La ciudad desdibujada. Aproximaciones antropológicas para el estudio de la ciudad

Abstract

In her review on the anthropology of cities (1996), Setha M. Low remarked on two salient aspects of the recent literature: first, the subject "is under theorized in anthropology"; second, the "anthropological voice is rarely heard in the urban studies and urban policy discourse." The more we know about the city from an anthropological perspective, the more the cities we study appear to evade us. In this paper the author addresses, from a personal vantage point, the issues raised by Low. Both the historical development of urban anthropology and the emergence of complex new urban forms, together with the ways of conceptualizing them, are related to the current state of urban anthropology.