Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
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November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
115
the formal recognition of ‘multi-sited’ ethnography (Marcus 1995), which as Prato and Pardo
note has informally always been a part of fieldwork. But most anthropologists need different
skills than those developed for simpler times. They require quantitative skills useful for
evaluating results within samples, and for many these remain an anathema. Simple but powerful
forms of data collection and analysis based on social networks will be critical.
The need to acquire an urban perspective and use this to address the phenomena of day to
day life will become even more apparent as the current revolution in ubiquitous communications
results in new forms of social organisation and social life that resemble much more those of
urban contexts than the village. Recently, social computing has greatly changed the capacity for
establishing social networks. Initially, groups that existed primarily online were termed ‘virtual’,
with the imputation that they were unlikely to have a major impact on social organisation. This
was clearly miscalculated, as groups that are organised around mainly online contact are a major
resource for many, particularly younger, people. Part of the reason for the misapprehension of the
significance of online groups is common also for the consideration of more traditional networks.
If each network is viewed as a single network, some – apparently organised around a single
interest or need – appear relatively insubstantial. But people are members of many such groups,
and where these groups in part overlap, either directly or indirectly, they become more
significant. That is, when members of one network can be presented as resources through another
network, the two networks in part extend each other beyond the immediate corporate
relationships of given egos in the networks. Single principle networks are likely to have a large
number of people come into and leave these, but as other networks become partially integrated
these networks will become more resilient and robust.
An individual’s economic and social circumstances change throughout their lifetime, and
more radically in urban environments. Drivers of change include physical changes in locales and
the roles of locales within the city and changes in the overall infrastructure and economic
circumstances that emerge from urban formations. But at an individual level there are many
drivers that relate to changes in age, skills, knowledge, experience, social networks, health and
cultural interpretations of the individual interacting with these. This has several consequences.
People must develop new adaptive strategies for their entire life as both circumstances around
them change together with the changes that arise from their personal development as they enter
different culturally recognised phases of life. Much of this will come through learning, mostly
intra-generational learning, as people incorporate adaptive strategies from others around them in
similar circumstances. But people are not just buffeted in the stream of life, adapting to
circumstances imposed on them. An important adaptive strategy is to change the circumstances
somewhat rather than simply change to adapt to circumstances; e.g. adapt the circumstances to
oneself rather than simply adapt to the circumstances, which Fischer has referred to as adaptive
agency (Fischer 2008); that is, the capacity to change the options available and to actualise these
as viable choices. Some of this can be done at a personal level, but often this requires cooperation
with others. Social networks are, thus, an important aspect of instantiating adaptive agency.
