Keeping Ethnography Alive in an Urbanizing World

Abstract

How do we preserve wide-ranging ethnography, and not retreat to interviews alone, in the dense and increasingly enormous cities of our urbanizing world? Interview-based fieldwork presents several dangers, as well-delineated by Barth. On the other hand, rising demands for historical, political-economic, and theoretical contextualization threaten to overwhelm the distinctive contribution of systematic ethnography. As one solution, several settings for productive urban fieldwork that were utilized in a team study of a multiethnic New York City neighborhood are discussed—commercial locations, houses of worship, secular rituals, and local political fields and arenas. In conclusion, ways are identified in which research in such settings is generative of new fieldwork, more precise contextualization, and more powerful theory.

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