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City Life

West African Communities in New York

West Chester University

JASMIN TAHMASEB McCONATHA

West Chester University

This article focuses on the relevance of the notion of community to contemporary urban studies. The results of a six-year ethnographic study of West African traders in New York City suggest that the notion of community—however problematic—is one worth retaining. Given a conception of community that is refined to confront the complexities of postmodernity, the authors suggest, the social scientist is able to demonstrate how macro-forces (globalization, immigration, informal economies, and state regulation) affect the lives of individuals living in the fragmented transnational spaces that increasingly make up contemporary social worlds. This premise is reinforced through the presentation of ethnographic data that demonstrate how contemporary dispersed communities of West Africans in New York provide economic, social, and cultural resources that enable many, though not all, West African traders to cope with the cultural alienation of "city life."

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