the early twenties to late sixties. A conscientious effort was made to include intergenerational diversity in the research.
As will become evident in the presentation of the ethnographic data, the CWC’s leadership often acted as intermediaries or agents—cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic—for people of African descent (immigrant and United States-born) of lesser financial means, education, international exposure, or experience negotiating American institutions. For example, several of the CWC African immigrant leaders who shared their migration stories and opinions about African identity formation acted as volunteer interpreters and providers of various social services to people from their community. They helped people with fewer resources and less knowledge of American society navigate the various bureaucracies they needed to understand for survival: for example, by helping with a job interview, working with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to arrange for emigration of relatives; accompanying them on doctors appointments; or working as a liaison with attorneys, social workers, schools, and so forth. Indeed, in many instances African immigrants saw this kind of support as their personal responsibility. This same role of cultural or bureaucratic intermediary was also prevalent among African American CWC leaders with both African immigrants and lower-income African Americans.
Most CWC leaders of African descent, at the staff, board, and special-project levels, were women. While I cannot offer any conclusive statements about why this was the case, it did seem that part of the CWC’s ideology was that identity and community building—defined by the CWC as working to strengthen connections to heritage—was “women’s work,” the actual term often used by the CWC leadership. Therefore, partly by design, across all constituent groups, the CWC leadership and most active participants tended to be mostly, though not exclusively, female. Several active African and European male participants took special note of the many occasions where they were among only a few men in CWC workshops, classes, or other activities.
The CWC was not part of any national initiative. Although the CWC was one of about six local nonprofits working to explicitly promote some version of pan-African identity, such groups were not part of a broader, organized movement. In the context of the Twin Cities’ vibrant and relatively large nonprofit sector, the GWC, as a new organization, had a relatively low profile. Groups like the CWC represent a highly creative, local response to global cultural dynamics in the Twin Cities.11
Given the unique work and particular sociodemographic background of the CWC’s African and African American network, it was not possible to make conclusive generalizations about an identity or community formation process that applied to the Twin Cities metropolitan region’s entire African diasporan population. Nonetheless, the CWC provided an important lens on the region’s broader identity dynamics. With the limitations and contours of the “sample population” in mind, the CWC’s diverse African and African American network, its strong support from the philanthropic and public sectors, and its location in one of the most ethnically diverse and immigrant-populated neighborhoods in the region made the CWC an ideal institutional and ethnic crossroads for case study. The CWC was a mediating institution—a space that brought together African people across various class, ethnic, and political divides to experiment with a particular approach to building pluralistic ethnocultural identities. So, this research does not so much study up as study across the diverse African ethnicities that comprise part of the CWC’s constituent base. It examines how the CWC, particularly its predominantly middle-class African and African American and female leadership, worked across the Twin Cities’ power and ethnic structure (and national boundaries) to promote a shared sense of African community.
It became evident from the earliest phases of the research that the term “African” was a key issue for debate among the CWC’s African and African American constituency. To emphasize participant self-definitions of identity, the term “African” is often used in quotes in this study to underscore the culturally contentious and contextual meanings of the term. In describing various events and conversations in the course of fieldwork, there is also a deliberate effort to use ethnic classificatory terms that the participants themselves use, with explanation where necessary. So, for example, the reader will find, in some instances, the term “African born in America” used by many CWC participants to refer to what some people might describe as “African American” or “Black American.” Another term, “continental African,” is used by African Americans, who define themselves as “African” or “Africans born in America” to refer to a person of African heritage born in Africa but living outside Africa, in this case, in the United States.
The use of the self-defined ethnic terms gives a truer sense of the internal dynamics of identity formation than forcing CWC participant labels into those that I might personally prefer or that are more common in academic discourse. Indeed, the terms themselves are part of what is being posited and debated as various CWC participants create a shared sense of “African culture” among people of diverse origins and backgrounds. By the end of Part II, the tenor of CWC identity formation terminology is established, and I generally discard the quotation marks around the term “African,” although I continue to use self-identified ethnic labels with explanation where necessary.
Ideally, an anthropological study of any transnational cultural formation, including a diaspora, would involve “multi-site ethnography” (Marcus 1995)—in this study, ethnography in the various places in which the CWC’s work was somehow manifest. Unfortunately, such a geographically wide-ranging ethnography was not feasible in the context of this study. An alternative strategy that I used for this study was to track the perceptions, life histories, and social relations of key agents involved in the creation and maintenance of transnational networks as they live and work in a given translocal site. With increased global mobility and cultural interchange, networks—and not places—may provide an important part of the social glue that holds “community” and other collectivities together (Sullivan 1996). Thus, I saw the CWC as a key point of connection—a linking mechanism—in a larger and more complex transnational flow of meaning, images, and symbols connecting various people to places in the African diaspora. Although based in one place, the CWC represented and shed light on a cross section of the micro- and macro-level sociopolitical factors that impact African diasporan identity formation in the Twin Cities and in networks beyond them.12 This strategy, while providing for an intense study of the CWC’s African diasporan networks, does have its limitations as a transnational ethnography. The findings do not provide for definitive generalizations about African and African American relations in either the Twin Cities or the United States. Instead the study is a point of departure to contribute to anthropology’s efforts to define the contemporary theoretical and methodological grounds of intercontinental cultural production.
The field research for this study was carried out in an applied setting. Although relatively new and small, the CWC was an innovative, high-profile nonprofit funded by several large foundations as part of an effort to promote new approaches to addressing the increasing concentration of poverty in the Twin Cities urban neighborhoods and the disproportionately high levels of physical health problems, for example, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high infant mortality rates, in these areas.13 Because of its deliberate and planned efforts to promote a pan-African sense of identity and social relations among Twin Cities’ Africans and African Americans, the CWC was an ideal forum for studying translocal cultural processes. Since the research was in an applied setting and was not a foundation- or government-sponsored evaluation, the CWC was not required to participate in this study. Furthermore, the CWC’s staff and board of directors were committed to a “participatory research policy.” As explained to me, the CWC would only engage in research projects where the benefits to its work were clear, CWC constituents were in some way included in research design, and the researcher “helped out” in setting up meetings or taking minutes and was able to apply what she or he learned to his or her own personal growth and health. The participatory and applied research setting provided unique access to CWC’s culture-building work. Participants’ reactions and my personal reactions to the sometimes unexpected implications of a participatory research strategy are included
