Urban Anthropology

Peter JM Nas, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is a revision of the previous edition article by S.M. Low, volume 24, pp. 15999–16004, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract

Urban anthropology consolidated in the 1970s–80s and became an important section of anthropology and urban studies. It
embraces four main fields: (a) urban ethnography to highlight urban conditions and lifestyles, (b) the comparative study of
cities as wholes, (c) anthropological studies of urbanization as a process of regional, national, and global social change
related to all sorts of problems, especially poverty and slums, urban inequality and ethnicity, and urban environmental and
conservation issues, and (d) fieldwork under specific urban conditions.

Introduction fieldwork periods was considered the specific anthropological

method, and the principal aim, known as the holistic
Urban anthropology is a section of general anthropology and approach, was to reach an understanding of society and
urban studies. It embraces urban ethnography and is diversified culture as a whole. The well-known introduction to cultural
by regional differences. In short, the subject is quite complex, as anthropology by Keesing (1958) covers such issues as material
it examines various sources of influence and stimuli. The for- culture, social, economic and political patterns, religion, art,
mational phase of urban anthropology took place in the 1960s, and language.
a reflection of the contemporary rapid world urbanization An influential example of a functionalist study on the city in
especially in Latin America and Asia that occurred after the this period is Sjoberg’s The Preindustrial City (1960). These cities,
Second World War. Europe and the United States already had Sjoberg argues, are rather small with 5000 to 10 000 inhabitants,
reached high levels of urbanization. rarely more than 100 000. They maintain political,
Urban studies demonstrate that the city is one of the most administrative, military, economic, religious, and educational
important inventions of mankind. The city is basically an functions generally mixed in the city area. Commercial,
unfolding societal process of increasing interdependency and religious, and administrative activities are situated in the
cooperation of high-density populations in their quest to realize center and professional and ethnic characteristics are bound to
increasingly complex activities by attaining high levels of specific neighborhoods. The lower class is concentrated in the
heterogeneity and specialization (Nas, 1990: p. 35; Karsten in urban peripheries and the differences between higher, lower,
Toelichting, 1938). Cities have paved the way for a cumulative and outcast population groups are indicated by such
increase in living standards. expressions of cultural differences as language and clothing.
Urban anthropology is developing in response to the esca- Living, working, and religious practices are combined in the
lation of almost complete world urbanization, which will be same ward. Sjoberg shows that family life was dominated by
reached in the second half of the twenty-first century when the extended family, whose functions were many, including
most probably 80% of the world population will be located in procreation, socialization, and social security. Furthermore,
urban centers. At this stage, urban studies and urban anthro- these families also played an economic, political, and religious
pology will dominate almost the whole society and paradoxi- role. The marriages of the children were arranged so that class
cally this will mean their termination as a specific subfield in boundaries were maintained. The roles assigned in marriage
anthropology and other social sciences. were fairly formal, with the women, who were responsible for
the upbringing of the children, staying out of the public
sphere. The major religious functions that exerted a binding
The Formational Stage influence were performed by the elite. The political functions
were also dominated by the elite who exercise traditional
After the Second World War, anthropology was dominated by leadership based principally on personal relations and less on
functionalism and structuralism. The attention paid to evolu- strict administrative rules. Sjoberg describes how economic life
tionist and diffusionist theories had weakened. The study of was dominated by the guilds, which among their other tasks,
family and kinship, religion, and hierarchical relationships, maintained monopolies and were responsible for the selection
based on empirical research by means of fieldwork, was and training of members. They also regulated capital and
prominent. One obvious indication of this is the book Tristes ceremonies.
Tropiques by Lévi-Strauss (1955), the founder of structuralism, Although this study by Sjoberg highlights the similarities
who relates his travels to some Indian groups in the interior between preindustrial cities, it disguises the cultural differences
of Brazil. The aims of anthropology were listed by Evans- between cities in diverse regions. By the 1960s, for example, the
Pritchard (1963) as the description of important features of specific characteristics of Yoruba, Maya, and medieval cities in
societies and cultures, the characterization of the underlying Europe had already been highlighted. Krapf-Askari (1969)
structures and the comparison of cultures all over the world, described the layout of the Yoruba cities (present-day
but outside the West. Participant observation during long Nigeria) characterized by a palace, plaza, and holy wood

774 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 24 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.12160-9
 Urban Anthropology 775

within the city walls. She shows how the different types of and slum culture were interrelated to some extent. As main
family systems, either patrilineal or bilineal, determined the elements in the rapid urbanization process, together they
layout of the traditional city and the social and ceremonial formed the roots of new forms of urbanism.
integration with the villages, respectively, in a cake wedge The formational phase ended in two approaches that are
and chess board system, as no distinction between city and still dominant now and are exemplified by two types of
countryside was made by the inhabitants. This integration of ‘introduction to urban anthropology,’ one by Fox and the other
town and countryside also applied to the traditional Maya by Gutkind. Fox (1977) singles out holism, participant
cities that had a highly ceremonial character (Hardoy, 1973). observation, and cultural comparison as the main features of
In contrast, the predominating feature of the medieval city in anthropology and he shows the different pathways urban
Europe was a pronounced gap between town and countryside anthropology has taken to study urbanism (lifestyle of city
(Pirenne, 1952). people in general), poverty (especially the poor based on life
Besides the study of the city as a whole and the comparison histories), and urbanization (alterations in urban social,
of cities embedded in different cultures, the accelerating associational, ethnic, and other structures in combination
process of urbanization and its related problems attracted with urban problems). His holistic approach has led to the
attention. This led to a heavy emphasis on research into two distinguishing of five types of cities: regal-ritual,
issues, poverty and slums, and to the related matter of rural– administrative, mercantile, colonial, and industrial. These
urban migration. categories are discussed in their broader state and
In the 1950s and 1960s, Lewis (1959, 1968) published administrative settings and elaborately illustrated by case
a series of books about his research in the slums of Mexico, studies. He predicts that the dualism between holistic and
Puerto Rico, and New York. He developed the concept of the microstudies in urban anthropology will be bridged by
‘culture of poverty,’ implying that a core group in slums, a focus on the relationships of the different social groups in
probably all over the world, is not just poor, but has culturally the city with the larger regional and national social and
adapted to their poverty, transmitting this subculture from administrative contexts. Gutkind (1974) has concentrated on
generation to generation. He argues that the specific traits of African cities, demonstrating their relational, organizational,
culture of poverty have been generated by long-term adapta- and institutional complexities in the context of the process of
tion to a life both marginal and poor, generating distrust urbanization and the style of life of the inhabitants. He
toward the institutions in society at large, dependency, and advocates the anthropological study of cities by exploring
even specific personality traits. His family histories, on which such concepts as tribalism, ethnicity, pluralism, and
the concept is based, and the descriptions of daily life in slums modernity, and dedicates considerable thought to rural–
are an extensive and intricate example of urban ethnography. urban relations as well as political, work, family, and
By this time, urban anthropology was no longer limited to religious relations and ways of life. He discusses the specific
societies outside the West as the Puerto Ricans in New York methodological problems of field research in urban areas at
were one of the groups researched. The study of a black ghetto length and, acknowledging the need for the application of
in Washington, DC, by Hannerz (1969) is another example of knowledge, he warns of the false dichotomy between pure
the change in focus toward the urban ethnography of poor and applied studies.
groups in Western societies. In France the bidonvilles of Paris,
including that of Noisy-le-Grand mainly populated by French
families, were an early field of functionalist slum study Early Roots
focusing on deviant behavior and exclusion sociale (Labbens,
1965; Klanfer, 1965). In the 1960s and the 1970s, in attempts to develop urban
Migration was the second important subject at the end of studies and urban anthropology, urbanists began to search for
the formational phase. By then, the rural exodus and the earlier urban research results and approaches. Sennett’s (1969)
migration of people from all over the world to Western cities Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities with papers from the
involved ever-growing numbers and could no longer be German School including Weber, Simmel, and Spengler and
ignored. The migration model of Lee (1967) distinguished the Chicago School with Park, Wirth, and Redfield proved
the characteristics of the emigration territory, of the very helpful in deepening theoretical and methodological
immigration territory, the intervening obstacles such as insights. The contributions of these scholars were widely read
distance, and the personal characteristics of the migrants such by students of urbanism.
as gender and education. This ‘bipole’ and push–pull factors Marx, Weber, Redfield, and the works of the Chicago School
model integrated easily into the migration ‘laws’ that were became especially influential. In 1921, Weber (1958)
developed in response to urbanization in Britain in the published his essay on the city in which he compared the
nineteenth century (Nas, 1974). Anthropologists followed the medieval city in the Low Countries, the classical ancient
migrants to the cities in their own countries to discover their cities, the early Renaissance city in Italy, and the Far Eastern
motives, their ways of adaptation and subcultures. ‘Peasants cities. He applied his ideal-type method to his analysis and
in cities’ became one of the influential titles that betrayed this concluded that only the medieval cities in Europe had all the
evolving interest (Mangin, 1970). Later, migration studies characteristics of the fully developed city, namely,
also incorporated the growing number of international labor a fortification, market, own juridical system, local political
migrants to the Western and Middle Eastern cities in their structure, and high level of autonomy. These medieval cities
research. As migrants often, although certainly not always, reached the highest level of heterogeneity that Weber claimed
ended up as poor people in ghettos and slums, migration was characteristic of the basic role and function of the city. In
776 Urban Anthropology

their linear evolutionary approach, Marx and Engels (1972, conclusion was that a townsman was a townsman and that
original 1846) were much more negative about the city as tribalism in towns was an entirely urban phenomenon. The
they interpreted the gap between town and countryside as an migrant was detribalized in the city and deurbanized when
expression of the separation of cerebral and manual labor he returned to the village. Particularly interesting are the
and one of the dominating forms of alienation. In their situational analyses and the extended case study methods as
contrasting negative and positive views on the role of the city developed in the Copperbelt studies. Gluckman (1940) takes
in culture and societal development, the views of Marx and the opening of a bridge as point of departure to obtain
Weber reveal the basic controversy that still characterizes insights into the various persons and groups that take part in
Western culture. The positive attitude toward the countryside the ceremony and describes their relationships to explain the
is also rooted in the outlook of the traditional European colonial conditions, la situation coloniale (Balandier, 1951).
rural nobility, which romanticized country life. Mitchell (1956) also took a specific event, namely, the Kalela
The works of the Chicago School have been interesting not dance and the roles performed by the medical doctor, the
so much for their theoretical approach that uses an ecological nurse, and so on to shed light on tribal and colonial relations.
analogy but for their urban ethnographic richness. Particularly In the colonial period, the Java studies of cities were written
influential are Wirth’s view on urbanism as a way of life (1938) in Dutch, often by scholars who had been trained as colonial
and Burgess’ 1925 concentric zone model of Chicago, showing administrators or were educated in Dutch universities in
a number of concentric circles with different social and housing language and law of the Netherlands East Indies or architecture.
characteristics, varying in lifestyle, wealth, and ethnicity. This They were extremely interested in the architecture, cultures, and
concentric zone model has been replicated in other cities all languages of the Indonesian Archipelago and wrote extensively
over the world, generating a lot of inspiration and new about what they encountered in their places of residence. Only
alternative modeling. in 1958 under the title The Indonesian Town (Wertheim et al.,
The difference between rural and urban was intensively 1958) was part of their work published in translation. Town
researched by Redfield (1941) who chose a range of development in the Netherlands Indies, including traditional
communities from traditional folk society to peasant village town formation, the analysis of the urbanization process and
and city to analyze their characteristics, including worldview, its accompanying problems, the layout of a regency town, the
family relations, and cohesion. His work was part of living conditions of the coolies and the administrative alter-
a tradition of community studies initiated by Robert and ations in a small town were issues discussed at length. Many
Helen Lynd in Middletown in the United States (1929) and works from this colonial period have never been translated,
restudied in 1937. In other countries such as the United including those of Tillema and Karsten, not to mention the
Kingdom (Frankenberg, 1966), the community studies masterpiece of de Haan (1922) on Old Batavia that was amply
approach was espoused. The research on kinship and used in her PhD dissertation by Milone (1966). To abstract the
extended families in cities led Bott (1957) to distinguish specific features of colonial society in the Netherlands Indies
close-knit and loose-knit family relations, thereby laying composed of a Western and native section, the concepts of
a basis for the network approach. The study of the differences bazaar economy, dual economy, and plural society were
between town and countryside, including those in Western defined. Later, these were elaborated by other concepts like
countries, and applying quantitative approaches has attracted the informal sector. All the studies on the Javanese and
many scientists of diverse origins. It led to typologies of cities Copperbelt towns have greatly broadened the scope of urban
in various countries and to stereotyping the differences of anthropology and strengthened its consolidation in the
rural and urban areas and later it has shown that many cities 1970s and 1980s.
are home to traditional types of communities and some
small rural communities can display a rather urban type of
outlook. Consolidation
The Chicago School combined the overview of different
settlements in Mexico with elaborate research on areas, In the 1970s and 1980s, urban anthropology was still young,
communities, and situations in Chicago. They covered a wide but its consolidation on the basis of the growing number of
variety ranging from the ghetto and slum to the Gold Coast and research works undertaken in cities, the increasing migration
from the hobo bohemians and gangs to the dancing immi- streams to Western cities leading to integration problems, and
grants in the taxi-dance hall. These studies have continued to the rapid urbanization in cities outside Europe and the United
captivate and stimulate urban anthropologists and have laid States strikingly resulting in overwhelming slum areas and
foundation for an abundance of studies of urban conspicuous poverty was imminent. Its three main pillars were
components, such as wards, communities, professions, (a) urban ethnography to highlight urban lifestyles and
meeting places, and events all over the world. urbanism as city culture, (b) the comparative study of cities as
Two other sources of inspiration have been the Copperbelt wholes in various societies, and (c) anthropological studies of
and Java studies. Hannerz (1980) presents an overview of the urbanization as a process of regional and global social change
early research in the Copperbelt, Zambia (Africa), by the related to all sorts of problems, especially poverty and envi-
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute with authors such as Wilson, ronmental issues.
Gluckman, Southall, Epstein, and Mitchell. Their work At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the
analyzed adaptations to life in the towns and raised the general feeling in Western society and social science was
matter of whether an African townsman with his intensive fundamentally changed by the revolutionary quest for new
tribal and rural relations remained tribesman or not. The societal forms distinct from the ‘conservative’ post-Second
 Urban Anthropology 777

World War reconstruction mentality. In urban anthropology, giving an analysis of the pristine, ancient, and feudal city,
center–periphery and dependency theories were used to Southall discusses the Asian, Third World, and Western cities.
explain dependent urbanization in Latin America (Frank, His volume, which has apocalyptic overtones, is fairly
1967), Africa, and Asia. Galtung’s (1971) model emphasizing comprehensive.
a center and a periphery in both central and peripheral Meanwhile, besides their slums, both the informal sector of
countries was intricate and shed considerable light on the the cities of the Third World was widely investigated in an
dependency relations between cities in the world and the attempt to determine possible chances of development as well
differences between Western and Southern urbanization as urban ethnic minority problems arising from the influx of
processes. It was used for the interpretation of city size migrants from Third World countries to Western cities where
distributions in the world and the explanation of internal these groups formed what became known as the Fourth World.
and international migration patterns (Nas, 1974). These studies were of an applied nature and their purpose was
La question urbaine by Castells (1972), presenting an to solve concrete problems. This drive to obtain research results
elaborate Marxist approach to the city, was particularly in the expectation of defining and ‘solving’ problems provided
revealing. Castells rejected the culturalist and harmonic a strong impetus to the consolidation of urban anthropology.
approach to the city that explained urban culture as the In 1979, the Society for Urban Anthropology was founded
consequence of simple demographic density and social as a subdivision of the American Anthropological Association
complexity factors intensified by rural–urban migration and and in 1983 the International Union of Ethnological and
rapid urbanization. He was convinced that city culture should Anthropological Sciences installed the Commission on Urban
be explained by the social structure of the society as a whole Anthropology (Nas and de Groot, 2009).
and, particularly, the historical formation of the capitalist class By now, urban anthropology was generally accepted as an
structure and imperialism. Consequently, the cities in the important part of general anthropology and this implied that
First, Second, and Third World are completely different in anthropology had turned its attention to both applied studies
character as they have been produced by capitalist and to Western urban societies. These applied studies concen-
industrialization in the West; imperialist, industrial, and trated principally on slums, low-cost housing and kampong
financial domination in the Third World; and the socialist improvement, the informal sector, and urban ethnic minority
mode of production in the socialist countries. The Third studies tended to serve as a backup for urban policy and
World city consists of a concentration in large agglomerations planning. Urban anthropology proliferated with an
tending to lack integration into a hierarchical urban network, abundance of research on cities and urbanization in various
with a great distance between large settlements and the countries on different continents, often published in
countryside, an ecological juxtaposition of the autochthonous collections of articles. It was also influenced by scholars from
and Western city wards, a legacy of the colonial period, and other disciplines as among them Lynch (1960), Turner
a production system set up to serve the dominant Western (1976), and Kostov (1991) from architecture and Mumford
societies. Hence, slums are not marginal or disintegrated as (1961) and Braudel (1987) from history, and by a multitude
they often display an important degree of social cohesion. of sociological studies (Hatt and Reiss, 1951; Ward, 1976),
What characterizes inhabitants of slums is that they have geography (Hauser and Schnore, 1965; Santos, 1971), and
interests different from those of the dominant class in society. urban planning (Epstein, 1973; Friedmann, 1973).
In contrast to Third World urbanization, socialist urbanization Urban ethnography also steadily continued to broaden its
is characterized by the primacy of politics, while First World boundaries by including all sorts of lifestyles and professions
urbanization displays large metropoles and megalopoles with present in the urban arena, investigating specific ethnic and age
a wide distribution of activities, functions, and groups, plus groups, scavengers, construction workers, becak or pedicab
the disappearance of the difference between town and drivers, prostitutes, and small middlemen and traders.
countryside. At the end of the 1980s, after the fall of the Berlin This proliferation of urbanization and ethnographic studies
Wall and new economic policies in China, the Marxist eclipsed the comparison of cities as wholes. Earlier Redfield
approach was more or less abandoned. What did remain, and Singer (1954) had distinguished between orthogenetic
however, was the view of the city as an arena in which various and heterogenetic cities, the former being characterized by
interest groups try to realize their ideas or their ‘urban the continuation of traditional high culture and the latter by
meanings’ about the development of the city. A focus on the integration of influences from other cultures. Hannerz
urban protest movements in the urban arena was related to (1980) differentiated Coke, Commerce, and Court towns and
this (Castells, 1983). When one or other interest group has proposed an analytical model based on roles and role
formed an elaborate vision for the future development of inventories to compare cities as wholes. In geography and
a city and is backed by the resources to realize its plans, it is sociology, the comparison of cities developed empirically and
called a strategic group (Evers and Schiel, 1988). Urban arena quantitatively, using large numbers of variables analyzed by
and urban meaning are still pivotal concepts in urban factor analytical techniques.
anthropology. Urban anthropology also made progress in theoretical
Later, the urbanization branch of urban anthropology was approaches to urban societies, for example, by applying
continued, for instance, in the work of Southall (1998), who network theory to survey the city as a network of networks
focuses on the crisis in the capitalist mode of production (Hannerz, 1980) and the dramaturgical perspective of
where it is being affected by all sorts of environmental and Goffman (1959), who approaches institutions in urban
social problems such as climate change, heightened risk of society as if they had a front and a back stage on which
flooding, pollution, and other ecological disasters. Besides persons present themselves in different ways.
778 Urban Anthropology

Examples of important urban anthropological collections the informal sector were raised high and many projects initi-
of articles that have broadened the horizon to different conti- ated. Hernando de Soto (1989) who gave examples from
nents and subjects are the first publications of the aforemen- housing and transport generated particular optimism in the
tioned Commission on Urban Anthropology under the title development of Peru by proposing to eliminate all sorts of
Town-Talk: The Dynamics of Urban Anthropology (Ansari and Nas, official bureaucratic obstacles to entrepreneurship in the
1983), with examples from the Gulf States, West Africa, Japan, informal sector. The results turned out to be less than
and Venezuela, and City and Society (Southall et al., 1985) with convincing, although the importance of entrepreneurship in
Bulgarian, African, Kuwaiti, and Indian examples and studies development is widely recognized nowadays. The informal
on lifestyles, ethnic groups, middlemen in the grain trade, sector approach generated a wealth of research on all sorts of
and workers in the supermarket industry. Other contributions urban activities, including street-sweepers, scavenger
with regional scope deal with Mediterranean (Kenny and communities, street children, small itinerant traders,
Kertzer, 1983), African (Peil and Sada, 1984), and construction workers, and persons operating traditional
Indonesian cities (Nas, 1986) to mention just a few. Many means of transport.
publications broadening the scope of urban anthropology Alongside slums and the informal sector, urban ethnicity
have followed, often with the words ‘Third World cities’ or emerged at this phase of consolidation. It concerns people who
‘cities in developing countries’ in the title (Breese, 1972). share a system of norms and values and have to interact with
As mentioned earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, slums and other population groups in ‘complex societies,’ as cities tend to
low-cost housing, the informal sector, and ethnicity were the be increasingly labeled (Cohen, 1974). Hence, urban ethnicity
hot topics. The thinking about slums in urban anthropology is a very general concept, rightly ignoring the almost racial
was heavily influenced by the architect John Turner (1978). connotations it might have. Cohen (1974) shows the
He took exception to the idea that slums are cancers in the possible interrelationship of urban ethnicity with social
urban constellation and must be eradicated by destruction, inequality and political power. When class and ethnicity
relocation, and the introduction of massive low-cost housing coincide, they could reinforce each other, and political power
projects by the government. Turner realized that new, low- could be acquired on the basis of ethnic connections. Some
cost housing was often too expensive for the inhabitants of of the examples of ethnic groups in Cohen’s book are the
the slums and argued for a decentralist approach in which Hausa in Nigeria, the Protestant and Roman Catholic groups
planning and construction decisions were made by the users. in Northern Ireland, and the economic elite dominating the
He also stressed that slums represented enormous city of London. However, many other countries also provide
investments to their inhabitants, value that should not be examples of this type of group, for instance, the Pakistanis in
ignored but appreciated. Turner reversed the negative attitude the United Kingdom, the Chinese in Indonesia, and the
toward slums, turning it in a basically positive direction and Moroccans in the Netherlands. When migrants settle in
pointed out that the needs of slum people are diverse, varying a society, as time passes, their adaptation process can lead to
from location near work and low costs in the first phase of integration or assimilation, but this often produces problems
settlement in the city to housing security, only moving on to in the larger society. Importantly, all sorts of other modes of
services in a later phase. These needs were related to the connection of ethnic groups with the receiving society are
migration pattern in the city. Le droit à la ville, the right to the possible and are found in history. As seen earlier, in Africa
city, of the citizens was also stressed by Lefebvre (1968). urban ethnicity was discussed in terms of tribalism and in
In the 1970s, the concept of ‘informal sector’ was very Latin America regional clubs have been important (Jongkind,
influential in urban anthropology. The idea was that, in 1974). Initially, these clubs were considered as a vehicle of
developing countries especially, there were major informal security and adaptation; later it emerged that the leaders and
activities that were not regulated, not counted in the statistics members of regional clubs were already successful in the city
and hence remained outside the official administrative system. and did not need them for upward social mobility.
Among other factors, these activities dealt with small amounts To round off this phase on the basis of two introductions in
of goods, services, and capital, thereby involving the applica- urban anthropology (Eames and Goode, 1977; Press and
tion of traditional techniques, and they were often family Smith, 1980), one can list the following main issues: (a) types
based. In the formal sector, such activities would have required of cities and their roles, (b) urbanism and the process of
large amounts of goods and capital, and they would have been urban change, (c) urban differentiation (gender, social class
officially registered and based on contractual relationships. and ethnic groups, urban sites and places, and professions in
This distinction generated a flood of anthropological research cities), (c) urban integration (families, associations, networks,
in attempts to describe the informal sector and its development situations, and meetings), and (e) methods of research.
potentials. In the course of time, it became clear that the
distinction was not as clear cut as had been expected. Members
of one family could work in the formal and informal sectors Current Developments
and persons could even be involved in both sectors simulta-
neously. Some activities were shifted from one sector to The last two decades have been shaped by various fundamental
another as it could be profitable not to be registered in the developments. These have directed the urbanization branch of
formal sector for tax avoidance purposes, even though this urban anthropology away from its focus on complex societies
might imply less security. The conclusion was that perhaps the to the even more complex global network society. The fall of
concepts of informalization and formalization would be better the Berlin Wall has created new political conditions that unite
research tools. In explorations of development, expectations of the world in many aspects and the distribution of new
 Urban Anthropology 779

telephone and Internet facilities has transformed the whole dimensions that reflects other aspects such as the work
world providing easier direct long-distance connections that relationships. A multitude of cities have been studied in this
have transformed the world financial system, international framework and this has led to new concepts for the study of
business, market relations, and local and regional identities. cities as a whole inspired by the Chicago School spatial
Generally speaking, this has become an intense process in models, semiotic signification ideas, and social cohesion
both globalization and localization. In a three-volume studies. Cities seem to abound in symbols (Nas, 2011) that can
masterpiece, Castells (1996–98) has described and analyzed be used to characterize them and to describe their soul. Urban
these current processes and their impact on the city. He symbolism studies can be used as a tool in city branding and
distinguishes the ‘space of places’ and the ‘space of flows’ in marketing. This urban symbolism approach corresponds to the
megacities all over the world, referring, respectively, to a local insights of Lefebvre (1974) into the production of space, that
and historical community part of a city and a global, distinguishes natural space, the perception of space, and the
ahistorical part linked to the global flow of ideas, money, representation of space; Harvey (1990) on time and space; and
and so on. Both have their own ways of life, even the work of Nora (1984–92) and his realms of memory. In the
architecture, featuring the local, more traditional framework of urban symbolism, Dürr (2005) has published
constructions on the one hand and the global, starkly, and a case study of Albuquerque in the United States and Till
modern architecture on the other hand. (2005) of Berlin in Germany. Shahshahani (1998) has
Different regional urban experiences were combined by analyzed Esfahan in Iran and Colombijn (1998) Canberra in
Gugler (1996) into one volume listing Monsoon Asia, China, Australia to mention a few examples.
India, Indonesia, the Arab world, Africa South of the Sahara, One can conclude that in current urban anthropology
and Latin America in an attempt to describe convergences studies, many old themes are being continued in new ways.
and divergences in urbanization. In this branch of urban Migration has been transformed into international mobility by
anthropology, the different sciences have been almost a network approach and takes place in transnational spaces
completely integrated. Hence, environmental aspects have (Smart, 1999), urban ethnicity as a further phase beyond
been added to these studies by dint of focusing on certain multiculturalism (Prato, 2009), and the urban way of life
relevant areas in the city and the purpose is often applied with solitude alongside solidarity and loneliness (Coleman,
research. Other examples of regional specification deal with 2009). Interesting new developments cover many topics such
Japanese cities (Karan and Stapleton, 1997) and Caribbean as gated communities (Low, 2003), the influence of mobile
cities (Jaffe, 2008). phones and the Internet (Postill, 2008), wounded cities
In the ethnographic branch of urban anthropology, more (Schneider and Susser, 2003), urban heritage conservation
and more parts of cities are being covered, including particular (Brumann, 2009), traditional and colonial architecture
buildings, the mall, the square, plaza or alun-alun, the street, the (Schefold et al., 2003–08; Nas, 2006), and a host of books
neighborhood, urban greenery, water problems, graveyards, and essays about urban agriculture and farming, low-density
and urban agricultural and architectural conservation areas. agrarian-based urbanism (labeled kotadesasasi), urban
Data are also being acquired about different ethnic and soundscapes, the city at night, environmental activism,
social groups in cities as well as about social and economic besides all sorts of urban localities and communities, among
activities. The employment of and changes in the use of mobile them neighborhoods, an urban skateboarding community,
phones and the Internet and participation in Internet and a boxing gym.
communities is especially interesting. There is an increasing Many of these themes refer to worldwide processes. In 1998,
tendency to frame ethnicity as multiculturalism. Guliana Prato the prevailing view on globalization prompted the Society for
(2009) raises the question to what degree multiculturalism is Urban Anthropology in the United States to change its name to
compatible with citizenship. She points out that the receiving the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthro-
society is not static and does not consist of one single pology. In 1983, the cooperation between urban anthropolo-
culture, while the immigrant cultures often are also gists and representatives of other sciences led to the setting up
composed of many cultures and are being altered because of of an Urban Laboratory (as part of National Center for Scien-
their connections with the larger societal settings (Harris, tific Research (CNRS)) in Paris. Jacques Gutwirth and Colette
2011). The number of studies on women in urban areas, Pétonnet (1987) played an important role in the foundation
investigating their entrepreneurship, is growing, which means of this Laboratoire d’Urbanisme.
that gender studies are increasingly integrated into urban Urban anthropology has passed through a great number of
anthropology (Jarvis et al., 2009). theoretical-, concept-, or reality-driven approaches. These have
The four volumes of the Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures: Cities covered the urban ecology analogy, functionalism, network
and Cultures around the World (Ember and Ember, 2002) form analysis, the dramaturgical perspective, migration models,
an inclusive inventory of data on a great number of cities in culture of poverty research, community studies, situational
the world, providing general urbanization and ethnographic analysis, the extended case study approach, ideal-type
information. comparison, Marxist approaches, structural imperialism,
In the branch of urban anthropology directed toward informal sector research, social inequality research, urban
comparing cities as a whole, a new approach has evolved under symbolism, transnational research, and so on. The
the label ‘urban symbolism’ (Nas, 1993; Nas and Samuels, anthropological study of the city has proved flexible and able
2006). In this approach, the means of existence is not the point to absorb the developments in general anthropology and
of departure in the characterization and comparison of cities, other related sciences as well as the outside urban realities
but has to cede precedence to the symbolic and ritual that shape our world.
780 Urban Anthropology

Fieldwork and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to
be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the
Field research in cities and megacities differs from the tradi- world .” (Baudelaire, 1995: p. 9). The flâneur is “the painter of
tional fieldwork in rural and tribal areas as the researcher is the passing moment and of all the suggestions of eternity that it
generally part of a multimillion population and often known contains” (Baudelaire, 1995: p. 5). “He marvels at the eternal
to a limited number of people in the city. The globalization of beauty and the amazing harmony of life in the capital cities
society has created new possibilities for frequent short visits to . He gazes upon the landscapes of the great city .”
the research area. Once long fieldwork visits of one or several (Baudelaire, 1995: pp. 11). The message conveyed by
years dominated and were preferred, whereas nowadays a series Baudelaire is that the flâneur is a member of the crowd and
of shorter visits to the same area are possible, even necessary a connoisseur of urban life; he is an active, intellectual
because of the publish-or-perish pressures in the academic observer driven by curiosity and he combines the casual eye
world. It has also become possible to study multiple of the stroller with the purposeful gaze of the detective.
locations, for example, in the case of migration both the area The true home of the flâneur was nineteenth-century Paris
of departure and the receiving area. Marcus (1995), Hannerz whose arcades provided his principal domain (Hazel Hahn,
(2003), and Falzon (2009) have elaborated on this relatively 2006); the city was his interior, his house. That is why
new fieldwork tendency called multisited or multilocal sometimes, in the guise of a public type, the flâneur is
ethnography, and contrasted it to the ‘fly-on-the-wall restricted to nineteenth-century Paris in the scientific
perspective’ (Katz, 2010: p. 26). Under the motto of “follow literature. He is considered to have disappeared when the
people, connections, associations, and relationships across shopping arcades were superseded by large department stores
space (because they are substantially continuous but spatially exuding a full-fledged consumer ideology, and when the
non-continuous)” (Falzon, 2009: pp. 1–2), now it is even interior of those shops became the exterior of the city and the
possible to investigate certain research objects in different domain of the consumer public.
locations and describe their fate in various communities. An Walter Benjamin (1991: p. 524) elaborates the contrast
interesting example of ‘follow the thing’ is Greek whisky between the flâneur and the traveler or tourist. The tourist
(Bampilis, 2010). In urban anthropology, besides one- restricts his attention to the monumental and places of special
location fieldwork in a specific neighborhood or on a specific interest, ‘the exotic and picturesque’ as it were (Goebel, 1998:
square, multisited fieldwork is quite common, as when p. 379), and is not actually involved in either urban history or
symbols and rituals are ‘followed.’ In a nutshell, under the city life. The flâneur tries to incorporate the native view, as he
influence of globalization, present-day fieldwork tendencies is interested in the background and history of the urban
cover a much wider sequence of locations rather than being landscape and society. Flânerie emerges from the
concentrated in the area of one city or agglomeration. confrontation between the city and the biographical
To illustrate the specific character of urban fieldwork, the background of the flâneur, or the ‘dialectical movement of
concept of the flâneur might be instructive. In contrast to familiarity and strangeness’ (Goebel, 1998: p. 379). In this
research in small urban communities where everybody is soon dialectical movement, the flâneur is also a detective. It suits
aware of the stranger in the community, in the city as a whole, him to hold himself apparently inert among the urban
particularly in megacities, the anthropologist is immersed in masses, but in reality he is a passionate observer and
a crowd of people and a multitude of places. His first task is to participant (Benjamin, 1991: p. 554), eager to understand the
familiarize himself with different places: their uses, functions, city and, like a journalist, takes notes on urban life. Flânerie is
and the people who frequent them. This exercise transforms the ‘an activity of ethnographic exploration’ (Goebel, 1998: p. 389).
anthropologist into a flâneur: a stroller, a wanderer, who has no In the course of time, the theory on the flâneur and flânerie
specific relationship with the places he or she is interested in has given rise to specific methods of enjoying and exploring the
and is eager to make contact with everyone who happen to city. Schulte Nordholt (2008) discusses these in her
cross his path in his quest to discover what the inhabitants do examination of Georges Perec and his sociology of daily life.
and think. The flâneur is an observer and a participant collecting The immobile flâneur might choose to take up his post in
general knowledge about the city. This task is the starting point a particular café or some other location and sit there to
for developing a view founded on his personal background, observe what is happening in the street. The mobile flâneur
including the relevant literature, but can later blossom into an can follow one person during the day and write down what
intimate knowledge of the views expressed by certain categories the person observed has been doing, perhaps visiting shops,
and groups of inhabitants, especially those of the key infor- talking with friends, and so forth. He can also take up his
mants who play a prominent role in the research. Besides being position three times a day at different spots in a particular
an observer and participant, the flâneur is also a detective square and describe what happens from different angles.
because his ultimate goal is to combine all he has learned into Alternatively, he can observe the same place for one day over
one narrative that will unite the fragmented views held by the a period of several years. An even more common method is
inhabitants in one, single model and thereby expose the soul of just to roam the city at random happening upon the
the city, its structure, and dynamics. unknown places and vistas, becoming acquainted with the
Charles Baudelaire, who introduced the concept of flâneur in architecture and plazas, relishing accidental encounters, and
1863, wrote the following: “For the perfect flâneur, for the festivities. Nowadays, urbanists and architects still opt for this
passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the way of exploring the city.
heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in Another possible step could be to include an imaginary
the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home exploration of the city by drawing mental maps or even by
 Urban Anthropology 781

narrative mapping without setting a map down on paper. In Evans-Pritchard, Edward E., 1963. Essays in Social Anthropology. The Free Press of
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Friedmann, John, 1973. Urbanization, Planning and National Development. Sage,
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