Or, if one really did want to define a couple really basic categories, you could do so based on a simple urban/suburban/rural scheme. Does a fieldsite exist in a location where a researcher can gain a good amount of data on the community as a whole, or do they have to narrow their focus to a couple city blocks? Is the community a regional economic hub, or is it a satellite community whose members migrate to a more concentrated area for work? Or is it a relatively self-sustaining community altogether?

The results might thus not give you a specific answer as to “are anthropologists still interested in Native American communities” but it would show any changes in the data on those characteristics that might lead you to a more general conclusion. For more specific answers you might want to do several analysis of specific areas in their own right.

Cheers from Boston University (the school with the worst faculty and anthro department prossibly on the planet):

Christopher Brennan

I mean, take my own research in highland New Guinea. Here is a very so-called traditional fieldsite in a ‘remote’ place (although by PNG standards, my fieldsite is not at all hard to get to). And yet, for several weeks when I first arrived way back in 1998, my overall impression was that highland New Guinea was like the place I grew up: central Nebraska. Almost everyone was a Protestant Christian farmer. Lots of buildings in the main town are made out of corrugated tin. Etc. It was sort of a funny first impression. Exotic? In some respects, no. I went to Christian revival meetings where the hymns had the sort of melancholy tonal quality that I remembered from my childhood church experiences in evangelical congregations.

Anyway, defining the categories for the analysis is, as you point out, the problem. That’s why I was hoping someone else out there had already done all that and published an analysis!

The other question is what we mean by “traditionally” exotic. Is that Africa, the Pacific Islands, Indigenous South America and East Asia? How does the anthropology of Japan and Korea or the anthropology of other geographic areas fit in when many studies in these areas have focused on people in urban areas (albeit enacting “traditions” such as Sumo or Shamanism for example.)?

http://anthromap.lib.berkeley.edu/

you can search by advisor, to see which faculty members mentor where…

FYI – As of 2002 (my phd awarded) my fieldsite in former east germany still not considered ‘real anthropology’