City life - West African communitites in New York

This article focuses on the relevance of the notion of community to contemp orary tit-ban studies. The results of a six-year ethnographic study of West African traders in New York City suggest that the notion of communi. ty-ho wever problematic-is one worth retaining. Given a concepti. on of community , that is refined to confront the complexities of postmodernity, the author s suggest, the social scientist is able to demonstrate how macro-forces (gl obalization, immigration, informal economies, and state regulation) affect the lives of individuals living in the fragmented transnational spaces that increasingly make tip contemporary social worlds. This premise is reinforc ed through the presentation of ethnographic data that demonstrate how conte mporary dispersed communities of West Africans in New York provide economic , social, and cultural resources that enable many, though not all, West Afr ican traders to cope with the cultural alienation of "city life."