Introducing Urban Anthropology

This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important field of urban anthropology. This is a critical area of study, as more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. Exploring contemporary anthropological approaches to the urban, the authors consider: How can we define urban anthropology? What are the main themes of twenty-first-century urban anthropological research? What are the possible future directions in the field? The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, and politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from urban settings across the world. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students and also for those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography. The revised second edition includes updated theoretical discussions and new ethnographic case studies. It features a new chapter on neoliberalism, austerity and solidarity, and engages more extensively with digital transformations of urban life.

A Companion to Urban Anthropology BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY A Companion to Urban Anthropology “The city is becoming the basic currency of human – and non-human – life: a pile of interconnections which makes a series of difficult wholes. This volume navigates the anthropology of this medium with the greatest aplomb.” Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick A Companion to Urban Anthropology presents original essays on central concepts in urban anthropology and ethnography. Featuring contributions from more than 25 leading international scholars in urban studies, the readings cover a wide variety of topics. Each essay explores a key phenomenon and is grounded in the author’s original research along with findings of other urbanists. Classic issues such as built structures and urban planning, community, markets, and race lead to emergent areas of study including borders, sexualities, nature, extralegality, and resilience and sustainability. A Companion to Urban Anthropology offers revealing insights into the complex forces that continue to shape the urban experience.

These ethnographically-based studies of diverse urban experiences across the world present cutting edge research and stimulate an empirically-grounded theoretical reconceptualization. The essays identify ethnography as a powerful tool for making sense of life in our rapidly changing, complex cities. They stress the point that while there is no need to fetishize fieldwork—or to view it as an end in itself —its unique value cannot be overstated. These active, engaged researchers have produced essays that avoid abstractions and generalities while engaging with the analytical complexities of ethnographic evidence. Together, they prove the great value of knowledge produced by long-term fieldwork to mainstream academic debates and, more broadly, to society.

The city is more than demography and architecture, it is a state of mind. Various groups, scenes and subcultures, widely known as "man in the street", shape and are shaped by urban space and its history according to imaginations, nightmares and dreams. Urban anthropologists get immersed in this closely knit fabric of urban culture and conduct field research with all their senses. The reader provides a compact introduction into urban anthropology, which has become the key discipline in exploring cities and city live as sites of encounter, conflict and sensation. It introduces the most influential writers in the field as well as young and upcoming field researchers.With essays by PeterJackson, LesBack, RuthBehar, MoritzEge, RolfLindner, Mirko Zardini, Margarethe Kusenbach, Loic Wacquant.

Global cities like New York City and Tokyo, national capitals like Cairo and Dakar, and regional centers like Bangalore and Barcelona are powerful economic, political, and cultural hubs. Cities and Spaces surveys the development, transformation, and role of cities in a globalized world while exploring the history, methods, classic texts, and current discussions in urban anthropology.Chapters examine urban dwellers' lives, work, culture, and experiences in different yet closely linked cities worldwide. This concise introductory treatment illustrates how anthropologists address a wide range of questions like: What does it mean to work in an informal market in Lomé? How does gentrification affect a Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago? How do people experience urban environmental degradation and injustice? How do race and ethnicity shape the experiences of urbanites? How do immigrants create new urban religious communities?

Urban Theory: New Critical Perspectives provides an introduction to innovative critical contributions to the field of urban studies. Chapters offer easily accessible and digestible reviews, and as a reference text Urban Theory is a comprehensive and integrated primer which covers topics necessary for a full understanding of recent theoretical engagements with cities. The introduction outlines the development of urban theory over the past two hundred years and discusses significant theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges facing the field of urban studies in the context of an increasing globally inter-connected world. The chapters explore twenty-four topics, which are new additions to the urban theoretical debate, highlighting their relationship to long established concerns that continue to have intellectual purchase, and which also engage with rich new and emerging avenues for debate. Each chapter considers the genealogy of the topic at hand and also includes case studies which explain key terms or provide empirical examples to guide the reader to a better understanding of how theory adds to our understanding of the complexities of urban life. This book offers a critical and assessable introduction to original and groundbreaking urban theory and will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in human geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, planning, political science and urban studies.

Anthropological perspective are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologist have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. Theorizing the City corrects this omission. Following a brief history of urban anthropology, emphasizing developments in the field during the 1990s, this volume presents twelve ethnographies of major cities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Five images of the city-the divided city, the contested city, the global city, the modernist city, and the postmodern city-serve as frameworks for the essays. Each section highlights current research trends such as poststructural studies of race, class and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and studies of the symbolic meanings and social production of urban spaces.