Antropología y ciudad: hacia un análisis crítico e histórico

Departing from a theoretical discussion of the relationship between anthropology and the city, we problematize the foundations of both urban and anthropological studies. Rather than viewing the city as a stable and universal category, we emphasize the possibilities anthropology has to approach cities as products of historically-situated social practices. We illustrate this proposal by focusing on urbanistic projects in the city of Bogotá during three historical moments and by analyzing contemporary imaginations of the cities of the future

Of food courts and other demons: shopping malls in Mexico as new centers for urban life

Shopping malls are a global phenomenon that has transformed the urban landscape towards a division in homogenized spaces worldwide throughout the last decades. We find malls in almost every bigger city. They offer a space where everybody, no matter where they are from, knows one’s way around. Especially Mexico seems to offer a fertile ground for the success of malls as they offer a presumably needed safe and prestigious space for social encounter. Furthermore, they often provoke the consolidation of whole new city districts. In consequence, what makes this phenomenon interesting for an anthropological study, are the socio-spatial practices that go beyond the intended use of a mall. This article wants to give a brief insight on the impact that malls can have on Mexican cities, using the city of Puebla as an example. Therefore it shall be questioned what makes malls so attractive and how this changes social dynamics in the urban landscape.Keywords: Shopping Malls. Urban Anthropology. Globalization. Public Space. Social Exclusion

Què passa amb els sants? Imatges del sagrat a Cachoeira, Brasil

Aquest article proposa una aproximació a l’antropologia de les imatges basada en les propostes de Belting, Gell i Latour. Podem desenvolupar una antropologia de les imatges que analitzi les imatges no només com a textos sinó també com a persones? És a dir, no només com a fixacions de representacions col.lectives, o símbols, essencialment diferents dels actors socials, sinó també com a actors socials en si mateixes? El cas etnogràfic en que es basa l’argument de l’article es el Candomblé brasiler, en el context del camp religiós de la ciutat de Cachoeira, a Bahia. Paraules clau: antropologia de les imatges, Candomblé, religió popular, iconoclastia, pentecostalisme. Abstract This article develops an approach to the anthropology of images based on the work of Belting, Gell and Latour. Can we construct an anthropology of images which analyzes images not just as texts, but also as persons? That is to say, not just as a means of fixing collective representations or symbols understood as essentially different from social actors, but also as social actors in themselves? The ethnographic case on which the argument is based is Brazilian Candomblé, analyzed in the context of religious belief and practice in the city of Cachoeira, in the state of Bahia. Keywords: anthropology of images, Candomblé, popular religion, iconoclasm, Pentecostalism

Ethics or the Right Thing?

A sympathetic examination of the failure of anti-corruption efforts in contemporary Indonesia. Combining ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Kupang with an acute historical sensibility, Sylvia Tidey shows how good governance initiatives paradoxically perpetuate civil service corruption while also facilitating the emergence of new forms of it. Importing critical insights from the anthropology of ethics to the burgeoning anthropology of corruption, Tidey exposes enduring developmentalist fallacies that treat corruption as endemic to non-Western subjects. In practice, it is often indistinguishable from the ethics of care and exchange, as Indonesian civil servants make worthwhile lives for themselves and their families. This book will be a vital text for anthropologists and other social scientists, particularly scholars of global studies, development studies, and Southeast Asia

Family size and intergenerational social mobility during the fertility transition: evidence of resource dilution from the city of Antwerp in nineteenth century Belgium

It has been argued in sociology, economics, and evolutionary anthropology that family size limitation enhances the intergenerational upward mobility chances in modernized societies. If parents have a large flock, family resources get diluted and intergenerational mobility is bound to head downwards. Yet, the empirical record supporting this resource dilution hypothesis is limited. This article investigates the empirical association between family size limitation and intergenerational mobility in an urban, late nineteenth century population in Western Europe. It uses life course data from the Belgian city of Antwerp between 1846 and 1920. Findings are consistent with the resource dilution hypothesis: after controlling for confounding factors, people with many children were more likely to end up in the lower classes. Yet, family size limitation was effective as a defensive rather than an offensive strategy: it prevented the next generation from going down rather than helping them to climb up the social ladder. Also, family size appears to have been particularly relevant for the middle classes. Implications for demographic transition theory are discussed

Two Kitchens and Other ‘Modern’ Stories

This paper examines the ongoing phenomenon of household nuclearization in the Newar city of Bhaktapur, Nepal. Building upon 15 months of ethnographic research conducted in 2018–19 among middle-class families, I investigate the reasons for household fission and the related kinship transformations. Tracing the interconnected stories of conflict and dispersal of the members of a joint family, I argue that transitions in domestic structures not only represent the consequence of improved economic possibilities but also communicate dramatic social transformations and a redefinition of hierarchies of value and power between family members, which emerge alongside new ideas of family and self. By negotiating domestic spaces and practices, householders redefine a modern dharma to attain a middle class ideal of relatedness. By considering the domestic as the locus of the negotiations between social change and continuity, and by looking at conflict as a dialogical process of cultural revision, this study provides a new perspective on the making of moral modernities in Nepal, ultimately contributing to recent debates in the fields of kinship studies, anthropology of conflict, and moral anthropology

Family size and intergenerational social mobility during the fertility transition

It has been argued in sociology, economics, and evolutionary anthropology that family size limitation enhances the intergenerational upward mobility chances in modernized societies. If parents have a large flock, family resources get diluted and intergenerational mobility is bound to head downwards. Yet, the empirical record supporting this resource dilution hypothesis is limited. This article investigates the empirical association between family size limitation and intergenerational mobility in an urban, late nineteenth century population in Western Europe. It uses life course data from the Belgian city of Antwerp between 1846 and 1920. Findings are consistent with the resource dilution hypothesis: after controlling for confounding factors, people with many children were more likely to end up in the lower classes. Yet, family size limitation was effective as a defensive rather than an offensive strategy: it prevented the next generation from going down rather than helping them to climb up the social ladder. Also, family size appears to have been particularly relevant for the middle classes. Implications for demographic transition theory are discussed.Belgium, demographic transition, fertility, nineteenth century, parental investment, quantity-quality trade-off, resource dilution, social mobility

Trigger Point

TRIGGER POINT aims to create new points of interaction between artists and experts from a broad range of disciplines to consider how art can have a role in shaping the future city and how this can be facilitated by new digital platforms for sustainable international discussion across disciplines. The core participants in the workshop were artists and academics in the field contemporary fine art, architecture, urban studies, social anthropology, human and physical geography, territorial engineering, digital communications, politics, futurology and history. The group also comprised of curators and representatives of arts commissioning bodies, participants from local government and cultural organisations as well as representatives from the commercial sector. This range of people shared knowledge and working methods through a series of curated city walks which will lead to an exhibition of city guides that together will provide the basis for a new digital platform