Urban Anthropology: What It Is And What Is Studied In It

Urban anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies the sociocultural processes that occur within cities. It has emerged as a consequence of the needs that population growth and the expansion of cities have generated. For the same reason it has been positioned as a branch of study that will be essential to understand and analyze our social organization in the medium and long term.

In this article you will find What is and what does urban anthropology study? how its object of study emerged and some of its applications.

What is Urban Anthropology? Definition and influences

Urban anthropology is known as the set of research and studies carried out within urban spaces, through a fundamentally ethnographic methodology.

It is a relatively recent area of ​​study, which follows the line of the sociocultural tradition of anthropology. But not only that, but it has many influences from the most classical traditions of sociology, which focused on study the institutions and social relations within the industrialization processes of the 19th century

Among other things, these traditions were strongly based on an important distinction in ways of life: there are urban settlements, and there are rural (or non-urban) settlements; and the processes and social relationships established in each one are also different.

The new conception of the city

All of the above led some sociologists to consider cities as a kind of social laboratories as well as everyday and ordinary life (apparently devoid of meaning) as an activity that could reflect much of social problems, and their possible solutions.

Thus, there was an important academic division between sociology and sociocultural anthropology. Given this, there were anthropologists (especially from the North American tradition), who noted that the communities that had traditionally been studied by anthropology were part of a broader social configuration, where Cities played an important role

This was one of the first motivations of anthropologists to study social processes from the perspective of cities and anthropology. In the North American context, for example, related studies on rural-urban migration and the impact that urbanization processes have on people All this quickly moved to other major European cities where anthropology was also developing.

Finally, interests in urban studies led to the organization of various academic publications, as well as multidisciplinary symposia in anthropology and ethnological sciences, societies of specialists in anthropology applied to the urban, specific professionalization in the area, etc.

Object of study: what is urban?

In its beginnings, anthropology was dedicated to the study of tribal societies and non-industrialized communities (previously called “primitive societies”). In contrast, what were called “complex societies” (which are basically Western industrialized societies), had remained spaces of little interest to anthropology.

As we have seen, it was through historical and geopolitical events (which, among other things, have extended the processes of urbanization and industrialization on a global scale), when anthropologists began to move towards the study of cities and the urban.

Especially this increased from the 1990s, between different discussions and opinions on whether urban spaces and industrialization processes could be constituted as an object of study of their own, with which the legitimacy of urban anthropology as a differentiated subdiscipline of social anthropology and sociology.

Meanwhile, different proposals have emerged. There are those who think that urban anthropology is the study that is carried out within urban areas, which brought about a new need: to define the object of study of urban anthropology. That is, clarify what “urban” is, as well as determine which can be considered urban areas and which cannot

Initially, “urban” was defined in terms of demographic density and in relation to population settlements where social interaction takes place Others have defined it as the different attributes that cities have as a specific social institution; others as centers of technological and economic change, to mention just a few examples.

How does it apply?

Initially, sociological studies of the urban, which significantly influenced the development of urban anthropology, adopted methods based on historical evidence interviews, and above all statistical and demographic material that would allow them to understand different social processes.

It was a quantitative methodology, which was soon rejected by different researchers who subscribed to the development of more qualitative methodologies that would allow them to understand the meaning produced by the actors themselves within the city. Among other things, the ethnographic method emerged, which soon became one of the main tools of anthropology in all its branches.