, focusing on the foundation and changes of the real society. This is a significant change from the macro to the micro.
Interestingly, this significant change in academic methodology from macro to micro must rely on observation and scientific tools. Observation is the most basic and the most commonly used means for collecting first-hand materials, which is the basis of all comparison and analysis. It is the simplest method, but at the same time it is also highly complicated. Without the basic training of observation, even if fieldwork research could still be carried out, it would be extremely daunting. Therefore, observation is the most fundamental method of other academic methodologies. To this day, the changes in the method of observation are only in terms of "method and methodology". If the observation method in the past relied almost entirely on the individual academic qualifications and qualities of the scholars, then the method today also depends on the ability to use various scientific tools and means, such as statistics.
What is quite surprising is that the economics, as a Victorian academic field which emphasized on the classics and the establishment of classics in the past, has now undergone some subtle changes. In the past, in the discourse about economics researches and analyses, it would require both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Later, when I introduced the "natural experiment" method, almost no one could understand it. This situation is reflected in today's policy departments, and the situation is equally serious. For those who that have been misled by the education system for a long time, they have the misconception that quantitative research must be "a little bit more advanced" than qualitative research, and that the economics is all about quantitative and qualitative researches.
The question is, is this really the case? Of course not. The trend of economic methodology too, has returned to its roots, which is re-focusing on the practice of observation. This year's Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to the economist David Card and others for engaging in "natural experiments".
Natural experiment is a kind of empirical research in which the object of research object is in an environment not controlled by the researcher but by other factors, hence the society often becomes a huge testing ground for such a research. As long as the problem is properly aimed at, and the design for the research is effective, then natural experimental method can achieve very credible results. It is precisely because of this that natural experiments are not controlled experiments but observational studies.
Paul Krugman, who also won the Nobel Prize in Economics, commented and explained this year's Nobel Prize in Economics in the New York Times, that economists generally cannot perform controlled experiments as all they can do is to observe. The issue that lies within it is that, attempt in drawing conclusions from economic observations would face numerous complexities in any given time and place. For example, after Bill Clinton raised high-income taxes and reduced budget deficits, the economy boomed, but did these fiscal policies bring prosperity, or was it the sheer luck for Clinton to meet the technological boom?
As a result, some economists realized that there is another method, that is, the use of "natural experiment". The most well-known example of it is the study on the impact of minimum wages conducted by David Card and Alan Krueger. Most economists thought that raising the minimum wage would reduce employment. Then in 1992, New Jersey raised the minimum wage, but neighboring Pennsylvania did not. Card and Krueger realized that they could assess the impact of this policy change by comparing employment growth in the two states after wage increases, mainly using Pennsylvania as a control for the New Jersey experiment. It is because of this research that the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Card this year, though Krueger unfortunately could not receive the prize because of his untimely death.
Concerning the method of natural experiment, many economists believe that economic research is undergoing an important change in methodology in recent years, from traditional statistical inference to causality analysis, to the extent that the academia refers to this as "credibility revolution".
Compared with the positive evolution of the academic methods in other parts of the world, China's academia shows great deficiencies in both depth and breadth. While there are more and more Chinese traveling and living around the globe, not many of them are economists and public policy scholars. Many of these scholars are still focusing on Western classics, either to translate them or being their students. They are all too accustomed to look up at everything in the West.
Such situation should be changed now. "Big Fieldwork" should be popularized and promoted in China, so as to develop into the "Big Fieldwork School" in the country, forming an academic path with Chinese characteristics that enriches diverse disciplines and encourages the development of China's public policy and social disciplines. Originally, China had such a traditional academic background, and this should be carried forward and further innovated. The world should know that addition to "Big Data", there is also "Big Fieldwork". As this is closely related to public policy and social development, it is worth our efforts to pay close attention to it and utilize it well.
Tracking:
To understand about "fieldwork" or "Big Fieldwork", it will be quite important to read more, especially works produced outside of the academia. In this regard, the deeds of a particular person will prove to be of interest. His name is Roderick James Nugent Stewart OBE FRSGS FRSL (born 3 January 1973), and he prefers to be called Rory Stewart. He is a field researcher, and almost without a doubt, someone with the background in intelligence, and he had even held ministerial positions in the UK. Afterwards, he quit his job and went on a 1,000-mile hike, crossing four countries including Afghanistan. After he came back, he wrote the book The Place in Between.
I have found out that genuine British aristocrats either like to work in the army or enter the intelligence service; Winston Churchill and T. E. Lawrence are examples of this. In other words, those who only know how to talk but without practical knowledge will be thought of as being further away from aristocracy and nobility. Rory Stewart is now at Yale University in the United States as a researcher. This position is specifically provided by American universities to those who are accepted and recognized in the academia. He is mainly dedicated to providing advisory opinions to the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
He also served as minister in the cabinet of Theresa May. Compared with others from conventional academia, he obviously has a special advantage.
