Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
95
combination of field techniques such as note-taking, open interviews, case-studies of significant
people and situations, audio and visual recording and so on. Traditionally, the ethnographic
method allowed anthropologists to focus on a specific topic while remaining holistic in their
analyses. The spatial complexity of the urban field undoubtedly presented a challenge in this
respect, as anthropologists were increasingly faced with the need to design their research in such
a way as to broaden their scope; ethnographic methods needed, therefore, expanding. Many, we
know, circumvented such a complexity by setting specific boundaries in defining the target
population and limiting their study to neighbourhoods (spatial boundaries), ethnic minorities
(cultural boundaries), or target groups that were confined by gender or work boundaries. As
anthropological research in urban areas increased, there was, however, the risk that the distinction
between the two disciplines would become blurred.
While sociologists became increasingly interested in the ethnographic method (e.g., Gans
1967), anthropologists such as Sandra Wallman doubted the applicability of participant
observation in urban areas, which eventually translated into an advocacy for new methods and for
an ‘anthropology by proxy’ (Wallman et al. 1982). In her research in London, published under
the title
Eight London Households
(1984), she applied research methods borrowed from other
disciplines. This soon turned out to be a major limit of such otherwise stimulating work, which
pointed to the relevance of analysing ‘resources’ such as time, information and identity in
understanding inner-city Londoners.
For a while, Wallman’s methodological stance appeared to play the perverse role of
justifying the objection that (classic) anthropology could not be done
in
the Western Industrial
city. So, for a while, the danger of this subfield being dismissed altogether was clear and present.
However, in the mid-1980s Pardo’s research on death in Naples (1989) and, then, his doctoral
research convincingly proved that not only was participant observation possible, but also that its
combination with an adaptation of Wallman’s techniques in the construction of case studies
produced good results and that a holistic study in the anthropological tradition could successfully
be done in urban Europe (Pardo 1996; see also 2012 on the academic and intellectual complexity
of that time). A key aspect of Pardo’s work in Naples is its focus on the agency-system
relationship, which led to a critical analysis of the categorical oppositions typical of both the
Functionalist and the Marxist perspectives. Demonstrating the analytical and theoretical
relevance of in-depth empirically-based research, Pardo drew on his detailed ethnography to
develop a sophisticated framework urging anthropologists to address the sociological significance
of ‘strong continuous interaction’ (Pardo 1996: 11-12) between the material and the non-material,
of long-term goals and immediate returns – taking into account the significance of morality,
rationality and values in people’s choices and strategies – and of the link between micro- and
macro-level analysis. New urban research followed thereof on the interactions between
economic, political and cultural aspects, which contextualized local dynamics and change in
national and global historical processes (Prato 1993, 2000, 2009). Others (see, for example,
Spyridakis 2006 and 2010) have taken on such an approach looking at the relationships between
