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nity" should be reserved for ethnic social interaction and organization. If this divorce were to be granted it would clear up much confusion in the writings on neighborhood and community. We would thus realize that the disagreement between Joy/Lieberson and Drieger/Church is due to their concern with neighborhood on the one hand and community on the other.
Application of such insights to Hong Kong's Fujianese helps us to evade the myopia that Fox (1977: 12) and others have recognized in all too many urban "community" studies. Viewing the city as a whole we are thus free to conceptualize the Fujianese community of Hong Kong as a somewhat dispersed entity - stretching from parts of North Point, to parts of other neighborhoods, and to the offices of the Fujian Commercial Association in Sheung Wan. Little Fujian as a local community is thus just one part of the larger Fujianese community of Hong Kong and cannot be understood without reference to it, just as village life cannot be fully grasped without a wider social perspective.
Similar insights into the Shanghaiese community yield quite a different reading of the Shanghaiese status quo. Their ethnic sub-neighborhood, Little Shanghai, is gone, with only pale reminders of its once thriving communality dotting North Point's urban landscape. Yet a Shanghaiese community definitely persists in Hong Kong as both formal organizations and informal sociocultural patterns help maintain a level of interactional intensity sufficient for a "sense of ethnic community." Of course the study of such a community presents far greater methodological and analytical difficulties than are usually encountered in most urban studies. Communities based in clearly recognized and spatially distinct ethnic (sub-) neighborhoods are far easier to deal with; it is no wonder urban anthropologists have preferred to map out such discrete and concentrated domains.
Such urban studies have been likewise drawn to communities with well-organized and formal social structures. These studies (Charsely 1974; Drieger and Church 1974; McBeath 1973; Neville 1975) have stressed the importance of formally organized institutions in giving that "sense of ethnic community" to otherwise anomic and isolated ethnics. Drieger and Church even go so far as to suggest (1974:36) that whenever an ethnic group's proportion of the population approaches 25% there is a corresponding tendency
"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)"
125
nity" should be reserved for ethnic social interaction and organiza- tion. If this divorce were to be granted it would clear up much confusion in the writings on neighborhood and community. We would thus realize that the disagreement between Joy/Lieberson and Drieger/Church is due to their concern with neighborhood on the one hand and community on the other.
Application of such insights to Hong Kong's Fujianese helps us to evade the myopia that Fox (1977: 12) and others have recognized in all too many urban "community" studies. Viewing the city as a whole we are thus free to conceptualize the Fujianese community of Hong Kong as a somewhat dispersed entity - stretching from parts of North Point, to parts of other neighborhoods, and to the offices of the Fujian Commercial Association in Sheung Wan. Little Fujian as a local community is thus just one part of the larger Fujianese community of Hong Kong and can not be under- stood without reference to it, just as village life can not be fully grasped without a wider social perspective.
Similar insights into the Shanghaiese community yield quite a different reading of the Shanghaiese status quo. Their ethnic sub- neighborhood, Little Shanghai, is gone, with only pale reminders of its once thriving communality dotting North Point's urban land- scape. Yet a Shanghaiese community definitely persists in Hong Kong as both formal organizations and informal sociocultural patterns help maintain a level of interactional intensity sufficient for a "sense of ethnic community." Of course the study of such a community presents far greater methodological and analytical diffi- culties than are usually encountered in most urban studies. Com- munities based in clearly recognized and spatially distinct ethnic (sub-) neighborhoods are far easier to deal with; it is no wonder urban anthropologists have preferred to map out such discrete and concentrated domains.
Such urban studies have been likewise drawn to communities with well-organized and formal social structures. These studies (Charsely 1974. Drieger and Church 1974; McBeath 1973; Neville 1975) have stressed the importance of formally organized institutions in giving that "sense of ethnic community" to otherwise anomic and isolated ethnics. Drieger and Church even go so far as to suggest (1974:36) that whenever an ethnic group's proportion of the population approaches 25% there is a corresponding tendency
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