Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
97
system beyond their neighbourhood and workplace and links nicely the analysis of micro-
processes to the complexity of macro-level influences. In this specific sense, ‘multi-sited’
fieldwork proves to be useful (see also Mollica 2012, Parry 2012, Prato 2012 and Giordano
2012).
A significant aspect in the study of the relationship between micro- and macro-levels is
the conceptual and analytical distinction between place and space. Such a distinction has become
significant in urban research as cities have been increasingly regarded as ‘places’ that take a
specific significance for the resident; they are argued to be more than physical spaces in so far as
their social forms give meaning to ‘who we are’. Thus, cities have been addressed as places of
meaning and identity. For some scholars (see, for example, Orun and Chen 2003),
conceptualizing the city as a place becomes particularly significant when cities are studied in
relation to external global forces. Although the global economy may transform cities, their
specific identity comes to light when they are analysed as places of meaning. Thus, despite new
attempts at classifying city types (e.g., Low ed. 1999), it would be misleading to apply the same
analytical parameters to such diverse cities as such as New York, Tokyo, London, Paris,
Shanghai or Chicago; these, like others, may well be described as ‘global cities’ (in the sense
given by Sassen 1991) but their empirical study brings out the indisputable fact that cities ‘vary
from one epoch to another, and from one society to another’ (Orun and Chen 2003: viii).
New Developments in Anthropological Urban Research: Cities in the Global Context
Since the 1990s, urban anthropological research has variously recognized the ways in which
regional diversity (cultural, social, economic and political) affects urban life. Anthropologists
have paid attention to: a) a rethinking of theories of urbanization and patterns of urban growth; b)
different patterns of urban social interaction and urban conflict in traditionally multi-ethnic states
and ‘multicultural’ processes in Western cities; c) the ways in which people in different regions
and under different political regimes respond and adapt to the demand of global policies (e.g.,
developing countries, post-socialist countries, post-industrial settings); d) the visibility and
relevance of urban research, and anthropology generally, in the broader society.
To expand on a key point, apart from inviting criticism
à la
Leach to which we have
referred earlier, attempts to provide a theorization of cities by categorizing them into sacred,
ethnic, gendered, global, informal, traditional, contested cities and so on, raise the obvious
question, how can one group under the same category cities such as, for example, Jerusalem,
Banares and Rome or Hindu and Islamic cities? These are all ‘sacred cities’, they are however
fundamentally different and such a difference needs to be recognized and appropriately
addressed. Similarly, we should ask whether the ‘spatialization of culture’ occurs in the same
way in Costa Rica and in Vienna (Rotenberg and McDonogheds 1993), or whether ‘class
struggle’ and gender solidarity have the same meaning and follow the same pattern in New York
City (Rosenzweig and Blackmar 1992) and in Barcelona (and Kaplan 1992). While comparative
analysis may well yield enlightening insights (see, for example, Monge 2010, Krase 2012), it is
