Urban Anthropology - History of The Discipline

History of The Discipline

In its early stages during the 19th century, anthropology was principally concerned with the comparative study of foreign (i.e. non-Western) cultures, which were frequently regarded as exotic and primitive. The attitude of ethnographers towards the subject of study was one of supposed scientific detachment, as they undertook the – self-serving and Eurocentric – mission of identifying, classifying and arranging cultural groups worldwide into clearly defined socio-cultural evolutionist stages of human development.

During the 20th century, several factors began leading more anthropologists away from the bipolar notions of foreign savagery versus Western civilization and more towards the study of urban cultures in general. A strong influence in this direction was the discovery of vast regions of the world thanks to a significant increase in human mobility, which had been brought about, among other factors, by the fast expansion of the rail network and the popularisation of travel in the late Victorian era. This meant that, by the mid 20th century, it was generally perceived that there were relatively few undiscovered “exotic” cultures left to study through “first contact” encounters.

Moreover, after World War I, a number of developing nations began to emerge. Some anthropologists were attracted to the study of these “peasant societies”, which were essentially different from the “folk societies” that ethnographers had traditionally researched. Robert Redfield was a prominent anthropologist who studied both folk and peasant societies. While researching peasant societies of developing nations, such as India, he discovered that these communities were dissimilar to folk societies in that they were not self-contained. For example, peasant societies were economically linked to forces outside of their own community. In other words, they were part of a bigger society — the city.

This realisation opened the door to more anthropologists focusing their study of societies (regardless of whether they were Western or non-Western) from the perspective of the city (conceived as a structuring element). This crossover was instrumental in the development of urban anthropology as an independent field. Clearly, this was not the first occasion on which the social sciences had expressed an interest in the study of the city. Archaeology, for instance, already placed a strong emphasis on the exploration of the origins of urbanism, and anthropology itself had adopted the notion of the city as a referent in the study of what was referred to as pre-industrial society. Their efforts, however, were largely unrelated.

A significant development in the anthropological study of the city was the research conducted by the Chicago School of Urban Ecology. As early as the 1920s, the school defined the city, in terms of urban ecology, as “made up of adjacent ecological niches accompanied by human groups in... rings surrounding the core.” The Chicago School became a main referent in urban anthropology, setting theoretical trends that have influenced the discipline until the present day.

Among the various individual scholars who contributed to lay the foundations for what urban anthropology has become today (i.e. the study of the city conceived as a community) was the sociologist Louis Wirth. His essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life” proved to be essential in distinguishing urbanism as a unique form of society that could be studied from three perspectives: “a physical structure, as a system of social organization, and as a set of attitudes and ideas.” Another notable academic in the field of urban anthropology, Lloyd Warner, led the “Community Study” approach and was one of the first anthropologists to unequivocally transition from the exploration of primitive cultures (the aborigines in his case) to studying urban cities using similar anthropological methods. The Community Study approach was an important influence leading to the study of the city as a community. William Whyte later expanded Warner’s methods for small urban centers in his study of larger neighborhoods.