Anthropology in the City: Methodology and Theory

242 Pages·2012·2.07 MB·English

by  Italo Pardo

Anthropology in the City
Urban Anthropology
Series editors: italo pardo and giuliana B. prato,
University of Kent, UK
Urban Anthropology is the first series of its kind to be established by a major
academic publisher. Ethnographically global, the series includes original,
empirically based works of high analytical and theoretical calibre. All volumes
published in the series are peer-reviewed.
The editors encourage submission of sole authored and edited manuscripts
that address key issues that have comparative value in the current international
academic and political debates. These issues include, but are by no means limited
to: the methodological challenges posed by urban field research; the role of
kinship, family and social relations; the gap between citizenship and governance;
the legitimacy of policy and the law; the relationships between the legal, the semi-
legal and the illegal in the economic and political fields; the role of conflicting
moralities across the social, cultural and political spectra; the problems raised
by internal and international migration; the informal sector of the economy and
its complex relationships with the formal sector and the law; the impact of the
process of globalization on the local level and the significance of local dynamics
in the global context; urban development, sustainability and global restructuring;
conflict and competition within and between cities.
Other titles in the series
Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance:
Anthropology in the Mediterranean Region
edited by italo pardo and giuliana B. prato
iSBn 978-0-7546-7401-6
Multiculturalism’s Double-Bind:
Creating Inclusivity, Cosmopolitanism and Difference
John nagle
iSBn 978-0-7546-7607-2
Beyond Multiculturalism:
Views from Anthropology
edited by giuliana B. prato
iSBn 978-0-7546-7173-2
Anthropology in the City
Methodology and theory
edited by
itAlo pArdo
University of Kent, UK
giUliAnA B. prAto
University of Kent, UK
© italo pardo and giuliana B. prato 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
italo pardo and giuliana B. prato have asserted their right under the Copyright, designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Anthropology in the city : methodology and theory. --
(Urban anthropology)
1. Urban anthropology--Fieldwork.
i. Series ii. pardo, italo. iii. prato, giuliana B.
307.7’6’0723-dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anthropology in the city : methodology and theory / by Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato,
[editors].
p. cm. -- (Urban anthropology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-0833-8 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-0834-5 (ebook) 1. Urban an-
thropology. i. pardo, italo. ii. prato, giuliana B.
gn395.A54 2012
307.7’6--dc23
ISBN 9781409408338 (hbk) 2012021804
ISBN 9781409408345 (ebk)
V
printed and bound in great Britain by the
MPG Books Group, UK.
Contents
List of Contributors vii
1 introduction:
The Contemporary Significance of Anthropology in the City 1
Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato
2 Comparative Reflections on Fieldwork in Urban India:
A personal Account 29
Jonathan Parry
3 Exercising Power without Authority:
Powerful Elite Implode in Urban Italy 53
Italo Pardo
4 Anthropological research in Brindisi and durrës:
Methodological Reflections 79
Giuliana B. Prato
5 Skopje as a Research Site:
issues of Methodology and representation 101
Ilká Thiessen
6 Contested Spaces:
Street Vendors in the Andean Metropole of Cusco, peru 117
Linda J. Seligmann
7 Celebrating Urban Diversity in a Rainbow Nation:
Political Management of Ethno-cultural Differences in a Malaysian
City 135
Christian Giordano
8 political Manipulation:
death, dying and Funeral processes in northern ireland 155
Marcello Mollica
vi Anthropology in the City
9 Between the Verandah and the Mall:
Fieldwork and the Spaces of Femininity 173
Henrike Donner
10 On Urban Anthropology in Contemporary China 191
Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen
11 Urban Anthropological research:
Old Spaces and New Ways of Living 215
Fernando Monge
Index 225
list of Contributors
Dr Henrike Donner is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes
University. Her research interests include gender and kinship, political
activism and urban anthropology. Since 1995 she has conducted fieldwork
in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, on the transformation of marriage and conjugal
ideals and the impact of privatised healthcare and schooling on middle-class
lifestyles as well as the legacy of the Maoist movement in this urban context.
Dr Donner has published in peer-reviewed journals and books. She is the author
of Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalisation and Middle-Class Identity in
Contemporary India (Ashgate, 2008), and the editor of Being Middle Class in
India: A Way of Life (Routledge, 2011) and (with G. De Neve) of The Meaning of
the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India. (routledge, 2006).
Dr Elisabeth Engebretsen is Research Fellow at Helsinki University’s Collegium
for Advanced Studies, working on a project on the cultural politics of sexuality,
class and space in metropolitan Beijing. Previously, she was postdoctoral fellow
at Duke University (2008–9) and faculty lecturer at McGill University (2009–11).
Her forthcoming monograph is titled Same sex, different women: An ethnography
of being and belonging in urban China.
Dr Christian Giordano is Full professor of Social Anthropology at the University
of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of
Timisoara; Permanent Guest Professor at the Universities of Bucharest, Murcia
and Bydgoszcz; and Guest Lecturer at the University of Naples, Asuncion, Berlin
(Humboldt University), Moscow (Russian State University of Humanities),
Torun, Zurich and Kuala Lumpur (University of Malaya). His research interests
span political and economic anthropology, Southeast Europe (Bulgaria,
Romania), Mediterranean societies (Italy, Greece, Spain) and Southeast Asia
(Malaysia, Singapore). Among Professor Giordano’s vast body of publications,
Handwerker- und Bauernverbände in der sizilianischen Gesellschaft. Zünfte,
Handwerkerkonfraternitäten u. Arbeiterhilfsvereine zwischen 1750 u. 1890
(Artisans and Farmers in Sicilian society. Tübingen: Mohr); Die Betrogenen
der Geschichte. Überlagerungsmentalität und Überlagerungsrationalität in
mediterranen Gesellschaften (The Dupes of History. Frankfurt, New York:
Campus); Власт, недоверие и наследство: Скептична антропология (Power,
Mistrust and Legacy: Sceptical Anthropology. София : Полис).
viii Anthropology in the City
Dr Marcello Mollica currently teaches Anthropology of Conflicts at the University
of Pisa, where he is conducting research on South Lebanese Christian enclaves. Dr
Mollica holds a European Doctorate Enhancement from the University of Deusto,
Bilbao. He was formerly a Marie Curie Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the University
of Ulster, a Marie Curie Intra-European Post-doctorate Fellow at the University
of Kent and a Post-doctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Social
Anthropology at the University of Fribourg. dr Mollica has published several
peer-reviewed essays.
Dr Fernando Monge is professor of Anthropology at the Spanish national
University of Distance Education (UNED), and a member of the Research Group
on Urban Culture investigating emergent cultural practices in the New Madrid.
He has carried out field research in Port Cities in The US, Cape Town, South
Africa and Spain, and historical work on North American Natives. Among his
main publications are: En la Costa de la Niebla. El paisaje y discurso etnográfico
illustrado de la expedición Malaspina en el Pacífico (2002) and the co-edition of
La Habana, Puerto Colonial, 1740–1898 (2000).
Dr Italo Pardo is Honorary Reader in Social Anthropology and a Fellow of Eliot
College at the University of Kent. Dr Pardo has carried out extensive fieldwork
in Italy and England and has produced substantial work in economic and political
anthropology and, over the last fifteen years, in the anthropology of legitimacy
and the law. He has taught at Universities in Naples, Tirana, Florence and Fribourg
and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and books. He is the author
of Managing Existence in Naples: Morality, Action and Structure (Cambridge
University press, 1996) and of Elite Senza Fiducia: Ideologie, Etiche di Potere,
Legittimità (Rubbettino, 2001), as well as of numerous peer-reviewed essays. He
has edited several volumes, including Morals of Legitimacy: Between Agency
and the System (Berghahn, 2000) Between Morality and the Law: Corruption,
Anthropology and Comparative Society (Ashgate, 2004) and, with Giuliana
B. prato, Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance: Anthropology in the
Mediterranean Region (Ashgate, 2010).
Dr Jonathan Parry is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School
of Economics and Political Science. He has done field research in various parts of
north and central india on various different topics. his publications include Caste and
Kinship in Kangra (routledge 1979), Death in Banaras (Cambridge University Press,
1994), Death and the Regeneration of Life (ed. with M. Bloch, Cambridge University
press, 1982), Money and the Morality of Exchange (ed. with M. Bloch, Cambridge
University press, 1989), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour (ed. with J. Breman
and K. Kapadia, Sage publications, 1999), Institutions and Inequalities (ed. with R.
Guha, Oxford University Press, 1999), Questions of Anthropology (ed. with R. Astuti
and C. Stafford, Berg, 2007) and Industrial work and life: An anthropological Reader
(ed. with G. De Neve and M. Mollona. London: Berg, 2009).
List of Contributors ix
Dr Giuliana B. Prato is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent.
Dr Prato has carried out fieldwork in Italy, England and Albania and has lectured
at the Universities of naples, Florence, london, Kent, tirana and Fribourg. She
serves as Chair of the Commission on Urban Anthropology (IUAES). Dr Prato
has widely published her research in Italy, England and Albania. Among her most
recent publications, Beyond Multiculturalism: Views from Anthropology (Ashgate
2009) and Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance: Anthropology in the
Mediterranean Region (ed. with I. Pardo, Ashgate 2010).
Dr Linda J. Seligmann is professor of Anthropology at george Mason University.
She is a specialist on Latin America with research interests in agrarian issues,
political economy and the dynamics of gender, class and ethnicity in the informal
sector of the economy. Her publications include Peruvian Street Lives: Culture,
Power and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco (University of illinois
press, 2004), Women Traders in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Mediating Identities,
Marketing Wares (Stanford, 2001), and Between Reform and Revolution: Political
Struggles in the Peruvian Andes, 1969–1991 (Stanford, 1995), as well as numerous
articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr Ilká Thiessen is professor of Anthropology at Vancouver island University.
She has carried out research in the republic of Macedonia on social change,
identity, space and gender and is currently working on development, identity
and nationalism. Dr Thiessen is the author of Waiting for Macedonia: Identity
in a Changing World (University of Toronto Press, 2007), which was translated
in Macedonian and published by Tabahon Publishers with the support of the
Macedonian Ministry of Culture. She is currently completing two books, one with
Professor Ljupčo Risteski on Wedding and Nationalism in Macedonia and one on
Macedonia’s New Identity: Toše Proeski the Saint, Bulgarian Passports and the
Hunza-Macedonian Royalties. She has published extensively in edited volumes
and in peer-reviewed journals.