Urban ethnography and the margins at the centre

Since its designation as China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen has become an important symbol of post-Mao China. This has involved the institutionalisation of the market as the preponderant mode of social organisation, accompanied by the faith that it would produce unprecedented wealth for all. Against this background Shenzhen has become a city where Chinese dreams are thought to be realised and, hence, a major destination for rural migrants in search of a ‘better’ life—the ‘good life’, so to speak. My ethnographic project in Shenzhen seeks to examine different views of what such a way of life might consist of. This has raised questions of how such an ethnographic investigation should be actualised, how the field defined, where the city sits vis-à-vis its margins, and what constitutes Shenzhen and what is out of bounds. At stake in the ethnographic undertaking is the fundamental question about ‘truth claims’ and how we come to them. Ethnography as ‘a return to the things themselves’ has the potential to offer an account of things ‘as they are’. Drawing from 30 months of research in Shenzhen, this paper details my ethnographic experience and reveals how knowing is foremost a corporeal affair. One has to be in situ to experience and know ‘the city’ and ‘its margins’.