Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
85
Second World War and the process of decolonization forced anthropologists to turn their
attention to Western society, they were famously encouraged to carry out research in rural
villages, not in cities. As Cole (1977) noted, anthropologists focused on processes of
modernization in rural European villages, believing that the analysis of these processes would
provide a blueprint for an understanding of the changes that were occurring elsewhere in the
world. As we have argued elsewhere (Pardo and Prato 2010), the anthropological study of
Western society, especially in Europe, contributed to push the discipline backward rather than
encouraging its advancement (see also a later section). It can indeed be reasonably argued that,
while holding on to the then still dominant functionalist paradigm, anthropology appeared to be
rediscovering its nineteenth century evolutionistic roots.
Moreover, those anthropologists who took an interest in the city appeared to see this kind
of setting as a new laboratory in which to carry out traditional studies on kinship, on belief and
value systems and on small group dynamics. This trend prompted Ulf Hannerz (1980) to question
whether urban anthropology did actually have a specific object of study. The key point is that
early anthropological studies in cities focused on traditional anthropological topics, thus leading
to the study of urban kinship, of ghettoes and slums in shanty town communities, of the
perpetuation of folklore and rituals, and so on. Throughout the 1960s, such disciplinary interest
focused on new urban residents; urban problems, such as poverty, urban adaptation and
ecological factors; the role of dominant social groups; minority communities (the problem-
centred approach); and traditional ethnographic studies which looked at the city as a laboratory.
The overall, basic focus was rural-urban migration. However, it must be stressed that,
notwithstanding their limitations and later criticism, such Anglophone pioneering studies did
undoubtedly form the basis for the development of urban anthropology.
The Development of Urban Anthropology
In the 1960s, the worldwide increasing demographic movement to cities led to the expansion of
urban anthropological research. With continued attention to ‘problem-centred’ studies, research
focused on poverty, minorities – including ethnic minorities – and on urban adaptation. Some
anthropologists who engaged in these studies developed such concepts as ‘culture of poverty’
(Lewis 1959, 1966), which over the years was fiercely criticized (see, for example, Valentine
1968, Eames and Goode 1996); others focused on ghetto culture and community dynamics (see,
for example, Hannerz 1969), on interpersonal networks and collective identities (see, for
example, Abu-Lughod 1962) and on the significance of so-called ‘quasi-groups’ in the context of
‘complex societies’ (see, for example, A. Mayer 1966). A more eclectic and regionally
diversified urban anthropology emerged during the 1970s, as field research was increasingly
carried out in Japan, India, South-East Asia and in various African and South and North
American countries. Southall’s edited volume, titled
Urban Anthropology
(1973), offered an
initial insight into the variety of research that was being done at the time, bringing together
methodological and ethnographic contributions and a seventy-page bibliography on the topic.
