Overview

For a long time, anthropology was obsessed with the rural and the primitive. But today, more than 50% of humanity lives in cities. Urban Anthropology asks: Does the city destroy community (alienation)? Or does it create new, intense forms of community (subcultures)? It studies slums, skyscrapers, street gangs, and gentrification.

Core Idea

The core idea is adaptation to density. How do humans, evolved for small bands, cope with living among millions of strangers? The city is not just a container for people; it is a social force. It creates anonymity, which allows for freedom (you can reinvent yourself), but also loneliness.

Formal Definition

The subfield of anthropology concerned with issues of urbanization, poverty, urban space, social relations, and neoliberalism. It often focuses on the “informal economy” and the survival strategies of the urban poor.

Intuition

Walk down a street in New York. You pass a Chinese grocery, a Dominican barbershop, and a hipster coffee shop. This is the “urban mosaic.” An anthropologist studies how these groups interact. Do they mix? Or do they live in “parallel universes”? They study the “invisible lines” that divide a neighborhood—why one block is safe and the next is dangerous.

Examples

  • The Chicago School: Early sociologists who studied the city as an ecosystem, mapping “zones” of transition, crime, and wealth.
  • Oscar Lewis and the “Culture of Poverty”: A controversial theory based on fieldwork in Mexico City and NY, arguing that poverty creates a unique value system (fatalism, present-time orientation) that keeps people poor.
  • Gentrification: Anthropologists study the human cost of “urban renewal”—how long-time residents lose their “sense of place” and community when their neighborhood becomes trendy.

Common Misconceptions

  • Cities are “soulless”: Fieldwork shows that cities are full of “urban villages”—tight-knit networks of kin and friends (e.g., in a favela or a housing project).
  • It’s just sociology: While they overlap, anthropology brings the method of ethnography (long-term participation) rather than just statistics.
  • Transnationalism: Immigrants in cities often maintain strong ties to their home villages, sending money (remittances) and living “dual lives.”
  • Non-Places: Marc Augé’s term for spaces of transience (airports, malls) that lack history or identity, common in the modern city.
  • The Right to the City: Henri Lefebvre’s idea that citizens should have the power to shape their urban environment, not just developers.

Applications

  • Urban Planning: Designing cities that encourage social interaction rather than segregation.
  • Public Health: Understanding how disease spreads in dense slums.
  • Policing: Understanding the relationship between communities and the state.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Scale: It is hard to study a whole city ethnographically. Anthropologists often focus on a single neighborhood, risking “methodological parochialism” (missing the big picture).
  • The “Ghetto” Trope: There is a tendency to over-study the poor and marginalized, ignoring the anthropology of the elite (Wall Street, gated communities).

Further Reading

  • Bourgois, Philippe. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. 1995.
  • Low, Setha. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. 2003.
  • Hannerz, Ulf. Exploring the City. 1980.