From Jaffa to New York: The Scope of Urban Anthropology

Abstract

Re-examining the ethnographic studies that he has conducted during the last four decades in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and New York City, Shokeid explores the subjects, methodology and conceptual relevance manifested in that ‘lifelong project’. Although engaging in different social issues, fieldwork settings and research strategies, he views these projects as representatives of the various facets of contemporary urban anthropology. He identifies the connecting thread linking these fieldworks in the complex of existential conditions and modes of response revealed by social groups and individuals enthralled in the circumstances unique to their urban environment. For Shokeid, the ethnographic method conducted in the urban context by the ‘lone anthropologist’ continues to represent the methodology and research benefits associated with the discipline’s founding tradition of fieldwork that engages the ‘whole community’, and could contribute to the discourse about the professional ‘identity’ of urban anthropologists among the wider areas of anthropology and sociology.