REPRESENTING CLASS - WHO DECIDES

If we are to rethink the idea of ''the field,'' we should start by ret hinking the nature Of field relations. I offer as case in point my stu dy of class, race, and language among Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Class in the United States is officially represented by the ''hard data'' of income and education. The people I worked with, like other Americans, see class as a system of oppositions-poor versus rich versus a middle ground in which they locate themselves. They shape these perceptions in speech acts that rarely surface in a social science literature whic h typifies Puerto Ricans as ''culture of poverty'' or ''underclass.'' In this essay I explore their use of the fieldwork process to construc t alternate representations of themselves, as they address what it mea ns to be ''poor'' or ''middle class.''