Postmodernism, Urban Ethnography, and the New Social Space of Ethnic Identity

122This chapter is a condensed version of an article originally published in the journal Theory and Society in 1992. It moves sharply beyond political-economic logic to refocus on the theory of postmodernity and the cultural, social, and political practices of urban inhabitants, particularly the way in which their hopes, dreams, and everyday practices contributed to the social construction of new ethnic identities and new modes of urban citizenship. Methodologically and epistemologically, I show how postmodern thinking has come to infuse theorizing on the social construction of key concepts in urban social theory, such as “the urban,” “grassroots democracy,” and especially new representations of “ethnic identity.”