Paper short abstract:

What does the term 'public' mean in urban contexts where municipal services and amenities are increasingly privatised? I suggest that the fragmented and piecemeal nature of the contemporary 'public' sector actually provides new opportunities for repatriating our work back to our host communities.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last several years, anthropologists have taken to referring to something we call 'public anthropology.' This now commonplace use of the term 'public,' however, risks falling into the same traps as did the now more widely interrogated term 'community.' That is, the notion of a 'public' anthropology seems to assume the presence of a single homogeneous 'public' for our work. Furthermore, in many cities around the US (and around the world), municipal services and amenities are increasingly privatised, raising additional questions about the changing nature of a putative 'public' sector. In addition to the contracted-out management of public services and corporate ownership of utilities and amenities, in my own city of residence, Indianapolis, the philanthropic sector also plays an enormous role in funding a number of community-based and civic activities, ranging from neighborhood organisations, to social safety net provisions, to the arts. In this paper, I discuss the ways in which my own community-based and engaged fieldwork in Indianapolis revealed to me the complexities of trying to define what constituted 'a public' for our work. I also discuss the ways in which, ironically, the complexities and contradictions of defining the public, in this era of municipal fragmentation, ironically provided new and innovative opportunities and formats for repatriating our research products back to our host communities.