Urban Anthropology
1. Introduction
I will not cover the extensive literature on peasant migration to Latin American cities or on African urbanization, two areas which have become sub-fields unto themselves. This essay will focus on what may be called the “western” urban experience, though I hope it will also make frequent reference to the work of non-western anthropologists.
While today urban anthropology is practiced throughout the world, it is still identified most closely with the cultural and social anthropology of the United States. Consequently, the greater part of this essay will be devoted to work on urban topics by American socio-cultural anthropologists. European and Canadian work in urban anthropology is growing rapidly and is beginning to develop its own distinctive character. Unfortunately, I lack the expertise to do justice to this work and will note only the studies I have found most helpful for my own understanding of urban phenomena. I hope that someone more qualified will be able to write a parallel review of European urban anthropologies.
Urban anthropology, the study of contemporary human settlements, is a dynamic and rapidly growing field. Since its emergence in the 1950s, urban anthropology has developed a number of important theoretical orientations and research foci. This bibliography is intended primarily for the use of students beginning work in urban anthropology or for those with research interests in particular areas who wish to know what research has been done on urban topics.
2. Theoretical Framework
From the context established in the first part of his framework, Appadurai sets out a basic schema to explain his theory on the disjuncture: “The disjuncture occurs when the fast cheap flows of images, people, technology capital do not sustain the more durable and slower systems of production distribution and production of and for culture” (p. 8). This is comprised of 5 different scenarios whereby the global cultural trends create disconnection between the various constructs of culture. The first of these is glocalization, apropos to the fact that despite global cultural trends, there is invariably a reconstitution of culture that is tailored to a specific locale.
The theoretical framework of Appadurai’s work is inferred from the fundamental context of globalization and its impact on the different dimensions of global culture. This approach differs significantly from many of the anthropological works on the lasciviousness of the nation-state and is based on three primary characteristics of global cultural dynamics. These are characterized as a) disjuncture and difference, b) the flow of culture through various vectors and networks, c) the re-imagination and reconstitution of culture in a continual process. It is Appadurai’s assertion that the traditional means of understanding global culture are not adequate; and as a result, he conceptualizes a complex systematic model that functionally categorizes the dimensions of global cultural flows. Through the associative logic of economics within globalization, Appadurai notes the changing function of culture in the ideologies of exchange value. This argument is both vital and central to the understanding of local cultures in an economically globalizing world. It establishes a historical framework that sets the stage for the contemporary and future trends of global culture. This is then furthered with the notion that the disjuncture of global cultural flow creates a disconnection between culture and cultural production. This is important because it is what Appadurai believes leads to the various conflicts of global cultural ideologies. In providing these arguments, Appadurai has performed an important task in setting up the context for his theory on the disjuncture and global cultural flow by identifying the economic institutions and the various types of peoples that form the global cultural system. This is detailed by his identification of these specific sets of relations.
3. Research Methods
In the current setting, with the increased dissemination of quantitative techniques throughout cultural anthropology and discussion of what is the best way to teach these to graduate students in light of decidedly mixed results of some near rubber-stamped competence exams, there’s a session of testing and assessment. Have methods recycled from the cognitive portion of the general psychological paradigm, now custom-fitted for cultural research, ever proved to be superior in finding out areas relevant to social cause and behavioral effects.
Some of the studies reviewed here use combinations of methods, for example, participant observation and focused interviewing, mapping, and surveying. Each paper on its own will suggest its own rationale for why a particular method or several methods are best suited to exploring a significant question. No methodological recipe will be offered. What will emerge in the diverse and thoughtful set of propositions offers a most stimulating methodological session held in memorium by Marvin Harris at the 4th annual meetings of the Society for Cross Cultural Research, now 20 years ago. Of special note were Harris’s comments about the weak contingency of current ecological theory at that time with research in non-human animal behavior and ecological anthropology stemming from his own learning in preparation for a paper that appeared later in Current Anthropology.
In the anthropological study of human beings, even in the urban environment, the basic goal of research remains the same, i.e. to make sense of the thoughts and actions of people within the context of their lives and, in turn, to make apparent the connections between those microscopic levels of activity and the greater historic, economic, and social forces that define events and institutions in our complex world. Consequently, methods are chosen or fashioned from the edging of existing techniques to serve the requirements of the questions asked and, in a sense, to fit the strategy used to the problem at hand.
4. Case Studies
Now, due to all his research and data collection, Malinowski wrote “A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term.” This was a study of the European war seen through Malinowski’s eyes and his experience of life under a state of total mobilization, and it’s an attempt at self-analysis which is a rather complex psychological case study. Through the elaborate and documented body of data which Malinowski collected, the analysis by him and some other anthropologists and psychologists on Trobriand culture and personality is a worthy also case study of the changes in native mentality brought about through contact with the European ideas and forms of organization.
But to the maintenance of the Trobriand Islanders’ art, religion, customs, and organization under the formidable pressure of new European influences, he found it necessary to return for a further brief stint of fieldwork in 1940. This final phase of research was broken by the war, but it was easier for Malinowski to publish memoirs of his earlier career in a book coming out in America. In that time, he therefore published the fact on which this study is history.
The native man and the magic was a study which Malinowski developed within a case study. The study involved Malinowski returning to the islands after a long absence of several years and again taking up contact with the study of magic among the bwatkuans and the study of the kula. After he and his wife left the field after the First World War, fieldwork already disturbed, was completely stopped by the Japanese occupation. It was obvious that there would be no way of continuing the studies in which his aim was to build up an exhaustive analysis of native mentality, taking magic and the kula as paradigms for almost all behaviors.
Bronislaw Malinowski’s classic scientific study of natives on the Trobriand Islands off the eastern coast of Australia employs the use of case studies. His research provided a functionalist perspective on what he described as his “Imponderabilia of Actual Life.” He went to great lengths to study the lifestyle of the native people, including their economics, health, and psychological development. This relatively recent fieldwork collected an exhaustive amount of information, and from it, Malinowski used his best-known technique in the development of functionalism theory.
5. Conclusion
Consequently, urban anthropology is not just the problem of an age-old dichotomy between rural and urban social organization. Traditional dichotomies simply cannot be applied to very complex large-scale urban systems with any degree of suitable discrimination. There is still tremendous value in comparing communities and neighborhoods within a city, and there are many urban settings in less complex societies where the rural-urban dichotomy is still relevant. However, the key problems in general revolve around rethinking sociocultural contrasts in the context of worldwide urbanization and forging concepts and methodological tools suited to these new tasks. In broad terms, the key to understanding the dynamics of sociocultural systems, whether in a global perspective or in the small, lies in comparison. Now it falls to urban anthropology to craft the tools for effective comparison in what is surely the most complex of human social endeavors: life in cities.
