REPRESENTING CLASS: WHO DECIDES?

If we are to rethink the idea of "the field," we should start by rethinking the nature of field relations. I offer as case in point my study of class, race, and language among Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Class in the United States is officially represented by the "hard data" of income and education. The people I worked with, like other Americans. see class as a system of oppositions--poor versus rich versus a middle ground in which they locate themselves. They shape these perceptions in speech acts that rarely surface in a social science literature which typifies Puerto Ricans as "culture of poverty" or "underclass." In this essay I explore their use of the fieldwork process to construct alternate representations of themselves, as they address what it means to be "poor" or "middle class." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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