The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity

This text reassesses the concept of community within anthropological studies. The practice of fieldwork in anthropology has traditionally been undertaken with the assumption that places are fixed in time and space. This approach has now been extensively revised by contemporary anthropologists who are more likely to stress the mobility of modern society, which is characterized by migration, shifting identities and boundaries. The authors move on from this argument to ask - as local economies are now embedded within global systems of production, and yet migrants frequently face barriers to their own movements - how should we now conceive of the interaction between sociality and individuality? What are the political, theoretical and ethnographic implications of this interaction.