Urban anthropology: what is it and what is studied in it?

Life in urban areas can transform our view of the world and our habits.

Urban anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies the socio-cultural 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 positioned itself as a branch of study that will be fundamental to know, analyze our social organization in the medium and long term.

In this article you will find what is urban anthropology and what does it study?how its object of study arose 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, it has many influences from the more classical traditions of sociology, which focused on the study of institutions and social relations within urban spaces. institutions and social relations within the processes of industrialization in the 19th century..

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

The new conception of the city

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

Thus, there was a major academic divide between sociology and sociocultural anthropology. In the face of 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, studies related to rural-urban migration and the role of anthropology have been very popular since the first half of the 19th century. the impact that urbanization processes have on the people of the world. All this was quickly transferred to other major European cities where anthropology was also developing.

Finally, the 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, and so on.

Object of study: what is urban?

In its beginnings, anthropology was devoted to the study of tribal societies and non-industrialized communities (formerly called "primitive societies"). (formerly called "primitive societies"). In contrast, the so-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 developments (which among other things have extended the processes of urbanization and industrialization on a global scale), that anthropologists began to move towards the study of cities and the urban.

Especially this increased from the 1990s onwards, amidst different discussions and opinions as to whether urban spaces and industrialization processes could be constituted as an object of study in their own right, thereby also discussing the legitimacy of urban anthropology as a sub-discipline distinct from social anthropology and sociology.

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

In the beginning, "urban" was defined in terms of demographic density and in relation to population settlements where the 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 is it applied?

In the beginning, sociological studies of the urban, which had an important influence on the development of urban anthropology, adopted methods based on historical evidence. methods based on historical evidenceinterviews, 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.