Urban anthropology or anthropology in the city Does Lefebvre hold the key to escape this cul-de-sac?

Abstract

Urban anthropology is a discipline that emerged only with great difficulty. Its origin in the Chicago school of sociology made the discipline dependent upon urban sociology. The ethnographic focus of the Chicago school was short-lived, overtaken by a statistical, quantitative sociology that came to long dominate the field. For their part, anthropologists were late in dealing with cities, arriving only in the 1960s. Since then, they have vacillated between doing anthropology in the city and doing urban anthropology. Given this problem, the urban philosopher Henri Lefebvre may provide us with some fresh insights. In this article, I propose an anthropological rereading of some Lefebvrian concepts, such as “lived space” and “everyday life,” emphasizing their socially transformative character. I offer a series of epistemological reflections relevant to our discipline and, by drawing on examples from my ethnographic research, seek to contribute to the methodological formulation of a critical perspective on urban ethnography.