American Anthropological Association

Today we feature an extended version of a December Anthropology News section column, submitted to the Society for East Asian Anthropology by Gene Cooper, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. Are you interested in contributing a future Section News column? See the online contact list to get in touch with your AAA section’s editor. Do you have questions or comments about today’s online feature? Contact Gene Cooper at eugeneco [at] usc.edu.

Ethnography as Evidence and the Endurance of the Ethnographic Relationship

By Gene Cooper (USC)

As one who has sometimes felt cynical about whether any “good” has ever come out my ethnographic work, I thought the following story might be of interest to similarly afflicted colleagues. It shows how mundane ethnographic data can sometimes actually come to be “useful” to our informants in unforeseen ways, and how enduring relationships forged during fieldwork may circle around to reengage over the long term with happy consequences.

Back in 1972–73, as a wet behind the ears PhD candidate, I conducted my dissertation fieldwork from an apprentice’s workbench in a carved wood furniture factory in Hong Kong (HK), where I tried to learn some carving skills while immersing myself in the culture of craft production. [read more link] The factory owner, Mr Ng, was willing to put up with me in part because having me around, I could tutor his eldest son, Wah-leung, in English, which I did with some regularity during the course of my fieldwork. And when Wah-leung set about preparing admissions applications to several Canadian universities, I was also able to lend a hand. This proved to be the gateway to his successful career as a computer programmer-analyst, now living in Australia. As an apprentice in the factory, I took my lunch in the Ng’s home, together with the family, and became something of a fictive elder sibling to Wah-leung, his two brothers and sister.

Our acquaintance was renewed during the three years I spent as lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in the late 1970s. And during the late 1980s, as mainland China continued to open up to foreign researchers, I conducted several stints of fieldwork in the family’s native county in Zhejiang province, connecting with many of their relatives and associates. After one such field study in the spring of 1989, I found myself accommodated on the family’s living room sofa in Kowloon City sharing in the horror, as images flashed across HKTV of the tanks rolling in to crush the student demonstrations in Tiananmen on June 4.

So in the fall of 2007, when I received an email from the eldest son, Wah-leung, requesting that I rendezvous with him in HK to testify in a lawsuit resulting from the HK government’s reclamation of the land on which their factory had been situated, I was happy to help. The case turned on the fact that when, in March 2000, the HK government reclaimed the land on which their factory was sited, the Ngs were entitled to compensation by virtue of a law of “adverse possession.” According to the law, whether or not an occupant has clear title to the land in question, if he can show that he has been in continuous exclusive occupancy for 20 years, then he is entitled to compensation should the government reclaim the property.

Back in 1960, when Mr Ng opened his factory on the site, known as Ho Family Garden, across from the Hau Wong Temple on Junction Road in Kowloon City, there was apparently some ambiguity as to whether the person who “sold” him the property was actually its real owner, or merely a tenant. When the larger property of Ho Family Garden was reclaimed in 2000, it was the descendants of the original Ho family who collected the entire amount of government compensation awarded. But Mr Ng had been operating his business out of House #53 since 1960, clearly more than the necessary 20 years to qualify for compensation, whether his title to the premises was valid or not. Thus, the Ngs were suing the Hos for what amounted to a very small portion of the government’s total compensation already paid out to the Hos, which the Ngs argued was rightfully theirs.

As I had known the family since 1972, and had visited the factory premises again for old time’s sake during my stay with the family in 1989, I could personally attest to their continuous occupation of the premises for 17 of the necessary 20 years as the result of direct observation, and for several more years by virtue of oral accounts of the past recorded during fieldwork that I had no cause to doubt. I also had photos of the premises and some of the surrounding squatter settlement that Ho Family Garden had become, as well as the published ethnography itself, in which the family’s enterprise and its history were described. All this material corroborated the testimony of the family’s second eldest son, Kwok-wah, who was the actual plaintiff in the case as administrator of his father’s estate.

During the fall of 2007, at the request of the family solicitors, I organized all of the above material into a written deposition of my proposed testimony. I also had to explain the anthropological practice of using pseudonyms for informants, to account for the fact that although the Ng family was the plaintiff in the case and their furniture company was known as Mau Sing Co, in my monograph I used the pseudonym Li for the family, and gave the company the fictitious name, Heng Lung Co. So, in January 2008, I flew to Hong Kong to testify on the family’s behalf at a hearing before the High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Upon arrival, I was met with a great rush of nostalgia and affection by Kwok-wah and Wah-leung, but the denouement proved hugely anti-climactic. During my day in court, it came to light that the other side had established its title to the property in a legal proceeding during the mid 1970s with the very “tenant” from whom Mr Ng had “purchased” his factory premises back in 1960. Thus the Ng’s “adverse possession” for the 15 years or so prior to 1975 would not be counted, as they were deemed to have been adverse with respect to the “tenant.” This meant that although the judge was prepared to accept my deposition without my having to rehash it on the stand and be cross examined, three of the 17 years of continuous occupation I was prepared to testify to (the years between 1972 and 1975) would be disallowed. And since Mr Ng had passed away in 1991, there were insufficient years of his personal adverse possession between 1975 and 1991 for him to qualify for compensation. For this reason, it was only appropriate that Mrs Ng, although incapacitated and in a nursing home, be the plaintiff in the case, rather than second son, Kwok-wah. It was her continued adverse possession of the premises after her husband’s death that would qualify the Ng’s for compensation.

The judge gave our solicitors a good scolding for having erred in drawing up the case, and sent them back to redraw it, instructing that our side pay the legal expenses of the other side up to that point, as penalty for wasting their time. This was not a particularly good sign for our side, but with the case now needing to be redrawn, the proceeding was adjourned, and that was how I left it, returning to Los Angeles to resume my teaching responsibilities at USC in the spring semester 2008, with the case still very much up in the air.

Somewhat more than a year later, in May 2009, the case was finally concluded, unequivocally recognizing the legitimacy of the Ng family’s claim. Our solicitors carried the day by supplying evidence that Mrs Ng had leased the premises out to a succession of entrepreneurs after her husband’s death in 1991, and thus qualified for compensation. The other side was ordered to pay a designated portion of the compensation they had already received from the HK government to the Ngs, and the court also reversed its previous order, now requiring the other side to pay our side’s legal expenses. Justice was done, ethnography played a role as evidence, and a happy outcome resulted from the enduring personal relationships forged during fieldwork.

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