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"You Just Belong to Us": Tales of Identity and Difference With Populations to Which the Ethnographer Belongs

Hunter College

This article, based on the first ethnographic study on the Argentine minority in New York City, addresses some of the conflicting issues emerging from ethnographers’ involvement with research populations to which they belong, including the implications of being perceived as members of the same "flock." The article explores participants’ self-representations in terms of class and racial and/or ethnic categories vis-à-vis others including the ethnographer, also from Argentine origin. The Whiteness strategy and the cultural divide were two important discursive tools that allowed lighter-skinned study participants to place themselves closer to the White majority, while challenging their perceived socioeconomic dislocation in mainstream America. The ethnographer’s self-representation in the field was also characterized by tensions and adjustments, which relied on the exchange of social resources (social capital) as the unexpected backdrop for trust and reciprocity to be continuously negotiated.

Key Words: immigrants in the United States • Latinos • Argentina • auto-ethnography • race and ethnicity • class • downward mobility

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Vol. 5, No. 3, 383-401 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1532708605275710


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