Fieldwork in the Postcommunity

Abstract

This article considers the place of fieldwork in the anthropology of the United States on several levels. First, it traces how I decided to use my high school graduating class in Newark, New Jersey as the ethnographic population for an ethnohistorical research project. The article considers the time/space trajectory of the group—that is, the fact that the group had been part of an actual on‐the‐ground community in the past, and is spread all over the United States in the present. This mobile formation seemed more true to the shape of the contemporary world, as represented in earlier discussions of modernity and more recent discussions ofpostmodernity. The article goes on to show how this radically delocalized fieldwork produced what seemed to be a perverse effect—a strong sense of the endurance of "community" among the members of the group, albeit in fascinatingly altered forms.

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