Abstracts
Ethnographer as Muckraker: Investigatory Anthropology in NYC
Melissa Checker,City University of New York, Queens College
American anthropologists have a long history of reaching out to audiences beyond the academy by publishing their research results in journalistic venues. Over the past year, I have taken this tradition in a slightly different direction, using journalism, itself as an ethnographic strategy for my research on environmental gentrification in New York City. Assuming this hybrid role has in many ways facilitated my ethnographic research. But, it has also brought unanticipated opportunities to investigate and publicize certain environmental offenses for the first time. Needless to say, this research approach raises a host of questions about ethnographic methodologies, the role of the ethnographer, and the implications of a contemporary public anthropology.
Ethnography on the Darkside: Illuminating the Nightshift
Russell Sharman, Brooklyn College, CUNY
NIGHTSHIFT NYC is an ethnography of nightshift workers throughout New York City. But it is also a challenge to dayshift New Yorkers to confront the nightly realities of laborers in the incessant service economy. Using this project as a backdrop, this talk will highlight the power inherent in ethnographic method and writing to encourage public engagement with contemporary social, political and economic issues.
The Business of Social Relations: Aging and Social Resilience among West African Immigrants in New York City
Paul Stoller, West Chester
After more than 15 years of fieldwork among West African immigrants in New York, I have observed many changes in the community. The results of this most recent research suggests that West African immigrants, many of whom are now middle-aged, face a set of seemingly intractable social problems—low incomes, sub-standard living conditions, health concerns, high costs of living, and an ever-increasing set of transnational family obligations--with pragmatic resolve. Indeed, the West African immigrants I know in New York City are socially resilient. In this paper, I argue that this social resilience, which devolves from the robustness of their social networks, provides them the social, economic, and psychological wherewithal to confront the considerable difficulties of living as immigrants in New York City.