Commentary on 'The Making of an Ethnoburb' (Liu et al., 2022) and 'Boundless China, Backward Asians' (Liu, 2022)

This commentary reflects on articles by Liu et al., (2022) on the formation of an ethnoburb of Albany, New Zealand and by Liu (2022) on how queer psychology has misrepresented Sinophone queers. Drawing upon a sociological disciplinary standpoint, it identifies a theme of anti-essentialism that these works share, and suggests methods that would be helpful to use in further research that builds upon these articles. Specifically, as the work by Liu et al., (2022) could be the basis for future, deeper examinations of how ethnoburb residents interpret and experience their communities, exemplars are recommended of related qualitative projects using thoughtful sampling designs, attending to reflexivity, and creatively incorporating an immediate experience of space. Turning to Liu (2022), the recommendations flow from first considering how psychology and sociology each take up the term culture. Finding Liu's view of not only culture but also individual agency to sound quite sociological, methods of furthering her project that borrow from the sociological bookshelf are recommended; in particular, these are narrative analysis methods and participatory action research.