Anthropology Matters Journal, 2004, Vol 6 (1).

Special Issue: Cities

Guest Editor: Andrew Irving

Introduction

Cities: an anthropological perspective.

Andrew Irving (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, University College of London and Royal Free Hospital).

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Articles

Fahrid's insect world.

Iban Ayesta (Department of Anthropology, University College London).

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This article explores the subaltern corporeality of one of the many immigrants who are repopulating the city of Berlin. The ethnographer starts writing in the middle of the urban crowd, finding it almost impossible to write on the occurring phenomena due to the ephemeral conditions. Hanging out in the busy and heavily commercial Europa Center, the ethnographer meets Fahrid, an Algerian man who is seated quietly and bended forward. The generous and patient writing on such an apparently odd and absurd physical posture invades the thought of the ethnographer by revealing unexpected and often aberrant connections between Fahrid's body, the insects on the ground, the capitalist city and the practice of writing.

Tales of the global city: German expatriate employees, globalisation and social mapping.

Fiona Moore (Kingston University School of Business).

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Transnational business people are seldom studied by anthropologists. They are inexorably linked to cities through the nature of their work and yet detached from them by virtue of their globe-trotting lifestyles. Here, I examine the role that two ‘global cities’ — London and Frankfurt — play in the lives of a group of employees from a German transnational financial corporation. I consider how these employees construct, and are constructed by, the cities in which they work and suggest that anthropologists may have to rethink our present conception of ‘the global’ versus ‘the local’, in favour of more abstract models.

Mumbai slums and the search for 'a heart': ethics, ethnography and dilemmas of studying urban violence.

Atreyee Sen (Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

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In this article, I have explored some of the methodological problems faced by anthropologists when they conduct fieldwork in volatile ethnographic settings. My own fieldwork was based in the slums of Mumbai, one of the commercial capitals of India, where working-class women had allied themselves with a violent, Hindu nationalist movement. The ‘fundamentalist’ women, who had organised themselves into a miltant, semi-religious task force, played a vital role in orchestrating urban riots. While living and working with these women, I found myself a helpless, often frightened bystander to various forms of factional ‘war’. Would, should, could I prevent this overt use of violence and threats? That was always my primary dilemma. The eerie spectre of ethics continued to haunt my work during the writing-up stage, even though I was far, far away from my killing fields. In this article, I have tried to highlight and address some of the dilemmas of studying urban conflict, in a bid to emotionally equip future research scholars studying the anthropology of violence.

Panem et circenses at Largo da Carioca, Brazil: the urban diversity focused on people-environment interactions.

Ethel Pinheiro and Cristiane Rose Duarte (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

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This paper explores how outdoor performances actively define and create the essential character of open spaces in Brazil, a country known for its overwhelming abundance of outdoor life. We investigate the importance of open spaces within the urban fabric, and consider the ways in which the history and aspirations of the local community become meaningfully woven into these spaces. We chose an open space, or largo, in the city of Rio de Janeiro called Largo da Carioca, which embodies the relation between collective memory and appropriation. We then consider how the Largo has consistently been used as an arena of performance despite the intense urban changes and movement of people over the last 50 years. As a way of grasping the dynamic of the activities of the Largo da Carioca we adopted two approaches: historical-evolutive and participant observation. The first concerns the evolution of the urban space of Largo da Carioca and the background of outdoor performances as a way of introducing the popular arts of Rio de Janeiro, and as a way of connecting our theoretical analysis to the field research. In the second approach we use tools and methods from ethnographic research such as field annotations, direct interviews and visual resources, like photographs and video-shooting, so as to fulfill and complement our work. We argue that the urban essence of these performances is related to the ‘inviting’ conditions of this particular urban site and to its (in)formal structures, uses and regular activities. It invites – because of its openness, formal and social largeness and amplitude – a singular melange of uses and appropriations through which the formal and social are amalgamated – for, as one informant said, it is ‘an open space of constant comings and goings’ (Igor Ferreira, 13/07/03).

Inscribing the city: a flâneur in Tokyo.

Raymond Lucas (Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen).

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A recent topic for fascination in architectural theory has been Walter Benjamin’s work on the flâneur of Charles Baudelaire’s Paris. This figure, more than just a wanderer, shopper or tourist, characterises one aspect of the modern city-dweller’s condition, as found in the Parisian arcades. This meandering, aimless ‘Man Without Qualities’ so informs how we understand the city, for example, as a prototype for both the cinematic subject and audience. Flânerie also has its uses as a thinking tool. City-based artistic movements in the 20th century, from the Dada and Surrealists through to Fluxus and the Situationists have all exploited similar modes of distracted attention in traversing the city. This trajectory takes us to the Situationist International in particular, who engaged with the city in a fashion analogous to the paper support for a drawing, equip us with new ways of understanding the experience of the city. As a part of my general inquiry into the role of drawing and notation in creative practice, the graphic representation of the city forms a case-study of particular interest. How do these alternatives to the traditional tools of architecture and urbanism aid or reconfigure our understandings of cities? This final section shall outline some of my own working practices. Drawn from the tradition of the architectural fantasy, which traces its history from Piranesi through Ferriss and Constant to Tschumi, Koolhaas and MVRDV. By considering architecture as a practice of representation as well as of space- and place-making, the architectural fantasy or paper project offers distinctive possibilities beyond what is commonly assumed to be simply an ‘unbuilt’ or ‘unbuildable’ project. As such, I place my reflections upon Tokyo into this tradition – I will explore the process I have worked through in re-presenting a journey taken through Shinjuku station.

Change and contesting identities: the creation and negotiation of landscape in donetsk.

Julia Holdsworth (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Hull).

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This discussion explores the ways that contestations over the nature and pace of change during the post-Soviet era are being enacted both in and through the urban landscapes of Donetsk, an industrial city in East Ukraine. I will examine the ways in which Donetsk has, in the past, been constructed as an essentially Russian and Soviet space. Currently there are debates and conflicts over changes being made to present and develop a more Ukrainian and Western orientation in these spaces. This paper discusses particular moments in these debates and, by doing so, explores the ways in which landscapes and identities are interconnected.

New locations: the virtual city.

Denise Maia Carter (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Hull).

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While raising questions about the position of the city in anthropological practice, much of the existing discourse has failed to acknowledge that there is a new kind of city out there, the virtual city. However, while the virtual city as a general analytical category may richly fulfil its function as a focal point for cultural meanings, this role may also be problematic, as revealed by my own fieldsite, Cybercity. Against a background that boasts the absence of a shared history of meaning, a new virtual community has been constructed in which human relationships appear to be organised more perfectly than in everyday life. Within this city, being a good citizen is organised around discourses of harmony and unity. This in turn leads to questions about the enforcement of community ideals articulated through the control of both images and texts within the virtual city. By addressing these issues, my aim is not to represent some new model of the city. Rather, it is an attempt to stimulate discussion that will allow a movement towards new models of cities that are central to anthropological practices.

Book Reviews

Shore, C. & Nugent, S. (eds). 2002. Elite cultures. Anthropological perspectives. ASA Monographs No. 38. London: Routledge.

Stefanie Lotter (University of Heidelberg, Germany).

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Sillitoe, P., Bicker, A., & Pottier, J. (eds). 2002. Participating in development: approaches to indigenous knowledge. ASA Monographs No. 39. London: Routledge.

Laila Halani (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford).

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