It's hard to imagine at first the similarities between a group of anti-capitalists in provincial New Zealand and the largely privileged, professional expat community in Shanghai. But anthropologist David Foote is quick to point out how these different groups are in fact alike.

The Kiwi doctoral student, who is living in Shanghai for a year to study its expats, says his current research topic is not a great leap from his masters' thesis on anti-capitalist activists Down Under.

"If I had to boil the two ideas down to commonality, I would say that they are both (examples of) urban ethnography, and they both deal with marginal identities," Foote says. "Expats in China are a marginal identity. We're used to being in the mainstream and we're suddenly thrust into a marginal position in society. A privileged marginal position, but it's marginal nonetheless."

Foote's aim over the next year is to put expats under the microscope, and everything from the furniture bought by so-called trailing wives to many Western men's taste for Chinese women is fodder for his research.

But before we get to the fun stuff, it's back to the schoolroom briefly. Readers already confused by the word "ethnography" might appreciate a quick introduction to anthropology: It's the study of human culture, often carried out by researchers living in the communities they study.

Ethnography is the book or journal article resulting from an anthropologist's research, an analysis of a community's unwritten cultural laws. In a nutshell, anthropology asks: Why do these people do what they do? And why do they do it differently from those people over there?

Living among the "natives" of a community is what makes ethnographies stand out from your bog-standard academic research. Anyone who's ever lied on a survey knows what we say about ourselves can err toward wishful thinking. Anthropologists don't just ask us what we do, they observe us too, and see if the two match up.

Foote, who arrived in August, will spend the first six months of his research period simply living the life of an expat in Shanghai, informally observing expats, making friends, catching up on the gossip and sussing out how the community ticks. Then he will conduct a series of formal interviews with expats to answer his key questions about community and identity.

"I'm looking at how expats construct community, and why community is more important here than it would be at home," he says. "I'm also looking at the construction of a new identity in China - how being in China influences your construction of identity, and the role of community in that."

But back to taitai's interior decorations. Any expat tends to pick and choose the parts of Chinese culture that suit them, but this is especially the case with so-called trailing spouses, who might have been reluctant to move to China, and are less than comfortable living in the city.

So a taitai (housewife) might buy a Chinese-style porcelain bowl or a piece of dark-wood antique furniture, as a controlled way of letting China into her home and identity. Back home, we're more receptive to new ideas and experiences because we don't feel they will threaten our identities, Foote says.

"Whereas in this situation, the boundaries around our identity close down because they're constantly being contested. We're constantly having to face things that are outside of our comfort zone," Foote says. "And we still make choices about what we accept, but those are much more conscious choices, like 'okay, I like this piece of Chinese culture, so I'll let it through'."

The ironic part is that the taitai's bowl might not be authentically Chinese at all, but rather made in Singapore to a Japanese design, Foote says. The antique furniture, while genuine, is just as unrepresentative of current Chinese culture - it's rejected by modern Chinese people in favor of housewares from IKEA. "They love, they're absolutely entranced with IKEA."