Urban Anthropology - Main Areas of Study

Main Areas of Study

There are two main ways to go about researching urban anthropology: by examining the types of cities or examining the social issues within the cities. These two methods are overlapping and dependent of each other. By defining different types of cities, one would use social factors as well as economic and political factors to categorize the cities. By directly looking at the different social issues, one would also be studying how they affect the dynamic of the city.

There are four central approaches to the anthropological study of cities. The first is the urban ecology model in which the community and family network are central. The second is based on power and knowledge, specifically of how the city is planned. The third approach is studying local and supralocal and the link between the two degrees of units in the city. The last approach focuses on cities where political economy is central to the city’s infrastructure. Low uses several prominent studies from urban anthropologists to compile a list of the different types of cities that do not fall into only one category, and what factors individualize them. These types of cities include those focused on religious, economic, and social processes. An example of the religious city is what Low calls the “sacred city” in which religion is central to the daily life processes of the city. An example of an economic centered city image is the “Deindustrialized city”. In America, this type of city is usually found in areas where coal mining was the main industry in the city, and once coal mines were shut down, the city became a ghost city rampant with unemployment and displaced workers. Globalization has been studied as a force that severely affects these areas, and anthropological studies have greatly increased the knowledge of the implications.

Other types of cities include, but are certainly not limited to the contested city, in which urban resistance is a key image; the gendered city, dominant in urbanizing areas such as Africa where women find themselves newly employed in low-wage labor; postmodern city, that is centered around capitalism; and fortress city, where different populations within the city are separated, usually based on socioeconomic factors. The main reasons for the current studies focusing on types on cities are to understand the patterns in which cities are now developing in, to study theoretical cities that may come about in the future based on these current trends, and to increase the implications of anthropological studies. Anthropological studies have serious implications on the understanding of urban society: with the rapid rate of globalization, many peasant societies are quickly attempting to modernize their cities and populations, but at an expense of the interests of the people within the cities. Studies can illustrate these negative effects and project how the overall city will fare poorly in the future.

The other method of studying urban anthropology is by studying various factors, such as social, economic, and political processes, within the general city. Focuses on these factors include studies on rural-urban migration, kinship in the city, problems that arise from urbanism, and social stratification. These studies are largely comparative between how these relations function in an urban setting versus how they function in a rural setting. When studying kinship, anthropologists have been focusing on the importance of extended family for urban natives versus migrants. Studies have shown, generally, that the more “native” one becomes with the urban city, the less importance is placed on maintaining familial relations. Another important and commonly studied aspect of the urban society is poverty, which is believed to be a problem that arises out of urbanism. Urban anthropologists study several aspects individually, and attempt to tie different aspects together, such as the relationship between poverty and social stratification.