Entering the UNDP

Abstract

This chapter describes my entry into this old-fashioned cosmopolitan space and why I choose the UNDP China 5office as the site of my ethnographic enquiry. Its organisational design and the relatively long record of operating in China provides a crucial case for observing the everyday dynamics of norm diffusion of international institutions in the background of emerging powers. This chapter further includes a methodological discussion on the use of political ethnography, also called “perestroika movement” in political sciences, and responses to the questions of generalisation and objectivity.