Anthropological perspectives are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologists have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. The New Urban Anthropology Reader corrects this omission by presenting 12 cross-cultural case studies focusing on the analysis of space and place.
Five images of the city—the divided city, the contested city, the global city, the modernist city, and the postmodern city—serve as the framework for the selected essays. These images highlight current research trends in urban anthropology, such as poststructural studies of race, class, and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and
studies of the symbolic and social production of urban space and planning.
Selected Chapters:
Theorizing the City: An Introduction by Setha M. Low
Part I. The Divided City
The Changing Significance of Race and Class in an African American Community, Steven Gregory
Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation by Teresa P. R. Caldeira
Part II. The Contested City
Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica, Setha M. Low
Part III. The Global City
Wholesale Sushi: Culture and Commodity in Tokyo’s Tsukiki Market, Ted Bestor
Part IV. The Modernist City
The Modernist City and the Death of the Street by James Holston
Part V. The Postmodern City
Spatial Discourse and Social Boundaries: Re-imagining the Toronto Waterfront by Matthew Cooper