There are four reasons to build a national infrastructure to promote field research.

Second, the web can revolutionize the training of field research. There has been a comparative lack of academic attention to training in field research techniques. Additionally, there are too few minority and female social scientists engaged in field work in poor, minority communities. While there are some departments in a few universities which specialize in qualitative methods, there are no national centers specializing in field work training and development similar to the University of Michigan's quantitative Institute for Social Research (ISR).

Developing a national field work training institute modeled after traditional institutes like ISR, however, would be shortsighted. The world wide web has transformed education everywhere and thoughtful use of the web is absolutely indispensable for the reorganization of field work training. Twentieth century models of training centers physically rooted in one city are obsolete: the integration of web-based and in-person training is a 21^st century requirement.

Third, there is a need to face new theoretical challenges. The issues raised by postmodern critiques are important. Can field research "represent" the voice of the powerless? How can field researchers enable those lacking in power to speak in their own voice? Can reflexivity compensate for the different social position of the researcher and "research subject?" What is the role of the "author" in reporting research and what is the meaning of social responsibility in research? Can knowledge be meaningfully compared across sites? A few forums have aired these and similar issues, but nowhere has a sustained debate taken place.

The world wide web also presents new challenges to field research. For example, confidentiality becomes a much more serious question when field notes, photographs, and other data can be easily posted on the web. This issue needs careful investigation.

Fourth, the information era has raised new questions which are not easily answerable by quantitative methods alone. Field research traditionally has been at its best in identifying new issues which are not easily quantifiable (e.g Whyte 1984; Hagedorn 1990). Among the most important contemporary issues is the need for field work to describe and analyze the urban informal economy.

The informal economy is not often recognized as a major issue for social science. But some argue (e.g. de Soto 1990; Portes et al. 1989) that in the information era informal economic activity is not just a temporary phenomenon (e.g. Valentine 1978), but plays a key structural role in Third World countries and First World cities (Sassen 1991). Most estimates of the US informal or "underground" economy run in the billions (e.g. Pozo 1996), yet those figures lack precision (Feige 1996; Franks 1994; Reuter 1996). Informal labor markets, drug markets, and other underground goods and services have not been adequately described, thus making it difficult for scientists to make sense of existing official data.

Further, vast differences in the informal economy exist between cities, and between neighborhoods within cities, but the bases of those differences are not well understood (e.g. Stepick 1989). Informal drug markets apparently play a major role in homicide rates (Blumstein and Rosenfeld 1999; Goldstein 1985; Goldstein et al. 1997) but we don't understand why declines occur in some cities, but not others (Hagedorn and Goldstein 1999). The new economy has organized informal economic activity in a functional way in areas adjacent to development (Sassen 1991; 2000), but allowed more violent, survival-based underground markets to thrive in socially excluded" areas (Castells 1998; Hagedorn 1998b; Venkatesh 1996; 2000).

This uneven development of the new economy, sometimes called the "digital divide," may have vast implications for social theory and public policy in the 21^st century. But without good field work, these crucial issues can not be well understood. Next, we present the three central components of a national infrastructure for field research.