Among the many fields that contribute to Urban studies, Anthropology is one with great influence. It provides insights about the social and cultural aspects of cities.
In this review, an introduction to urban anthropology book was viewed and summarized, including the content and structure of the book after a brief introduction about the authors and their contributions to their fields. The article highlights the key points of each chapter, giving a brief analysis of each mentioned topic along with an objective critique of the content.
Urban studies are interdisciplinary in nature because cities are complex systems. They consist of the interaction between human and material components (Rybski & Gonza ́lez, 2022). As soja (2010) describes space, he refers to the social aspects of space as it’s not an empty void, but is heterogeneous that is filled with politics, ideology, and other forces shaping our life. Urban studies include contributions from several fields such as anthropology, sociology, economics and others.
Anthropology simply defined as the science of man that studies and describes human lifeways, is one with great significance to urban studies for its methodological and comparative approaches which give data that are unique and hard to obtain through other social sciences. Thus, urban anthropology has much to contribute for understanding and dealing with urban problems. Anthropology of the city by Edwin Eames and Judith Granich Goode is an introduction of this subfield. It describes this literature through its origins, its importance and explains terms related to the city and what is urban about different social aspects along with describing Urban Anthropology research approaches and challenges.
Written by Edwin Eames and Judith Granich Goode, the book was published in 1977 by Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, USA. Eames earned his PhD in Anthropology and worked for 15 years in the Anthropology department at Temple university and after that at Baruch College, branch of the City University of New York. He also was an adjunct professor of Sociology at CSU Frenso. Eames published 4 academic books, 30 academic articles and he was supported by many research grants to continue his Anthropological research (Eames, 2004).
Judith Granich Goode is an Urban Anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in Columbian cities while studying class formation and urban poverty. Her research included Ethnographic works and She helped founding SUNTA (Society for Urban, National and Transnational Association) and SANA (Society for the Anthropology of North America) (Temple University College of Liberal Arts).
The book consists of four parts, each part consists of 1 or 2 chapters as follows:
This part covers the development of Anthropology and how Urban Anthropology emerged. As well as the recognition and importance of the field. Furthermore, explanation of the meaning of urban in urban studies and urban anthropology.
Here, the origins, roles, and functions of cities are explored including urban typologies used in categorizing the city and the dynamics of contextual relationships of the city to its hinterlands and other cities.
This part focuses on the social construction of the city and the interaction of its units. Exploring the city’s social and cultural heterogeneity, It emphasizes the contributions of ethnographic research, which is part of anthropological studies, in establishing the view of urban social relationships.
This part discusses the methods, techniques, and ethics of urban anthropological research. It also highlights the different challenges that urban anthropologists face.
The last chapter, titled “The Culture of Poverty,” serves as an implication for the discussed ethical and methodological problems by discussing the concept.
Ethnography refers to the research method used in Anthropology and social studies, in which a certain culture is described. It’s literal definition is “a portrait of people”(Harris & Johnsom, 2000). This part includes a comprehensive explanation of the relationship between urban life and primary social relationships as social networks and kin ties.
One contribution of Urban Ethnography was correcting the view of urban life characterized by depersonalization and the loss of strong relationships between people.
The focus then was towards the ways societies can be categorized by 3 main principles:
Relating this to the city was by viewing the urban spaces or the urban settings and events that leads to bring different groups of population together.
Discussing the primary social units and the organizing principles of urban life emphasizes the uniqueness of the data collected by anthropological research.
Eames and Goode intended to give an introduction to a relatively new subfield of Anthropology that is Urban Anthropology. Authors made their introduction through historical review, viewing each topic through its origin and analysis of relevant studies. They provided a respectable amount of information that leads to understanding the field’s perspectives.
Despite the book’s language requiring the reader to have some prior knowledge of Anthropological studies while describing the emergence of the subfield of Urban Anthropology, the book structure was sequential and organized.
Understanding the complex interactions of the city needs interdisciplinary work. In discussing participatory urbanism which is another term for tactical urbanism defined by inclusivity and collaboration, it’s important to understand for whom this urban design is made and the consequences of the design on the cultural context of projects (Wortham-Galvin,2013). as Wortham-Galvin (2013) stated in understanding participatory urbanism, it can be by understanding it as an Anthropology of urbanism, this way it can become more exclusive. The book gives a good understanding to the social aspects of urban spaces, by describing what is “urban” about each topic and whether it affects or is affected by the city.
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