Cancelini_end of Century

8/10/2019 Cancelini_end of Century

1/12

Urban cultures at t h e end of th ecentury th e anthro polo gicalperspective

N6stor Garcia Canclini

As the twentieth century draws to a close, thefield of anthropology seems ready to embracethe whole century. Several decades ago itmoved beyond the study of non-European andnon-Western rural populations, which had beenanthropologys speciality when it started out asa discipline. Anthropologists have conductedinvestigations on metropolises and have beenconcerned with all types of societies complex,traditional, modem, cities and transnationalnetworks. Postmodern re-searchers are even showingthat the anthropologicalapproach offers a specialway of revealing the formsof multiculturalism whichproliferate under globaliz-ation.

To some degree, otherdisciplines such as demo-graphy and economics alsostrive to be omnipresent andomniscient in their quest toexplain the entire universeby means of a single para-digm. But anthropology

of an urban theory. There are three reasons whyI have chosen a different approach. First, suchan encyclopedic task, which would entail muchmore space than the present article allows, hasalready been carried out by various authors overthe past decades Eames and Goode, 1973; Han-nerz, 1992; Kenny and Kertzer, 1983; Signor-elli, 1996; Southall, 1973) and by journals in anumber of languages, for example, Ethnologiefrancaise 1982; a ricerca .folklorica 1989;

NCstor Garcia Canclini is an anthropol-ogist and head of the programme of stud-ies in urban culture at the UniversidadAut6noma Metropolitana POB 55-536,09340 Mexico, D.F .). Dr Garcia Canclinihas published twenty books on culturalstudies, globalization and the urbanimagination. He has been a Professor atthe Universities of Stanford, Austin,Barcelona, Buenos Aires and S oPaulo.His book, Hybrid Cultures 1995), waschosen by the Latin American Associ-ation to receive the first Ibero-AmericanBook Award for the best book aboutLatin America.

claims in addition to focus on the macro- andthe micro-social and to explain, at the sametime, how qualitative and quantitative knowl-edge is linked. The city is one area in whichthis all-inclusive approach turns out to be parti-cularly problematic.

shall avoid in this text one notable wayof assessing the work done by urban anthropol-ogists, which is to review the contributions thatanthropology has made during its history to theknowledge of specific cities and the elaboration

several issues of UrbanLife; Urban Anthropology1991; and the InternationalSocial Science Journal1996. According to theassessment made byKemper and Kratct inUrban Anthropology whichdeals almost exclusivelywith research in the UnitedStates, at the beginning ofthe decade there were 885urban anthropologists, in-cluding archeologists, lin-guists and physical anthro-pologists. The same report

indicates, however, that social anthropologistsaccount for 70 per cent of the researchersKemper and Kratct, 1991). That is one reason

why the present analysis will be confined tothis subdiscipline.

Secondly, we have to acknowledge thatwhile numerous studies on cities are to be foundin the anthropological literature since the nine-teenth century, anthropologists who talk aboutcities are often actually referring to somethingelse. Although they deal with cities such as

ISSJ 15311997 NESCO 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road. Oxford OX4 IJF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 USA.


2/12

346 N&or Garcia Canclini

Luanshya, Ibadan, MCrida or SBo Paulo, themain purpose of many studies is to investigatecultural contacts in a colonial situation ormigratory flows during periods of industrializ-ation, working conditions and patterns of con-sumption, or what traditions remain under con-ditions of contemporary expansion.

Apart from the early work of the ChicagoSchool in the 1920s, when cities became a parti-cular focus of investigation for sociologists andanthropologists, the latter used them onlyoccasionally as the core of their social analysis.It was only in the last three decades thaturbanism became a legitimate field of researchfor anthropologists, with all that this implies:leading researchers have specialized in the field,full recognition has been given in graduate andpostgraduate curricula, and funding has beenprovided for fieldwork, scientific meetings andspecialized journals Kemper and Kratct, 1991).

The third reason for not using a historicalreview to show how anthropology today is deal-ing with cities is that the challenges of thisresearch have become radically different in theepoch of conurbanization, globalization andtransnational integration. What is meant todayby city and anthropology is very different fromwhat was understood by Robert Redfield, the

Chicago and Manchester Schools and even morerecent anthropologists. We need simply recallhow much the significance and size of citieshas changed since 1900: at that time only 4 percent of the worlds population lived in cities;now half its population has become urbanizedGmelch-Zenner, 1996, p. 188). In certain peri-

pheral regions, such as Latin America, whichwere the preferred subject of earlier anthro-pology, 70 per cent of the population lives inurban conglomerations. Because urban expan-

sion is due in great part to the influx of ruraland indigenous populations, these social groupswhich have traditionally been studied by anthro-pologists are now found in large cities. It ishere that their traditions are passed on andtransformed and that the more complexexchanges arising from multi-ethnicity andmulticulturalism evolve.

Old ideas in new con tex t s

It is not by chance that a large number of urbananthropological studies focus on migrants and

the so-called marginal sectors. In attempting tostudy these changes in the habitual targets ofanthropological research, it became clear thatmodem cities were presenting new challenges tothe anthropological concepts and methodologiesthat had been developed to study small, indigen-ous and rural communities. It has to beacknowledged that the ethnographic approachhas contributed original qualitative work oninter-ethnic and intercultural relations, which inother fields have been subordinated to a macro-social view of things. Nevertheless, theapproaches used by anthropologists for a longtime inhibited the construction of an urbananthropology involving a comprehensive pictureof the meaning of urban life. As Durham 1986,p. 13) noted, they were engaging not so muchin urban anthropology as in anthropology in thecity. As a result, the city becomes more a locusof research than its object. In any event, thisis a difficult matter to resolve both in anthro-pology and in other fields. How is it possibleto embrace in a single concept urban cultureall the variety of city life? Is there really aunified and distinct phenomenon of urban space,especially in such complex and heterogeneousagglomerations as New York, Beijing or Mex-ico City, or would it be preferable to speak of

various types of cultures within the city? If so,should the categories be based on social class,organization of space, or other criteria?

At the same time, besides reshaping themodel of anthropology, urban issues havedemonstrated the resourcefulness of anthropo-logical conceptual tools and methodologies indealing with key aspects of modern cities whichare of interest to all the social sciences. I shalldiscuss three of these: multicultural heterogen-eity, intercultural and social segregation, and

de-urbanization.Sociocultural heterogeneity or diversity,

which has always been a basic theme in anthro-pology, is today one of the most destabilizingelements for the classical model offered byurban theory. The difficulty of defining what ismeant by city derives in part from the varietyof forms cities have taken throughout historyindustrial, administrative, political capitals, ser-

vice cities, ports and tourist cities); but thiscomplexity is even greater in the major metro-

polises which cannot even be reduced to suchmonofunctional characterizations. Some theor-

UNESCO 997


3/12

Urban cultures at the end of the century 347

ists maintain that the parallel existence of manydifferent functions and activities is, in fact, thedefining feature of the present urban structureCastells, 1995; Signorelli, 1996). Moreover,

this flexibility in performing various functionsis expanding as the delocalization of productionweakens the historic ties between certain citiesand particular types of production. Lancashireis no longer an international synonym for thetextile industry; Sheffield and Pittsburgh are nolonger synonymous with steel. Manufacturedgoods and the most advanced electronic equip-ment can be produced just as well in the inter-national cities of the first world as in the citiesof Brazil, Mexico and South-East Asia Castells,1974; Hall, 1996; Sassen, 1991).

The diversity of a city is usually a resultof distinct stages in its development. Milan,Mexico and Paris all provide parallel evidenceat least of the following periods: a) historical,whose monuments make them cities of artisticand touristic interest; b) industrial, the develop-ment of which restructured in a specific wayin each case the use of land; and c) a recenttransnational and post-industrial architecturefinancial and telecommunications industries)

which has restructured the appropriation ofspace, movement in the city and urban habits,and the incorporation of these cities into supra-national networks. At the present time, theexistence side by side of these different periodsgives rise to a multi-temporal heterogeneitywhere processes of hybridization, conflicts andintense intercultural exchanges occur GarciaCanclini, 1995a, 1995b).

Adding to the heterogeneity and hybridiz-ation which stem from the contiguity of build-ings and spatial organization of different histori-cal periods, is the cohabitation of immigrants

from different regions of the same country andfrom other countries. These immigrants bringto the great cities languages, behaviour patternsand spatial structures from different cultures.The same process can be observed in metropoli-tan and peripheral countries, cancelling out tosome extent the differences noted in an earlierperiod by evolutionists between cities indeveloped and underdeveloped regions.

The close proximity of native-born com-munities with many others has brought about

an explosion of the traditional urban idiosyn-crasies in Lima as much as in New York,

Buenos Aires or Berlin. The sudden, and attimes violent, confrontation between the presentand the past, between social scientists andexotic peoples, allows us to assert that urbananthropology has been decisive in fully liberat-ing anthropologists from the sense of belongingto a universe divorced from the purposes oftheir study; it has also helped some researchersfeel less guilty about interfering in foreign cul-tures and has discouraged evolutionist subter-fuges designed to restore that distance by meansof a learned stance. While urban anthropol-ogists may not be from the same ethnic groupor from the same class or national backgroundas their subjects, they are exposed to the sameor similar socio-spatial, advertising and tele-vision influences.

While macro-social planning, the stan-dardization of buildings and roads, and in gen-eral the unified development of the capitalistmarket have tended to turn cities into mech-anisms of homogenization, these three factorshave not prevented the forces of diversity fromemerging and expanding. But the explosion ofdifferences is not just a concrete process; it isalso an urban ideology. Since the 1970s, thepostmodern trends having an impact on anthro-pology and urbanism have promoted difference,

multiplicity and decentralization as the con-ditions of urban democracy. Nevertheless, thesetrends must be assessed differently in the metro-politan and peripheral countries. Such a distinc-tion is essential above all for political and econ-omic reasons. We cannot equate the growth ofself-management and plurality after a phase ofplanning designed to regulate urban growth andsatisfy basic needs as in nearly all Europeancities) with the chaotic growth of survivalefforts based on scarcity, erratic expansion andpredatory use of land, water and air which arethe norm in Asia, Africa and Latin America).

A second distinction concerns scale. Forcountries which entered the twentieth centurywith low mortality rates and with planned anddemocratically governed cities, the detours,shifts and loss of power by all-embracing insti-tutions may be seen as part of the logic ofdecentralization. In contrast, in cities likeCaracas, Lima or Sgo Paulo, dispersal arisingfrom the population explosion, popular or

speculative invasion of the land, and far fromdemocratic means of representing and adminis-

UNESCO 997


4/12

348 Nestor Garcia Canclini

Shanghai street scene. Frangois Pedcosrnos

trating urban spaces may be perceived asadding to a disorder which is always on theverge of exploding.

In the first case, the weakening of plannedinstitutions may be a liberating step forward. Inthe majority of cities in the peripheral countries,meanwhile, the ideology of decentralizationoften serves only to reproduce ungovernableagglomerations, thus encouraging at times theperpetuation of an authoritarian and centralized

government reluctant to let the people vote ormake decisions. Research into social movementsgenerally considers that the destructuring of cit-ies stimulates the formation of local, youth, orecological groups which try to create alterna-tives to the hegemonic dis)order. Other disci-plines equate decentralization with a heighten-ing of chaos, the spread of gangs, urban terrorand sexual aggression, or see it simply as anopportunity for business interests and evenneighbourhood groups to appropriate public

spaces and discriminate against the rest. Aspointed out by Holston and Appadurai 1996,

p. 252 , the popular exercise of democracy cantherefore produce anti-democratic results.

It is clear that in many African, Asian andLatin American cities a weakened regulatoryauthority does not increase freedom but ratherleads to insecurity and injustice. In those coun-tries, postmodernism usually means exasper-ation with the contradictions of modernity: thedisappearance of what little urbanization hadbeen achieved, the emptiness of public affairs

and the private search for alternatives not toa different kind of city but to urban life, whichis seen as a stressful tumult. The abandonmentof unified public policies, combined with anincrease in unemployment and violence, givesrise, as shown in the studies by Mike Davis onLos Angeles and by Teresa P.R. Caldeira onSiio Paulo, to spatial segregation: those in aposition to do so shut themselves away in forti-fied enclaves. Instead of working with conflictsarising from interculturality, there has been a

separation of groups by means of walls, fencesand electronic security systems. Recent anthro-

UNESCO 1997


5/12


pological studies have demonstrated the signifi-cant role played in creating urban segregation,along with physical barriers and changes in hab-its and rituals, by obsessive discussions aboutinsecurity which tend to polarize good and eviland to set up symbolic walls and distances thatreinforce the physical barriers Caldeira, 1996).

Studies of the changes in cultural consump-tion practices in Mexico City show that a pro-cess of de-urbanization is taking place: in recentyears there has been a decline in the recreationaluse of public spaces. This is due in part toinsecurity, and also to the growing preference,promoted by electronic technology, for culturedelivered to the home through radio, televisionand video instead of going to cinemas, theatresand sporting events, which means travelling

long distances through unsafe areas of the city.Staying at home or leaving the city for theweekend are more than just a way for peopleto free themselves a little from the violence,stress and pollution; they are ways of sayingthat the situation of the city is hopeless GarciaCanclini, 1995).

In political terms, the democratization ofthe government and popular participation is per-haps the only way to reverse partially thismajority trend towards private seclusion and to

control the voracity of private real estate, indus-trial and tourist interests which interfere withbalanced urban development. But how can thedemocratization of public policy and the growthof responsible citizenship Perulli, 1995) man-age to revive the public space and produce aviable and more appropriate distribution ofsocial forces that can reshape the map of thecity and the overall meaning of urban sociallife? If this does not take place, we are facedwith the risk of ungovernability: the explosive

potential of destructuring and destructive trendscould lead to greater authoritarianism andrepression.

Various studies from the 1990s considerthe challenges raised by large and medium-sizedcities as an opportunity to revitalize popularparticipation and organization. When the nation-state loses the ability to mobilize the public,cities re-emerge as strategic sites for the devel-opment of new forms of citizenship with moreconcrete and manageable referents than those

offered by national abstractions. In addition,urban centres, especially megalopolises, have

become a medium for the international flow ofgoods, ideas, images and people. Whatever istaken out of the peoples hands by supranationaldecision-making appears to be recovered tosome degree in the local arenas of home, workand consumption Dagnino, 1994; Ortiz, 1994).Those who today feel that they are voting spec-tators rather than citizens of a nation are redis-covering ways of relocating the imaginationHolston and Appadurai, 1996, pp. 192-95).

Redefinit ion of ci t ies

Anthropology is in fact not the only disciplinethat must reformulate its project in the light ofthese changes in multiculturalism and segre-gation, in the local and in the global, which are

being manifested with particular intensity in themajor cities. Uncertainty about what defines cit-ies and how to study them, which is also raisedby the other social sciences, makes it necessaryto reorient the entire field of urban studies.This field thus provides a good opportunity toexamine the current state of interdisciplinaryand transdisciplinary efforts the theoreticaland methodological conditions under whichvarious pieces of knowledge may be linked.

From the perspective of the changes that

have taken place in the cities, twentieth centuryurban theory looks like a series of unsuccessfulor inadequate efforts. Rather than providingstable solutions or responses, we find a suc-cession of approaches that have left many prob-lems unresolved and have serious difficulty inpredicting changes and adapting to them.

There are, for example, the studies whichhave attempted to define cities by contrastingthem with the countryside or of conceiving ofthem as what the countryside is not. This

approach, which was very common in the firsthalf of the century, made an overly categoricaldistinction between the countryside as a placeof community and primary relations, and thecity as the place of secondary membershiprelations, where roles were more segmented andpeople belonged to several groups at the sametime. In various countries going through theprocess of industrialization this methodologywas applied up until the 1960s and 1970s.Prominent theoreticians, like Gin0 Germani,

elaborated this approach in their studies of LatinAmerica and of Argentina in particular.

~ ~

Q UNESCO 997


6/12

35 NPstor Garcia Canclini

Germani considered the city to be the nucleusof modernity, the place where people could getaway from primary and obligatory affiliationsand the intense personal, family and neighbour-hood relationships that are part of life in smallcommunities, and enter the anonymity of elec-tive relations and segmented roles, which heanalysed from the particular standpoint of hisfunctionalist background.

Many criticisms have been levelled at thecategorical opposition of city and countryside;it should, however, be kept in mind that thisdistinction is limited to external aspects. It is adescriptive distinction which does not explainstructural differences or the frequent parallelsbetween what goes on in the countryside or insmall communities and what happens in the

cities. It does not deal, for example, with howrural communities are now split by internal con-flicts brought on by the urban invasion. Bycontrast, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, itis often said that the cities are invaded by thecountryside. One can still see families ridingaround in horse-drawn carriages the waycountry people do as if there were no cars.These are the points of intersection between theurban and the rural that cannot be understoodin terms of simple opposition.

A second, long-standing definition, pro-posed by the Chicago School, is based on geo-graphic and spatial criteria. Wirth defined thecity as the relatively extensive and dense perma-nent localization of socially heterogeneous indi-viduals. One of the main criticisms of thisgeographickpatial approach is that it fails totake into account the historic and social pro-cesses which gave rise to urban structures andwhich determined their size, density and hetero-geneity Castells, 1974).

A third approach has been to use certaineconomic criteria, defining cities as the outcomeof industrial development and the concentrationof capital. Cities have in fact led to a moreeffective organization of social life and, up toa certain period, more efficient reproduction ofthe labour force by concentrating mass pro-duction and consumption. However, the econ-omic perspective usually fails to take accountof cultural aspects, everyday urban life and theway in ,vhich city dwellers represent the city.

Authors who have conceptualized urbanexperience and representations, such as Antonio

Mela, who does so on the basis of the theoryof Jurgen Habermas, note two features whichdefine the city. One is the density of interaction;the other is a faster rate of message exchanges.Mela specifies that these are not just quantitat-ive phenomena, since both features have aninfluence on the quality of urban life, at timesin opposite directions. The increase in com-munication codes means that new, specificallyurban skills must be developed; this is evidentto any newcomers arriving in the city who feelout of place and find it difficult to orient them-selves in the midst of interactions and rapidinformation exchanges. When urban studiesbegan to focus on this issue at the time of themid-century migrations, the question was raisedas to who could use the cities.

This approach, which defines the urbanquestion as a tension between spatial rationaliz-ation and expressivity, led to a linguistic analy-sis of urban society Mela, 1989). While semi-otic studies have placed most emphasis on thatfeature, anthropology also sees cities today notsimply as physical phenomena or as a way ofoccupying space but as places where expressivephenomena arise and may be in conflict withthe rationalization of social life or with attemptsto rationalize it. The industrialization of culture

through electronic communications has madethis semantic and communicational aspect ofhuman settlements more self-evident.

If our goal is to come up with a universallyvalid theory of urbanism, we would be forcedto conclude that, in some sense, all suchtheories have failed. They do not give us onesatisfactory answer. Instead they suggest a num-ber of perspectives, none of which can be over-looked; they coexist today as part of the realityof urban life, of what we believe might give it

some meaning. Yet, all these definitions cannotbe easily linked together into one satisfactoryand relatively operational definition to furtherour investigations of urban life. This uncertaintyabout the definition of cities is even greaterwhen it comes to megacities.

Megalopolises cris is andrebir th

Only half a century ago megalopolises were theexception. In 1950, New York and London were

UNESCO 1997


7/12


the only two cities in the world with morethan 8 million inhabitants. By 1970 there werealready eleven such cities, five of them in theso-called Third World three in Latin Americaand two in Asia. According to United Nationsprojections, by the year 2015 there will bethirty-three megacities, twenty-one of them inAsia. These megalopolises are notable as muchfor their unrestrained growth as for their multi-cultural complexity, which blur their historicalcontext and call into question the definitions weuse to understand them.

What is a megacity? Studies carried out inrecent years in cities like Los Angeles, Mexicoand SHo Paulo lead us to reformulate the termas it is habitually used in the specialized litera-ture, where it refers to a phase in which neigh-

bouring cities become part of a large urbanagglomeration, forming a network of intercon-nected settlements.

This spatial characterization is undoubtedlyapplicable to the Mexican capital Ward, 1991),where the population in 1940 was 1,644,921and now exceeds 17 million. Among the mainfactors responsible for this expansion have beenthe numerous migrations from other regions ofthe country and the incorporation into themetropolitan area of twenty-seven adjoining

municipalities.Meanwhile, during the fifty years that the

urban space was growing to 1,500 square kilo-metres, making communication between its vari-ous parts impractical and destroying the physi-cal image of the whole, communications mediawere growing at a fast pace, developing anddisseminating images that renewed the connec-tion between the disparate parts. The sameeconomic policy of industrial modernizationwhich caused the city to overflow its boundaries

at the same time stimulated the developmentof new audiovisual networks which restructuredinformation and communication practices andreconstructed the meaning of the city. Whatconclusions can be drawn from these facts?While demographic and territorial expansion hasdiscouraged the majority of people living inperipheral areas from going to the cinemas,theatres and dance halls concentrated in thecentre, radio and television is bringing cultureto 95 per cent of homes. This reorganization of

urban practices suggests that the socio-spatialdefinition of the megalopolis needs to be sup-

plemented by a socio communicational defini-tion which takes into account the restructuringrole played by the media in urban development.

The central hypothesis of this reconcep-tualization is that the megalopolis, in addition tolinking large population groups by consolidatingthem physically and geographically, connectsthem through macro-urban experiences trans-mitted by mass media networks. Of course, theexistence of mass media connections formedium-sized and small cities and the fact thatthe full range of television and computer tech-nology is also available to populations of 10,000shows that this is not a feature exclusive tomegacities. Nevertheless, cities like Mexico,Los Angeles and S2o Paulo which have beendestructured by an extraordinary territorial

expansion and their strategic position in inter-national networks, lead us to wonder how thisincrease in media connections may take onparticular significance when it is linked withthe history of demographic and spatial expan-sion and with the complex and widespread cul-tural offerings typical of major cities.

Some urban researchers have examined thisdouble role of cities from the point of view ofthe effects of information technologies on spa-tial transformations. Manuel Castells speaks of

the information city and of information flowspaces to describe the way in which territorialcustoms are now influenced by the circulationof capital, images, strategic information andtechnological programmes. Despite his emphasison that aspect, Castells continues to recognizethe importance of territory as a means ofaffirming group identity, as a mobilizing forcefor populations to achieve their demands, andas a way of restoring the modicum of controland meaning people derive from their work.

According to Castells 1995 p. 485), peoplelive in places and power is wielded throughinformation flows.

I prefer to speak of information flow sys-tems rather than spaces: the notion of spacecorresponds more closely to the physical aspectwhile information flows, although they canoccasionally take a physical form, usually oper-ate through invisible networks. Furthermore,cannot agree with the distinction between theplaces where people live and the information

flows which dominate them. But these are nodoubt minor details compared to the enormous

~ ~

Q UNESCO 1997.


8/12

352 Ndstor Garcia Canclini

contribution made by Castells in redefining themeaning of the city in the light of the newconditions of technological development.

The current literature highlights the dualnature of cities which are both spatial andcomrnunicational n two ways: first, in relationto information systems and their impact on therelationship between capital and labour, whichis the main focus of studies by Castells andother recent urbanists Peter Hall, SaskiaSassen); and second, in connection with the newurban sociocultural patterns and practices towhich the communications technologies are giv-ing rise Garcia Canclini, Martin Barbero).

Purpose and methodologyw hat dist inguishesanthropology?

What, then, distinguishes urban anthropologyfrom other fields such as sociology, urbanismand semiotics? Some researchers maintain thatanthropological research is still in a unique pos-ition because the data is obtained through directcontact with small groups. They acknowledgethat urban research has modified the length oftime spent in the field and the ongoing and

close relationship with the people beingobserved and interviewed, and that the newtechnology from portable tape recorders andcameras to computerized surveys) providesinformation on a scale which is more suited tourban life. They believe, nevertheless, that fieldobservations and ethnographic interviews arestill the specific reseurces of anthropology. Incontrast to sociology, which constructs hugemaps of urban structure and behaviour fromgraphs and statistics, the qualitative and lengthy

investigations conducted by anthropologistsyield, in principle, a more profound understand-ing of social interaction.

Several anthropologists have pointed outthat because researchers have less strong ties tothe people they are studying and no longershare the exact same living conditions poverty,violence, survival difficulties), there is a risk,as noted by Durham 1986), of seeking in thesymbolic interaction an identification with thevalues and aspirations of the population under

study. This would explain the over-emphasis inmany studies on the cultural aspect of urban

life and on the analysis of discourse or symbolicprocesses. In the central and peripheral coun-tries alike, anthropologists involvement in thefield of urban studies has undoubtedly beendecisive in focusing attention on cultural aspectswhich had been and continue to be neg-lected by the demographers, economists andsociologists who preceded them in investigatingthe urban sphere. However, neither the trad-ition of anthropology as a discipline nor the in-disputably economic and symbolic nature ofurban processes justify limiting anthropologicalresearch to cultural factors. The growth of citiesand the reordering or disorder) of urban life islinked to economic, technological and symbolicchanges whose interrelationships make it essen-tial to maintain the classic anthropological

approach of considering the various dimensionsof social processes all at the same time. Thathas been the approach used in the 1980s and1990s in investigations on the economic andcultural significance of urban social movementsand working conditions, neo-liberal de-indus-trialization, informal markets and survivalstrategies Arias, 1996; Dagnino, 1994; AdlerLomnitz, 1994; Sevilla-Aguilar, 1996; SilvaTellex, 1994; Valenzuela, 1988). I have men-tioned only Brazilian and Mexican researchers

simply to limit the examples that might be givenfrom the vast bibliography on the subject. Fur-thermore, Brazil and Mexico are the two LatinAmerican countries in which the most consistentwork has been done on how economic, politicaland cultural aspects are combined, by studyingthe relationship between various forms of resi-dence and work behaviour, family life and howgender affects trade union participation and cit-izenship. Of course, this approach is also usedby urban anthropologists, including some of the

authors just cited.Yet, with few exceptions, those studies are

more anthropology in the city than about thecity. The field as a whole has not yet achievedthe target of carrying out studies that connectthe micro- and macro-social and the qualitativeand quantitative in a comprehensive urbantheory. The only way to capture the complexityof urban life is to understand the experiencesof communities, tribes and neighbourhoods aspart of the organizing structures and networks

of each city Holston and Appadurai, 1996;Hannerz, 1992).

UNESCO 1997


9/12


At the top of the Latin American Tower, Mexico. DahedCamma

According to another view, the distinctivefeature of anthropology lies not in its object ofstudy but in its methodology. The sociologisttalks about the city while the anthropologist letsthe city speak: with their careful observationsand in-depth interviews and their manner ofbeing with people, anthropologists try to hearwhat the city has to say. Paying attention tothe eloquence of everyday acts has beenrewarding as a methodology. From an epistemo-

logical point of view, however, it gives rise todoubts. How much confidence can we have inwhat people say about how they live? Whensubjects relate their experiences, who is speak-ing the individual, the family, the neighbour-hood in which they live or the social class towhich they belong? In response to any urbanproblem transport, pollution, itinerant tradethere are so many opinions and so much infor-mation that it is difficult to distinguish betweenthe real and the imaginary Silva, 1992).

Epistemological analysis of common senseand ordinary language is nowhere more needed

than in the big cities. We cannot record thedivergent views of our informants without ask-ing ourselves if they know what they are saying.Indeed, the fact of having lived a particularexperience intensely obscures the unconsciousmotivations for acting and leads individuals toreshape the facts to construct versions that aresatisfying to themselves. An isolated ethno-graphic approach to the fragmentation of thecity and its discourse usually falls into one of

two traps: either producing monographs whichdescribe urban fragmentaton but fail to explainit or else claiming that the urban fragmentshave been pieced together, opting for the expla-nation of the most vulnerable informants. Themethodological populism of certain anthropol-ogists thus becomes the scientific ally of polit-ical populism.

We are not conceding epistemologicalprivileges to anthropologists or urbanresearchers who take a global view of the city.

The postmodern debate spurred by anthropo-logical research prompts us to think that anthro-

UNESCO 1997


10/12

354 Ntfstor Garcia Canclini

pologists, too, are unsure of their subject whenthey practise ethnography. The polemicaldebates between Robert Redfield and OscarLewis on Tepoztlih, for example, make itappear at times that they are not referring tothe same city and that their research, in additionto proving that they were there, is undertakenas Clifford Geertz suspects, in an effort to createa place for themselves among those who havearrived in the universities and at symposiums.

These three ways of reclaiming the tra-ditions of anthropology the defence of eth-nography, the integration of the socio-economicand the symbolic, and the method of lettingnative theories speak for themselves canenrich urban studies. However, this methodologyhas to transcend local and partial communities

in order to help redefine cities and their placein transnational networks. As anthropologists, wemust not retreat into the illusory independenceof the neighbourhoods or communities andkeep silent about what we can contribute interms of a global view of the city. Why notreadjust the profession to the reality of themegacities instead of holding on to a provincialnotion of structure and social processes? In orderto study urban life properly, is it not essentialto focus on the new forms of identity which

are being shaped as a result of the enormouscommunications networks, the multiple rites andthe access to urban goods that make us part ofinternational communities of consumers? Someresearchers are attempting to prove that anthro-pology can throw light on the new forms ofmulticulturalism and interculturism that are gen-erated in the exchanges which have arisen fromtourism and immigration Valene L. Smith,1989), and the deterritorialization of communi-cation and consumption Renato Ortiz, 1994;

Garcia Canclini, 1995a, 1995b). Against thebackground of the tendency towards homogeniz-ation noted by economists and sociologists,anthropologists can discover how each groupconstructs its own particular profile in differentsocieties and especially in the setting of largecities.

From this vantage point, what best disting-uishes anthropologists is their traditional con-cern for the other, and the others. But the otheris no longer that which is far away and foreign;

it is the multiculturism of the cities in whichwe live. The other is borne within the anthro-pologists themselves as they share in differentlocal cultures and focus less on transnationalcultures AugC, 1994). The current problems ofurban anthropology consist not only in under-standing how people reconcile the rapid paceof an international city with the slow rhythmof the territory itself. The task is also to explainhow the seemingly improved communicationand rationality associated with globalization hasgiven rise to new forms of racism andexclusion. The current rapid increase in funda-mentalism in major cities like Los Angeles,Mexico, Berlin or Lima means that anthropol-ogists cannot merely be apologists of difference.They must seek to understand how international

information networks and the simultaneous needfor belonging and for local roots can coexist,without discriminatory hierarchies, in a multi-cultural democracy.

From this redefinition of anthropology,being elaborated amidst general uncertaintyabout the meaning of cities, it can be concludedthat anthropologists must not perpetuate thetendency of the profession to focus on what isvanishing. This temptation is even greaterbecause the megalopolises are full of books,

magazines and scientific articles that talk aboutthe end of the city for example Chombart deLouwe, 1982). The alarm bells set off by thepopulation explosion, traffic jams, and air andwater pollution bring out the melancholy sideof anthropology its propensity for studyingthe present while yearning for small pre-mod-em communities.

It would be more appropriate to distinguishbetween what is actually dying in the medium-sized and large cities as a result of economic,

technological and sociocultural transformations,at both the city and global levels, and the newforms of urban life. In this respect, urbananthropology is one division of the field thatcan most readily demonstrate its capacity notonly to take pleasure in what is fleeting butalso to disentangle the promises and contributeto resolving the dilemmas of a new century.

Translated f rom Spanish

NESCO 1997


11/12

Urban cultures at the end of the century 355~ ~~

References

ADLER OMNITZ, ., 1994. Redessociales, cultura y poder: ensayosde antropologia latinoamericana.Mexico City: FLASCOh4iguelAngel Porria.

ARIAS, ., 1996. La antropologiaurbana ayer y hoy, Ciudades, 31,julio-septiembre, Mexico City,RNIU.

AucB, M., 1994. LQ sens desautres. Actualire de lanthropologie.Paris: Fayard.

CALDEIRA, .P.R., 1996. Buildingup the walls: the new pattern ofsocial segregation in Slo Paulo,International Social ScienceJournal, Cities of the future:managing social transformations,no. 147, Oxford: BlackwellPublishersNNESCO.

CASTELLS, ., 1974. La cuestionurbana. Mexico City: Siglo XXI.

CASTELLS, ., 1995. La ciudadinformacional. Madrid: Alianza.

CHOMBART E LAUWE, .H.;IMBERT, . (eds), 1982. Labanlieue aujourd hui. Paris:L Harmattan.

DAGNINO, . org.), 1994. s anos90: politica e sociedade no Brasil.S2o Paulo: Brasiliense.

DAVIS,M., 1992. City of Quartz:Excavating the Future in o sAngeles. New York: First VantageBooks Edition.

DURHAM, .R., 1986. A pesquisaantropolbgica compopulacoesurbanos: problemas e perspectivas.In R. Cardoso (org.), A aventuraantropoldgica. Teoria e pesquisa,Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.

EAMES, .; GOODE, .G. 1973.Anthropology of the City.Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:Prentice Hall Inc.

ESTRADA, .R.; NIETO, R.; NIVON,E.; RODRIGUEZ, . (compiladores),

1993. Antropologia y ciudad.Mexico City. CIESASNAM-I.

Ethnologie fragaise. InLethnologie urbaine, Vol. XII, 2,1982.

G A R C ~ AANCLINI, ., 1995a.Hybrid Cultures: strategies fo rentering and leaving modernity.Foreword by Renato Rosaldo.MinneapolisLondon: University ofMinnesota Press.

G A R C ~ AANCLINI, ., 1995b.Consumidores y ciudadanos.Con ictos multiculturales de la

globalizacidn. Mexico: Grijalbo.University of Minnesota Press(forthcoming).

GEERTZ, C., 1987. Work and Lives.The Anthropologist as Author.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

GMELCH, .; ZENNER,W.P., 1996.Urban Life. Readings in UrbanAnthropology. Third edition,Illinois: Waveland Press.

GOODE,G., 1989.I

paradigmaelusivo. Lanthropologia urbana inAmtrica. In A. Signorelli (a curadi), Antropologia urbana.Progettare de abitare: lecontraddiuioni dell urban planning,Monograph, La ricerca folklorica,20, pp. 75-82.

HALL,P., 1996. The global city,International Social ScienceJournal, Cities o f the future:managing social transformations,No. 147, Oxford: BlackwellPublishersNNESCO.

HANNERZ, . 1992. CulturalComplexity. Studies in the SocialOrganization of Meaning. NewYork: Columbia University Press.

HOLSTON, . 1995. Spaces ofInsurgent Citizenship, PlanningTheory 13, pp. 35-51.

HOLSTON, .; APPADURAI, ., 1996.Cities and Citizenship, PublicCulture, Vol 8 , University ofChicago.

KENNY,M.; KERTZER, . (eds),1983. Urban Life in MediterraneanEurope. Urbana: University ofIllinois Press.

KEMPER, .V.; KRATCT, . (eds),199 1 Urban Anthropology andStudies of Cultural Systems andWorld Economic Development, Vol.20, no. 3.

MELA, A,, 1989. Cuidad,comunicacibn, formas deracionalidad, Dialogos de lacomunicacidn, 23, Lima, pp. 10 16.

ORTIZ, R., 1994. Cultura emundializacao. S2o Paulo:Brasiliense.

PERULLI, ., 1995. Atlasmetropolitano. El cambio social enlas grandes ciudades. Madrid:Alianza Universidad.

ROLLWAGEN,., 1980. Cities in aWorld System. Toward anEvolutionary Perspective in theStudy of Urban Anthropology. InT. Collins (ed.), Cities in a Larger

Context, Atlanta: University ofGeorgia Press.

SASSAN, ., 1991. The Global City.New York, London, Tokyo:Princeton University Press.

SEVILLA, ,; AGUILAR, M.A.(coordinadores), 1996. Estudiosrecientes sobre cultura urbana enMixico. Mexico City: Plaza yVald /INAH.

SIGNORELLI, ., 1996. Antropologiaurbana. Introduzione alla ricerca inItalia. Milano: Guerini Studio.

SILVA, . 1992. Imaginariosurbanos. Bogota y do Paulo:cultura y comunicacidn urbana enAmirica Latina. Bogotl: TercerMundo Editores.

SILV A ELLEZ, V., 1994.Sociedade civil e a construqao deespaqos pliblicos. In E. Dagnino(org.), 0 s anos 90: politica esociedade no Brasil, S5o Paulo:Brasiliense, pp. 91-102.

UNESCO 1997


12/12

356 Nhtor GarCa Canclini

SMITH .L., 1989. Anjtriones einvitados. Antropologia del turismo. Oxford University Press. Frontera Norte.Madrid Edymion.

SOUTHALL,. ed.), 1973. UrbanAnthropology: Cross Cultural brava b e Cholos, punks, chavos AlianzdCNCA.

Studies of Urbanization. New York: banda. Tijuana: El Colegio de la

WARD, ., 1991. Mixico; Umegaciudad. Mexico City:ALENZUELA,.M., 1988. A la

UNESCO 1997

Documents

Cancelini_end of Century