Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
81
designated realm of sociological enquiry. Thus, until the 1970s, urban research remained
associated mainly with sociology.
Although for many years anthropologists had conducted research in urban areas,
especially in African and Latin American countries, only in the late 1960s did the anthropological
establishment cautiously begin to acknowledge the relevance of such research. The 1970s saw the
publication of several books and articles, as anthropologists became engaged in debating the
conceptual and theoretical definition of ‘urban’ and the extent to which ‘urban’ anthropology
differed from ‘traditional’ anthropology. Such a debate never ceased. Both the definition of urban
and the very definition of urban anthropology are thorny issues that continue to be the objects of
academic dispute. For some, urban anthropology is ‘simply’ (more or less classical)
anthropological research carried out
in
urban areas; others endeavor to define the city as a
specific ‘social institution’ with its dynamics and social, economic and political relations, thus
maintaining that urban anthropology is anthropology
of
the city.
However defined, the emergence of urban anthropology, and its growing strength, can
reasonably be seen as a consequence of historical events, for its development has been
intrinsically linked to worldwide geo-political changes and to their impact on the discipline as a
whole. Today more than ever, this is unmistakably the case. Over several decades, varying,
though more often than not fast processes of urbanization in so-called tribal societies and the
crisis of European colonialism have posed new challenges to anthropologists who began to turn
their attention to Western industrial societies, the (improperly) so-called ‘complex societies’. In
brief, for us to understand what it exactly is and what it studies, this sub-field must be
contextualized within the tradition of socio-cultural anthropology, taking appropriately into
account the disciplinary and paradigmatic changes that have occurred at key historical junctures.
In order to clarify such a context and the attendant changes, the following sections offer
brief examinations of significant cross-disciplinary theoretical influences; of the early
anthropological interest in processes of urbanization and of the consequent development of
‘urban anthropology’, including influences from cognate disciplines. Then, the discussion moves
on to outlining key methodological issues and new developments in the field of anthropological
urban research.
Cross-disciplinary Influences
Before looking at the development of urban anthropology, we need to address the underlying
theoretical, mainly sociological, influences. Early anthropological theorizations on the specificity
of urban life, institutions and social relations reflected the classical sociological framework
developed in the industrial society of the nineteenth century. Most of such analyses were based
on the assumption that there was a sociologically significant distinction between urban and rural
(and, more generally, non-urban) life. Notable among the sociological classics is Ferdinand
Tönnies’s work on Community (
Gemeinschaft
) and Society (
Gesellschaft
), published in 1887
(Tönnies 2002 [1887]), which established a distinction between the feudal community,
