Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
98
The definition of what is to be considered an urban environment (usually as opposed
to rural areas) proved as well to be a complicated issue, bringing to a head the implications of
an heritage left by ‘classical Anthropology’, which often tended to consider small groups of
people as a closed system, and treated them as representative of much wider realities.
What particularly caught my attention in Prato and Pardo’s essay is an evident tension
between the study of micro- and macro-processes which, though not often made explicit,
seems to have always been latent in the discipline. The implications of studies about
globalization and transnational movements pose the issue of reconsidering the urban context
as a whole. Suburbs and neighbourhoods, as well as whole cities and extended metropolitan
areas, cannot be considered as closed and self-legitimating groups of people, neither as
limited spaces of significations, they need to be understood as poles of a transcultural and
transnational continuum which operates at multiple levels. The tension between micro and
macro, which probably has caused the arousal of a feeling of inadequacy towards the means
and methodologies of the anthropological research, has been possibly the reason that led to
the temptation of considering such processes as separated from each other, and not as
constantly interrelated. On the other hand, as the authors report, the attempt to provide a
holistic understanding of the many processes at play have often produced superficial
ethnographic accounts.
Furthermore, and here I agree with the authors, I consider the traditional
anthropological methodology to be the most fitting for the study of urban environments (Pezzi
2013). If it is true that one of the core aims of the discipline is to ‘translate’ cultures into an
intelligible broader discourse, participant observation and interviews are the best ways to put
the points of view of the citizens into their own context and to comprehend how their sets of
values, moralities and identities cohabit and are (re)negotiated in a specific reality. Not only is
Urban Anthropology an anthropology of the city, but to my understanding it is also an
anthropology of how people inhabit their social space. I do consider the city to be a place that
constitutes both the significant and the signification of peculiar social interactions and
modalities of the existence.
Secondly, interdisciplinary tools could come in handy when trying to grasp the
complexity of the interaction of micro- and macro-processes in a specific area, as well as the
dynamics which might lead to the creations of different behavioural patterns and how they are
perceived in a fast changing environment. Having assumed that the anthropological methods
are a definitive plus-value, dialogue with other social sciences (but not only) could help with
providing a more in depth analysis of the available data. On the other hand, having
accessibility to a wider range of information, particularly on the quantitative side, could lead
to the tempting exercise of getting engaged in comparative efforts, which should be carefully
undertaken.
For what concerns my personal interest and engagement with tourism anthropology
applied to urban environments, I do believe that an anthropology of the city offers a variety of
tools and ideas which helps understanding the consequence of tourism development in urban
contexts, a phenomenon which has known a great expansion in the latest years, even in areas
which would not be considered to have tourism appeal in the classic sense.
