Current Approaches

to the Anthropology of Urban and Complex Societies

The Ga Family and Social Change. Diana Gladys Azu. African Social Research Documents, 5.
Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum; Cambridge, England: African Studies Centre, 1974.vii + 139
PP. n-P. (paper).
Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa: A Study of the Ivory Coast. Michael A. Cohen.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.x 262 pp. $14.75 (cloth).
Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos. Patrick Cole. African Studies Series,
12.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.xi + 297 pp. $17.50 (cloth).
Latin American Urban Research. Volume 4: Anthropological Perspectives on Latin
American Urbanization. Wayne A. Cornelius and Felicity M. Trueblood, eds. Beverly Hills:
Sage, 1974. 296 pp. $17.50 (cloth).
The Culture of Acadiana: Tradition and Change in South Louisiana. Steven L. Del Sesto and
Jon L. Gibson, eds. Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1975.vi + 174 pp. n.p.
(cloth).
Gypsies in the City: Culture Patterns and Survival. Rena C. Gropper. Princeton: Darwin
Press, 1975.xi + 235 pp. $9.95 (cloth).
Diffusion of Innovations in Sierra Leone, West Africa: First Report of the Introduction and
Diffusion of a New Rice Farming Method among Koranko Farmers in Alikalia, Koinadugu
District, December 1973-February 1974. A Study on Human Communication. A. W. Haas.
Leiden: Institute of Cultural and Social Studies, Leiden State University, 1974.ix + 71 pp.
n.p. (paper).
Urban Man in Southern Africa. Cliue Kileff and Wade C. Pendleton, eds. Gwelo, Rhodesia:
Mambo Press (distributed in the U.S. by Mambo Press, Signal Mountain, Tennessee), 1975.
254 pp. n.p. (paper).
Blue Collar Community. William Kornblum. Foreword by Morris Janowitz. Studies of Urban
Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.xvii + 260 pp. $9.95 (cloth).
Selective Genocide in Burundi. RenS Lemarchand and David Martin. Minority Rights Group
Report 20. London: Minority Rights Group, 1974. 36 pp. $1.50 (paper).
Gypsies, Tinkers and Other Travellers. Famham Rehfisch, ed. New York: Academic Press,
1975.x + 303 pp. €5.80 (cloth).
Mutations Sociales en Guin&. Claude Riui2re. Paris: Marcel RiviBre, 1971. 418 pp. n.p.
(paper).
Polish-American Community Life: A Survey of Research. Irwin T. Sanders and Ewa T.
Morawska. Community Sociology Monograph Series, 2. New York: Polish Institute of Arts
and Sciences in America, 1975.vi + 300 pp. $6.50 (paper).
The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot. Dauid 0. Sears and
John B. McConahay. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.xii + 244 pp. n.p. (paper).
African Urban Life: The Transformation of Ouaguadougou. Elliott P. Skinner. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. xii + 487 pp. $20.00 (cloth).
414
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 415

The Cocktail Waitress: Woman’s Work in a Man’s World. James P. Spmdley and Brenda J.
Mann. New York: Wiley, 1975. 154 pp. n.p. (paper).
Daytop Village: A Therapeutic Community. Barry Sugarman. Case Studies in Cultural
Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. x + 134 pp. $3.25 (paper).
Gypsies: The Hidden Americans. Anne Sutherland. New York: Free Press, 1975. x + 330 pp.
$13.95 (cloth).
The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825.
Jon C. Teaford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. viii + 152 pp. $9.75 (cloth).
Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area,
1880-1930. Siluuno M. Tomasi. Staten Island: Center for Migration Studies, 1975. xi + 201
pp. $9.95 (cloth).
Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Uganda Asians. Michael Twaddle, ed. University of
London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Commonwealth Papers, 18. Atlantic High-
lands, New Jersey: Humanities Press; London: Athlone/University of London, 1975. viii +
240 pp. $13.50 (paper).
African Farmers in Rhodesia: Old and New Peasant Communities in Karangaland.
A. K . H. Weinrich. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. x + 342 pp. $22.00 (cloth).
The Man in the Principal’s Office: An Ethnography. Harry F. Wolcott. Case Studies in
Education and Culture. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. xviii + 334 pp. $5.00
(paper).

RICHARD BASHAM
DAVID DeGROOT
University of Colorado, Boulder

Most anthropological work in the future will be undertaken in urban and complex
societies. Indeed, this may already be true today. Such work will shift the role of social and
cultural anthropologists from that of modern classicists, as keepers of vanished or vanishing
traditions in verbal formaldehyde, to individuals whose unique perspective on current issues
will come to be valued by nonanthropologists for something other than its quaint novelty.
The fields of “urban anthropology” and the “anthropology of complex societies” seem to
have crept up gradually and almost unnoticed, albeit inevitably, upon anthropologists. A
conversation with almost any urban anthropologist, especially one who has not been directly
involved in the more fully developed area of urban African studies, is likely to turn on the
fact that he is an urban anthropologist self-taught. Even just a decade ago when the senior
author began graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley no structured
seminars or courses in urban anthropology were yet available. Today, however, courses have
proliferated throughout North American universities and many anthropologists who began
their careers studying peasant or tribal groups now consider themselves “urban anthro-
pologists. ”
Despite the apparent recognition which urban anthropology has gained, in the eyes of
many it still retains a questionable and somewhat “pop” status similar t o the attitude which
Kimball noted two decades ago when he spoke of the fact that “most Amencan
anthropologists view the study of American communities as a fringe activity which is really
more closely allied to sociology” (1955:1132). Contrary t o the assumptions of many who
still regard urban anthropology as somewhat peripheral to the discipline as a whole, an
extensive literature has already been amassed in the anthropological study of urban and
complex societies. Undoubtedly the principal reason underlying the lack of recognition of
41 6 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79, 1977

this fact, and urban anthropology’s somewhat undeserved status as a fledgling branch of the
discipline, is that urban anthropological literature has not yet been systematically organized.
Anyone who has attempted to come to grips with it has surely experienced periods of
despair in which it seemed that no order could truly be found. There is not yet, for example,
a true textbook in urban anthropology. There are several readers (Fried1 and Crissman
1975;Foster and Kemper 1974;Mangin 1970;and Southall 1973),and several texts titled
Urban Anthropology which devote themselves to the study of a particular region (Gutkind
1974) or are aimed toward introductory anthropology students (Uzzell and Provencher
1976),but as yet we have no comprehensive introduction to the field. Those like Gutkind
(1973)who have compiled comprehensive bibliographies of the field have been forced to
proliferate categorical subheadings to the point where they assume an almost ad hdc
character. The problem of bringing order, and hence legitimacy, to the area has been
complicated by the fact that much valuable work on urban forms has been done by
sociologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, and historians. Discipline
boundaries in urban work have sometimes become so permeable as to have disappeared
altogether. So much valuable work has been done by nonanthropologists on Western and
non-Western cities and their inhabitants that past concern as to what should properly
constitute the subject matter and methods of anthropologists seems to be almost of a
different order. Even a definition of urban anthropology as “what urban anthropologists do”
will not suffice. Instead, we must stretch the boundaries of the field still farther to recognize
that urban anthropology is not only what urban anthropologists do but what interests them
in the performance of these duties.
During the past several years this article’s senior author has been engaged in writing what
he hopes will be a comprehensive and synthesizing urban anthropology text (Basham 19771,
while the junior author has joined him in a continuous series of independent study courses
focusing upon an exhaustive reading, abstracting, and discussion of the literature. What has
become apparent to us both is that the field of urban anthropology is not nearly so
fragmented as it sometimes seems. Most of the research which individuals who call
themselves urban anthropologists have done and most of the work of nonanthropologists
which they consider relevant to their workwhich together comprise our understanding of
what urban anthropology is-has quite clearly (and quite naturally) evolved from concerns
common to more traditional anthropological work in smaller scale societies. Urban work has
not moved urban anthropologists to different theoretical and methodological realms but has,
on the whole, reflected and reworked those which already existed. This continuity of
tradition can best be seen by examining the concerns central to most urban anthropological
work:
(1) Rural-Urban Migmtion: Why and in what patterns do people migrate to cities? (see
Balan 1969; Blumenfeld 1965; Butterworth 1962; Elizaga 1969;Evers 1975;Flinn 1968;
Hackenberg and Wilson 1972; Kemper 1974; Kerri 1976; Kuper 1965; Lee 1966; Little
1965;MacDonald and MacDonald 1968;Phillips 1959;Plotnicov 1965;Simid 1973;Simons
and Cardona G. 1972;Sovani 1966;Van Hoey 1968;Watson 1974;Zachariah 1966).
(2) Family Structure: What effect do urban migration and prolonged urban residence
have upon the family and traditional kinship systems and kin obligations? (see Adams 1968,
1970; Aldous 1962; Ames 1969; Axelrod 1956; BariC 1967; Berkner 1973; Bott 1957;
Bruner 1961;Clignet 1966;Codere 1955;Coult and Habenstein 1962, 1965;Eames 1967,
1970;Freed and Freed 1969;Freedman 1957;Furstenberg 1966;Garigue 1956;J. G. Goode
1970;W. J. Goode 1963;Hammel 1961,1964,1969;Jitodai 1963;Kemper 1974;Laslett
1973; Lewis 1952,1973;Little and Price 1974;Litwak 1960;Marris 1962;E. C. Masuoka
1962;J. Masuoka 1947;Matthiasson 1974;McCall 1961;Parsons 1943,1949;Rioux 1959;
Rowe 1973; Smelser 1966;Southall and Gutkind 1957;Vatuk 1971;Young and Willmott
1957).
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 411

(3) Adaptation and Adjustment: What effect does urban migration and residence have
upon individual adaptations and personal adjustment? (see Anderson 1972;Ashton 1972;
Barakbah 1971; Balsara 1961;Cambell 1970; Delhi School of Social Work 1959; Dwyer
1964, 1970;Epstein 1972;Fried 1963;Graves 1970,1973;Hackenberg and Gallagher 1972;
Jackson 1976;Johnson and Sanday 1971;Juppenlatz 1970;Khalaf 1965;Leeds 1969;Lewis
1961, 1966a,1966b, 1966c;Mangin 1967;Mangin and Cohen 1964;Moorthy 1959;Portes
1972;Price 1968;Raymaekers 1963;Rodman 1968;Salmen 1969;Sovani 1966;Taira 1969;
Weinberg 1965).
(4) Social Stratification and Pluralism: What is the impact upon group identity of urban
residence with others of different tribal or ethnic backgrounds? What forms of social
stratification are characteristic of cities? (see Berreman 1972; Boonsanong 1971; Bruner
1973; A. Cohen 1969;DeVos and Wagatsuma 1966; Doughty 1970; Evers 1975;Geertz
1963;Gutkind 1965;Jacobson 1968;Khuri 1968;Little 1974;Mayer 1961;McGee 1975;
Ottenberg 1974;Parkin 1969;Plotnicov 1972;Schildkrout 1975;Shack 1973;G. W. Skinner
1958; Southall 1975; Spiro 1955; Thompson 1974; Tschopik 1967; Van Velsen 1961;
Wallerstein 1960;Weiss 1974;D. E. Willmott 1960;W. E. Willmott 1969).
(5) Ethnogmphy and Ethnology: How can the traditional methodological concerns of
participant observation and holism be reconciled with the scale and divexity of city life?
How can we approach the cross-cultural study of cities in order to reach meaningful
generalizations about urban life? (see Agar 1973; Fleuret 1974; Fox 1972;Gulick 1975;
Kimball 1955;Leeds 1968;Liebow 1967;Mitchell 1969;Moore 1975;Nagata 1974;Pelto
1972;Price 1972;Redfield and Singer 1954;Rollwagen 1972;Smith 1975;Spradley 1972).
Not unsurprisingly, in terms of the interest with which anthropologists have approached
these topics, many of the works cited above actually overlap several divisions. Examination
of them and the research areas under which we have them clustered demonstrates how such
traditional anthropological topics as kinship, the place of the individual in society, the
acculturative impact of contact between and among cultures, and how best to achieve
accurate descriptive ethnographies amenable to cross-cultural comparison, have been
transplanted to urban research settings. Only a concern with motivations for rural-urban
migration is truly peculiar to urban anthropology and even here the study of the effect of
migration upon traditional societies is very much a part of anthropology’s long concern with
acculturation. Even the problem of scale and how ethnographers are to cope with large
populations is merely a compounding of one which anthropologists have always faced: how
accurately do their informants portray the culture as a whole?
Using these basic orienting categories we will turn to the task of reviewing a number of
recent contributions to urban anthropology. We are fully conscious of the fact that a
number of the works reviewed are more catholic in their concern than their setting in one
category would imply. Consequently, although for the most part we have considered each
work only under one topic we have tried where possible, and where we think the text under
consideration merits it, not to limit our discussion to only those points which apply directly
to the topic at hand.

RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION

The tremendous growth of the world’s cities in the past century has led many researchers
to focus upon the study of motivations for migration and its impact on cities and their
hinterlands. To some degree migration is touched upon by almost every article gathered in
Latin American Urban Research ( L AU R ) , Volume 4 . Jack Rollwagen’s article, “Mediation
and Rural-Urban Migration in Mexico: A Proposal and a Case Study,” offers a Mexican
illustration of the world-wide phenomenon of migrants of similar backgrounds establishing
and monopolizing a particular business or service niche. In this case, the residents of the
418 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST “79, 1977

small village of Mexticacan have spread throughout Mexico as owners and workers in
popsicle and ice cream businesses. Unfortunately, the article concentrates upon a discussion
of “mediation” which adds little to our understanding of the phenomena under study and
offers only a rather terse fleshing out of the actual process involved. We hope that Rollwagen
will pursue his research in greater depth and concentrate upon the apparently increasing
tendency of proprietors to engage citizens of the villages in which they operate their
businesses rather than import workers from the home village, a pattern which should presage
a gradual shift in identification from their “home” village to their new residence. Most
interestingly, two of the LAUR articles (Isbell’s study of “The Influence of Migrants upon
Traditional Social and Political Concepts” in their home villages and Robert’s study of “The
Interrelationships of City and Provinces in Peru and Guatemala”) focus upon migrants as
sources of change in their home areas. City migrants who retain strong ties with their village
and regularly remit portions of their earnings home can have far greater influence in their
families and villages than they could have ever hoped for had they not migrated. In some
cases nearly every family in a village may become dependent on its export of workers
(Watson 1974), in others migrants may join together to sponsor important rural
development projects which benefit all in their home regions (Shack 1973), while in certain
others traditional village hierarchies can be shaken by remittances which raise families
formerly at the bottom to “nouveau riche” status (Rowe 1973). Isbell’s article illustrates
how the Peruvian migrants’ exposure t o the national bureaucracy in Lima has encouraged
them to assault the entrenched village hierarchy and to press agrarian reform against the
large landholdings of the Catholic church. Roberts approaches the study of the effects which
migration has upon villages of origin from a comparative perspective. Contrasting the cases
of Guatemala and Peru, he concurs with Isbell in her assessment of the concern which most
Peruvian migrants retain for their natal village. In Lima, migrants join together in regional
associations to donate toward village public works and lobby the government on behalf of
the village. In contrast to the rural-oriented strategy of Peruvian migrants, in Guatemala
Roberts found whole households selling their property and leaving the village so that
“migration is more frequently a final resort of people who cannot make a living in a village,
and it often entails the severance of social and economic ties with the village” (p. 218). The
virtual abandonment of the countryside which Roberts portrays for Guatemala can clearly
enhance urban homogeneity as migrants commit themselves to urban lives but it does so at
great cost to the exacerbation of rural-urban differences and retards the development of
rural areas. In contrast, the maintenance of Peruvian migrant identity may add to the
anxieties of middle class Limeiios (Doughty 1970, 1972; Mangin 1967; Mangin and Cohen
1964) but may actually serve to reduce national divisions in the long run by enhancing the
quality of life in rural areas and mediating between Lima and “Cholo” lifestyles.
Tomasi’s cerebral excursion into the historical sociology of Italian immigrants to New
York City and the parishes which ministered to them, Piety and Power, provides further
illustration of the shift away from preoccupation with the motivations which underlie
migration (especially of “push” and “pull” factors) toward concern with the dynamics of
the acculturative process. The hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants who arrived in
the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were overwhelmingly
unskilled and illiterate. Perhaps even more than other immigrant groups, they were
considered ill-suited for American citizenship. Some, of course, came to America only to
accumulate savings to establish a small business in Italy while others oscillated between
Italian homes and American jobs. Most stayed, however, to eventually become American
citizens. Tomasi traces their progress toward Americanization through an initial period of
rejection and the subsequent creation of parallel institutions t o a gradual process of
acculturation and assimilation to American society as equals. While acknowledging that “as
individuals, the immigrants would have lost ethnic and religious identity in the pluralistic
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 41 9
American society” (p. 178), he argues somewhat obliquely that the immigrants had t o
“become a community, at least at the local level of the neighborhood . . . [as] the immigrant
group could compete in the pluralistic structure of American society only as a group” (p.
179). The vehicle for the community which Tomasi thinks necessary for eventual
assimilation was the Catholic Church and the formation of separate Italian parishes in
response to the domination and rejection, of Italian churchgoers by their English-speaking,
acculturated, Irish coreligionists. The rejection created a schism which Tomasi vividly
portrays in his description of early “duplex parishes” in which Italians conducted services in
the basements of Irish churches and his inclusion of some of the apparently voluminous
correspondence which the Italian clergy generated in its efforts t o gain greater autonomy
within the American church. In reading this well-considered and researched book, however,
one is inclined to question whether Tomasi’s position as a cleric and the current high regard
for pluralism in American academia may have led him to exaggerate the ultimate benefits of
the establishment of separate parishes. It is difficult to know whether Tomasi chronicles
actual reality when he suggests that numerous Italian immigrants were actively concerned
with securing their own, ethnically-distinct parishes or whether all this was simply an
administrative fracas among competing priests and church officials which was rather
peripheral to the hard-working lives of their parishioners. Despite Tomasi’s considerable
argumentative talents, it seems t o us quite likely that the church’s internal competition for
human resources and the role which separate parishes probably played in maximizing church
allegiance of Italian immigrants did little to facilitate the process of acculturation and
assimilation itself. On the contrary, it seems more plausible to conclude that the assimilation
of the descendants of the original migrants has taken place more in spite of, rather than as a
result of, the formation of the Italian parishes.

URBAN FAMILY STRUCTURE

A major concern of urban sociological and anthropological research of the past several
decades has been to discover what, if any, impact urbanization and urban residence has upon
the functioning of families. Parsons (1943)and Smelser (1959,1966) have suggested that
urbanization and/or industrialization tend to result in a progressive nuclearization of the
family and to limit the scope of kinship’s importance both in terms of the actual range of
recognized relatives and the functions which kin provide for each individual. Others have
suggested that American and Western European families tended toward an isolated nuclear
family structure even before large-scale industrialization and urban growth took place
( Furstenberg 1966; Laslett 1973), while numerous researchers have denied that the
importance of kin declines in the city in any event (Adams 1970;Bruner 1961;Jitodai 1963;
Litwak 1960). Unfortunately, most of this research suffers from the fact that it is limited to
determining whether extended kinship ties continue to be maintained in industrial society
rather than focusing on the more salient issues of the character and intensity of the ties.
Additionally, as Coult and Habenstein (1965)pointed out, a great deal of the controversy
surrounding Parson’s (1943:27-28)“isolated conjugal family” hypothesis is evidently the
result of a blurring of two separate issues: the use of the extended family ties to form
corporate groups and the functioning of nonnuclear ties as a basis for the construction of
interactional dyads.
Tomasi suggests that “the process of emigration de-socialized the southern Italian
immigrant from his familism and made him aware of his individualism” (p. 32), a point
which coincides with Collard’s description of the increasing independence of young Cajun
couples from family authority and obligation in his article “The Cajun Family: Adjustment
to Modern Trends” in The Culture of Acadiona, and Am’s findings in her impressive study
of The Ga Family and Social Change. Stressing the adaptation of Ga families to urban life,
 420 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977

Azu describes the manner in which the solidarity of traditional corporate lineages has been
undermined by the dispersion of their members and by the increasing emphasis upon
literacy. The nuclear family appears to be emerging as the basic residential unit, and
polygamy seems on the decline, while the greater social role of the conjugal family is
apparently coupled with a marked increase in the importance of romance as a basis for
marriage. Formal education, which has become crucially important in the achievement of
social position and wealth, has encouraged the decline of the position of lineage elders both
by removing their economic importance and undermining the significance of the traditional
knowledge upon which much of their authority was based. Today, even the elders, together
with other members of the lineage, must often look to wealthy and educated young lineage
members for economic aid. Far from chronicling the “disintegration” of the traditional
family, as the summary of the book on its back cover suggests, Azu approaches her data
without remorse or romanticism for a vanished past and focuses on changes in Ga kinship
and social organization as adaptive responses to a new order.
Kemper, in his study of Tzintzuntzan migrants to Mexico City (LA UR),also emphasizes
the adaptive character of rural-urban kinship differences. His survey of households revealed
that the proportion of those which were nuclear, joint, and truncated was roughly the same
in both Tzintzuntzan and among Tzintzuntzefios resident in Mexico City. Closer
investigation revealed, however, that relatives frequently lived in separate units of the same
cluster of apartments (uecindad), shared many of their daily activities and much of their
leisure time together, yet paid their own rents and regarded themselves as residents of
separate households. In reanalysis of his data Kemper found that recognition of this pattern
and elimination of the strict coresidence criterion left only a third of the Mexico City group
without significant ties to members of their extended family in the city. Indeed, while
extended family ties were invariably weak and sometimes lacking altogether in Tzintzuntzan,
residence in the city seemed to strengthen them since they served as “significant adjuncts to
the nuclear household in easing urban adaptation” (p. 28). Additionally, Mexico City
residence and the relative economic success which is generally coupled with it seems to have
enhanced family unity, educational opportunities for children, and reduced dependence
upon male machismo and female madre abnegada coping patterns.
Undoubtedly, the major source of disaffection between rural and urban kin is the demand
which rural people frequently place upon the resources of their city relatives. For this reason
especially, maintenance of ties with rural kin is frequently disadvantageous for urban-
oriented migrants who gain little from them but are expected to remain available to help.
Boswell’s impressive use of network analysis in his “Kinship, Friendship and the Concept of
a Social Network” (in Urban Man in Southern Afnca) illustrates the tendency for achieved
friendship networks to predominate in cities, through his analysis of the network of
“Trueman,” an urban, middle class Zambian. Trueman’s kinsmen had only a limited
association with other members of his social network, most of whom were his social peers.
Since mutual interests between relatives were often limited by different lifestyles, kin
relations tended to be activated only when they could be used for economic benefit. As a
successful member of his kindred, Trueman “regarded most of his kinsmen as worthless
countrymen who were eager to sponge off his father and himself once they were successful,
although they had had no interest in them before” (p. 168). Similarly, Kileff’s article in the
same volume, “Black Surbanites: An African Elite in Salisbury, Rhodesia,” chronicles the
situation of a black Rhodesian elite whose advancement and personal freedom is thwarted
by white restrictions on the one hand and threatened by expectations of rural relatives on
the other. Although members of the older generation continue to feel obligated to at least
entertain if not meet their relatives’ requests for aid, the growing sense of membership in an
elite class and the decline of tribal identities will undoubtedly free their children from such
demands. Already, children of the black suburbanites
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN A N D COMPLEX SOCIETIES 421
are growing up differently. Most attend multi-racial schools. They know little about
traditional customs. They know TV, European food, beds, bathrooms, and many other
luxuries that their rural relatives do not have. Some parents are embarrassed by their
children’s behaviour when they visit in the country. Children are often ignorant of what is
expected of them and do not know how to maintain the balance [p. 941.

URBAN ADAPTATION AND ADJUSTMENT

Anthropological and sociological writings on urban adjustments and adaptations have

often focused upon personal and societal pathology: on city slums and squatter settlements
(Epstein 1972; Laquian 1971; Leeds 1969; MacEwen 1972; Mangin 1967; Mangin and
Cohen 1964;Portes 1972),crime (Hauser 1957;Weinberg 1965),prostitution (Cohen 1969;
Khalaf 1965), alcoholism (Graves 1967, 1970), begging (Chan ms.; Delhi School of Social
Work 1959; Moorthy 1959; Taira 1969), overcrowding (Anderson 1972; Jackson 1976;
Kaye 1960), whether or not urban life leads to increased levels of mental and physical
pathology (Cambell 1970; Fried 1963; Hackenberg and Gallagher 1972;Leighton 1969;
Patrick 1971; Plog 1969; Scotch 1960; Srole 1962), and the notion of the “culture of
poverty” (Irelan 1969; Johnson and Sanday 1971; Lewis 1966a, 1966b, 1966c, 1969;
Valentine 1968;Wright 1971). Despite ample evidence that rural and small town life is itself
far from the uniform idyll some imagine (Edgerton 1971;Foster 1965;Lewis 1951),the
idea persists that urban life is somehow more harsh and less natural for humans.
Preoccupation with urban pathology has, in the past, often been rooted in unquestioned
reality. Certainly, the initial period of England’s industrial revolution in which the life
expectancy of the average Londoner was 36 years, and that of residents of Manchester and
Liverpool was only 26 years, compared to 41 years for England and Wales as a whole, must
have been quite gruesome for most urbanites (Davis 1968);Such conditions undoubtedly
prompted Thomas Jefferson to warn that: “When we get piled upon one another in large
cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as
they do there” (quoted in Plog 1969:288).Today, with the development of the germ theory
of disease and the spread of modern sanitation methods, however, urban life expectancies in
even the poorest nations often exceed those of rural areas (Hanna and Hanna 1971:95-96;
Brand 1958:264,269).
One of the most recent academic codifications of the implicit feelings of many
researchers that the city is destructive to individual well being is the concept of the
“marginality” of poor urbanites. Nelson (1969)applies the term to “the growing numbers of
unskilled, semi-employed and abysmally poor urbanites” of Latin America who
are economically marginal, in that they contribute little to and benefit little from
production and economic growth. Their social status is low, and they are excluded from
the formal organizations and associations and the informal and private webs of contacts
which constitute the urban social structure. To the extent that they are rural in origin,
they may also be culturally marginal, clinging to customs, manners, dress, speech and
values which contrast with accepted urban patterns [p. 51.
Peattie criticizes this concept in her LAUR article, “The Concept of ‘Marginality’ as Applied
to Squatter Settlements.” She reminds us that squatters are very much bound up in the
economic life of the community, that the inhabitants of squatments usually show a great
range of occupation and economic standing, and that community organization is often quite
strong. In general, research has shown that “those who imagined these areas as settings of
social disorganization were projecting their own anxieties about the poor” (p. 106).The lack
of interest which many squatters display toward so-called “urban” institutions, too, may be
easily interpreted as evidence of their “marginality.” Yet, as Walter Miller has pointedly
responded to the concern of American antipoverty workers that the poor be brought into
the mainstream of American society, the very notion of a “mainstream” seems highly
suspect:
422 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977
In the United States, there are people who go to ETA meetings and there are people who
play the numbers. It’s ‘my understanding that there are many more people who play the
numbers than there are who go to PTA meetings. Why do we always talk as if learning to
come to PTA meetings were joining the mainstream? [quoted in Peattie, pp. 106-1071 .
Butterworth’s article on “Grass Roots Political Organization in Cuba,” which also appears
in LAUR, discusses the failure of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR)
to take hold and thrive in Havana’s Las Yaguas slum, a failure which he attributes to the
influence of their “culture of poverty.” Rather than blame the failure of CDR’s to take hold
and provide a basic social structure for the slum on the inhabitants’ inability to organize
themselves, as Butterworth does, it seems equally plausible that even revolutionary Cubans
harbored the kind of negative attitudes toward these particular slum dwellers which
discouraged them from making whole-hearted attempts to orient Las Yaguans toward the
CDR’s. They, as had their predecessors for different reasons, may have avoided an intensive
commitment t o Las Yaguas in anticipation that they would fail in any event.
In August 1965, “Watts” gained an indelible place in the American vocabulary. In the
decade since, numerous theories have been advanced and accepted to explain the immediate
causes of the not. Until recently, however, no one has put these theories to a true test. Sears
and McConahay, in The Politics of Violence, have finally and forcefully remedied this
amazing gap in our study of one of the most significant phenomena of our time. Basing their
data on interviews of 586 residents of the Watts-Los Angeles Curfew Zone and 124 residents
of the Zone who were arrested during the rioting, they tested theories which have been
advanced to explain ghetto riots. Each of the various theories tested-that rioters were
“riffraff,” repudiated by the ghetto’s decent “folk” (and its more refined version that rioters
came from the “underclass” of the ghetto unemployed and uneducated), that rioters came
from broken homes, that they were Southern newcomers who brought with them a deep
anger which the tensions of the ghetto led them to vent, and that they were high-spirited
young people who rioted for fun and (looting) profit-are all widely held in academic and
nonacademic circles. With the exception of partial support given the “youthful spirits”
theory by the discovery that most rioters were under 30, none of these theories was
supported by their data. Rioters were not generally rejected by their community who “felt
the rioters were embodying, in a mass protest, the just complaints of black Americans in
general” (p. 21). Neither were the rioters even ungodly. In fact, those who attended church
more than once a week were most likely to have been active in the riot while those who
attended only once a month were least active! Analysis of the class origin of the rioters also
showed that they came not from the “riffraff” or underclass but from all strata of ghetto
society. Family breakdown, too, proved an insufficient hypothesis, as no significant
difference appeared between those raised in “matrifocal” families and those brought up by
both parents. Finally, the Southern migrant theory was disconfirmed by the fact that those
born in the South were less likely to have joined in the riot than natives of Los Angeles.
From their data the authors offer an alternative hypothesis which takes note of changes
in the demographic structure of the Watts ghetto which is now dominated by young blacks
who were born in the North or West (or arrived there before completion of their “political
socialization”), socialized in an urban setting, and who have at least a high school education.
The greater sense of self-worth and pride of these “New Urban Blacks,” as the authors
choose to label them, made them less willing to tolerate a subjective sense of deprivation
uis4-uis whites. This sense of relative deprivation, coupled with the pervasive feeling that
their legitimate grievances were being ignored by whites to whom they were “invisible,”
produced a well of generalized frustration. Consequently, a seemingly routine arrest
happened to ignite the passions of this group too alert and vigorous to despair and the not
was born. “Their discontents,” the authors point out, “tended not to be concrete but rather
to be generalized, abstract, and symbolic in nature.. . [and] the not expressed these
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 423

discontents at a symbolic level rather than through instrumental actions designed to redress
them at the concrete personal level” (p. 54). In retrospect, especially considering the
similarly impressive work of Crain and Weisman (1972) which reaches essentially the same
conclusions, it seems rather strange that so many have failed to recognize that the rioters
were not poorly integrated members of the community but were often in fact those most
fully socialized and integrated into it. “In reality,” the authors suggest, “mainstream
socialization may move young northern blacks part of the way toward, rather than away
from, collective violence” (p. 33). Equally important to the riot’s function as a political
statement is that once many blacks sensed that their message-however garbled-had at least
been received and that efforts were underway to meet their grievances, the riots ceased
before a truly serious white backlash cost all the gains which had been won.

URBAN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

AND CULTURAL PLURALISM

Urban social diversity can generally be seen to have a twofold dimension of intragroup
status and intergroup cultural differences. Further complicating these respective distinctions
of class and ethnicity is the fact that members of certain groups are often distinguished and
set aside for differential treatment by criteria of caste. Theoretically, it would seem that
systems based upon true individual achievement in which every person is permitted to
maximize his personal talents would be most compatible with the increased occupational
variety and complexity characteristic of cities. What is less certain, however, is whether cities
tend to reduce the significance of caste and ethnic differences by treating their members as
individuals first and caste or ethnic members second or not at all. Given the concern of
anthropologists with culture and society it is scarcely surprising that an inordinate number
of the books reviewed here should be concerned with the effects which urbanization has
upon social structure and traditional group cohesiveness.
In today’s America the metaphor of the “melting pot” has been rejected by those who
perceive a strong persistence of distinct ethnic identities in American society (Glazer and
Moynihan 1970). Indeed, a virtual academic industry has emerged to counter this metaphor,
an industry which is reflected in varying degrees by Tomasi’s study of New York City’s
Italian parishes, Sanders and Morawska’s Polish-American Community Life: A Survey o f
Research, William Kornblum’s Blue Collar Community, Del Sesto and Gibson’s The Culture
o f Acudiuna, and Gropper’s and Sutherland’s work on gypsies. The persistence of a sense of
ethnic identityand to a lesser degree of distinct cultural traditions-among many Americans
is real enough. Its importance, however, seems greatly exaggerated by the recent trend to
rush the slightest symbols of ethnic distinctiveness into print to prove that we have not
really blended into a common pot. Anthropologists who have studied truly plural societies
would probably feel, for example, that attendance at Polish picnics, membership in a
Polish-American voluntary association, and a reluctance to endure Polish jokes does not
equate with strong ethnic identity when the individual probably speaks little if any Polish
and shows scant evidence of adherence to Polish cultural traditions. Consciousness of Polish
identity in such circumstances seems partial at best.
Polish-American Community Life provides a comprehensive bibliography of research on
Polish-Americans but seems very much a part of the academic ethnicity industry. Nowhere
in this survey do we find real evidence that Polish-American ethnic identity is currently a
strong force in American life, urban or otherwise. The compilers themselves have seen fit to
devote only ten pages to their chapter on “Ethnic Identity and Identification.” They almost
dismiss this seemingly vital area of research by noting that “the area of ethnic identification
as such, being a more idiosyncratic dimension of ethnicity, lies somewhat beyond the scope
of interests ot the classical community study” (p. 236), although they acknowledge that
424 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977

“since we are dealing with an ethnic community, the phenomenon deserves at least some
consideration here” (p. 236). Brief examination in this chapter of a nationwide survey by
Polzin (1973) indicates that some 60% to 70% of the Polish-American “community” no
longer consider themselves ethnically distinct enough to warrant use of the label
“Polish-American.” Under such circumstances bibliographies of this sort provide interesting
introductions to past research but should not be seen as the harbingers of an ethnic
resurgence whose origins may lie far more in academic desires than in reality.
Certain groups protected by the insulation of a separate language, a distinct caste-like
status, or geography, have been able to retain a significant degree of cultural integrity in
modern America. Louisiana’s Cajuns are one such group. Although many have been
assimilated into the larger American society in the several centuries since their ancestors fled
or were deported by the British from Eastern Canada, their geographical isolation and
outcaste identity in many non-Cajun white eyes have impeded their full assimilation. Among
the articles on the prehistory of the region, and on Cajun cuisine, folklore, folk occupations,
and social institutions which appear in Del Sesto’s and Gibson’s interesting introduction to
the study of The Culture of Acudiunu, the question of the nature and persistence of the
Cajuns is best approached in Tentchoff’s article: “Cajun French and French Creole: Their
Speakers and the Questions of Identities.” Although handicapped by the failure of scholars
to produce a linguistic atlas of the region or even a published dictionary, Tentchoff
distinguishes between the two French languages of the region, Cajun French and Creole, and
discusses the significance the use of each has in social discourse and in establishing subgroup
identities within the wider community of French speakers. Also quite interesting is her
suggestion that the common subordinate ethnic group identity of both white and black
Cajun and Creole speakers which long served to soften the color line is giving way to ethnic
realignments which reflect those of the larger society. She reports that,
Younger blacks in the smallest villages have acquired a strong sense of identity with
Afro-Americans and with the national black movement. Such individuals do not refer to
themselves as Cajuns. If they are speakers of French or Creole they call themselves
“Creoles” [p. 90 1.
The three works on gypsies, Gropper’s Gypsies in the City, Sutherland’s Gypsies: The
Hidden Americans, and the collection of essays edited by Rehfisch, Gypsies, Tinkers and
Other Tmuellers, all portray the continued persistence of gypsy identity in present-day
Europe and North America. Chief among the factors which have held Gypsies aloof and
distinct from the larger surrounding non-Gypsy communities (the gaje) is an elaborate
ideology of ritual defilement ( m r i m e ) which places guje beyond the pale and provides
justification for their exploitation by Gypsies. The articles of Carol Miller (“American Rom
and the Ideology of Defilement”) and Anne Sutherland (“The American Rom: A Case of
Economic Adaptation”), which appear in the volume edited by Rehfisch, considered
together provide an excellent glimpse into gypsy notions of defilement, their boundary
maintaining effect, and the manner in which such a clear designation of in and out group
members permits the Rom to view welfare simply as another resource which they must trick
or cajole guje into providing. Moral considerations of fraud and “chiseling” are obviated by
the age-old legitimacy of gaining a living from guje, whether it be through fortune telling,
theft, or more acceptable (to guje) casual labor. Middle-class white American values to the
contrary, Sutherland argues in her book that for Gypsies
Welfare is not considered a hand-out; it is money that they convince the guje to give
them. . . . They do not consider themselves a depressed minority having to beg for charity
from the middle-class majority. On the contrary, welfare is to them an incredible stroke
of luck, yet further proof of the gullibility of the guje [p. 781.
Both Sutherland and Gropper have provided excellent ethnographies of urban American
gypsies, which should prove useful as supplemental texts in courses in urban anthropology or
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 425

race and ethnic relations. Choice between the two can only be based upon Sutherland’s
greater concern with the basis for, and character of, gypsy-gaje relations and the more
traditional ethnographic treatment which Gropper’s also wellconsidered text provides. Most
importantly, both have given us convincing illustration that Gypsies have neither been truly
acculturated nor structurally assimilated-in Gordon’s (1964)sense of admission into the
primary institutions of the host societyinto the larger American society. Exposure to
television and the insistence of school and welfare authorities that gypsy children attend
schoolsomething which will undermine the role of wide-scale illiteracy in preventing their
acculturationshould result in increasing erosion of gypsy-gaje cultural and interactional
boundaries and their eventual assimilation.
Several decades ago Spiro (1955)bemoaned the fact that anthropologists had sacrificed a
major opportunity to study acculturative processes at home, a loss which was heightened by
the fact that, in contrast to most acculturation toward Western traditions in other countries
which spread from a small colonial group to a much larger host society, the situation in
North America was one in which minority migrant groups acculturated to the traditions of
the existing inhabitants. For most groups, as Spiro noted, acculturation was already too far
advanced for anthropologists to profit from their study. Certain others, such as the h e r t o
Ricans of New York City, the Cubans of Florida, and the Southeast Asian communities
scattered throughout the major cities of America, still offer, however, an excellent
opportunity for anthropologists to study acculturational processes without the expense and
total allocation of time required by the traditional overseas field trip. While the experiential
value of a truly alien experience may be lost in conducting fieldwork in one’s own society,
the benefit to anthropological understanding can be equally as great, as the work of Gropper
and Sutherland with gypsies has demonstrated.
No region of the world has been studied as intensely by urban anthropologists as has
Africa. And no other topic has captured their attention as has that of the influence of towns
upon traditional tribal allegiances. Although several authors have taken pains to emphasize
the recentness of many tribal distinctions (Cohen and Middleton 1970; Ottenberg 1974;
Southall 1975), terms such as “tribalism,” “detribalization,” and “supertribalism,” and a
rural-urban distinction of “townsmen” and “tribesmen” have dominated much of the
African literature (Gluckman 1961;Mitchell 1960;Wallerstein 1960). As Mitchell (1960)
notes, this concern with tribalism in urban areas is quite natural as tribalism itself is “a
.
phenomenon arising out of culture contact.. [coming] into being when people of
different origin are thrown together in industrial areas and other labour centres, in schools,
in farms, or similar situations” (p. 2). The consequences of ethnic variation can often be
quite negative, as Skinner notes in his discussion of the expulsion of Dahomean and Togolese
civil servants in African Urban Life (pp. 195-199)and Cohen illustrates in discussing the
high degree of hostility with which many Ivoiriens regard Togolese, Dahomeyans, and
Guineans in his study Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa. Occasionally, interethnic
hostility among Africans has reached such high levels as to produce massacres or mass
expulsions such as those chronicled in selective Genocide in Burundi and Expulsion o f a
Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians. The resentment of the 85% of the Burundi population
which is Hutu at being economically and politically dominated by the (Wa) Tutsi minority
erupted into anti-Tutsi riots on 29 April 1972. Tutsi counterattacks, aided by their control
of the army and apparatus of state, quickly reestablished their dominance. Hundreds of
Hutu university and secondary students were taken from their schools and killed. Ironically,
many were transported to their deaths in UNICEF Landrovers without raising serious United
Nations objections. Within a few weeks virtually the entirety of what little intellectual and
political elite the Hutu had been able to raise had been destroyed, together with thousands
of others in a massacre-or, in LeMarchand’s description “selective genocide”-which
conservative estimates place at between 80,000 and 100,000deaths or 3.5% of the country’s
426 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977

total population (p. 5). Although Selective Genocide in Burundi attempts to document its
tale of terror as accurately as possible many will undoubtedly fault it for being
“overwrought,” or “insufficiently documented.” Under the circumstances, however, which
scarcely permit the entrance of a scholar into Burundi to conduct an unimpeded inquiry,
such a critique seems most unwarranted.
Of the varied contributions in Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians-many
of which are actually only tangentially related to the actual expulsion-Ocaya-Lakidi’s
article, “Black Attitudes to the Brown and White Colonizers of East Africa,” provides the
greatest insight into the climate in which the expulsion occurred. The intercalary position of
the Asians during the colonial period, when they were strongly represented in the lower
ranks of the civil service and the middle sector of the economy, placed them above local
Africans as a nonwhite elite. The relative wealth of the Indians, their “stereotype” as
economic exploiters (which Twaddle suggests in his opening essay was promulgated by
intellectuals), and the social pretensions of the Indians themselves, made them natural
scapegoats for the country’s economic problems after the British had departed. The
expulsion itself was obviously facilitated by the emergence of Idi Amin as Uganda’s
leader-Amin revealingly complained at a conference called to discuss the Asian problem
that “about seventy years have elapsed since the first Asians came to Uganda.. . [but] the
Africans in this country have, for example, hardly been able to marry Asian girls” (p. 12).
But, as the authors realize, the uncertain position of apparently prosperous, highly visible,
and unassimilated groups has been too well documented-ven with Overseas Indians in
Burma and elsewhere in Africa and Asia-to cast all the blame on any one individual.
The growth of indigenous elites in Africa’s postcolonial period has added the dimension
of class to the urban social matrix. Ruling elites, however, often will assert publicly that no
classes exist, preferring even to recognize and stress tribal differences. Official doctrine in
many countries denies the salience of local class differences altogether, clearly out of a fear
that the acceptance of Marxist models could threaten the position of the elite. In this
context, M. A. Cohen in Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa suggests that class does
indeed provide a useful and accurate descriptive concept but that African conditions require
that classes be defined as “categories of people sharing common political and economic
interests arising from their access to public authorities and public resources and
opportunities which they control” (p. 194; emphasis in original). In other words, social
mobility in Africa and most other “developing” nations tends to have political origins. Those
who are part of the political elite can and d o promote their interests in myriad ways, ranging
from having their own streets paved to arranging for government scholarships for their own
children. “Distinctions between small shop keepers, considered by (Samk) Amin as ‘middle
class’ and ‘artisans,’ included among the ‘masses,’ ” Cohen asserts, “are simply less important
than the political and economic differences resulting from access to public authority” (p.
194).
From its title African Farmers in Rhodesia: Old and New Peusant Communities in
Kamngaland would seem to be of only marginal interest to urban anthropologists. Weinrich’s
careful comparison of African farming communities and farming techniques demonstrates
the inhibiting character which discrimination can have on government efforts to modernize
farming techniques. In comparing the traditional farming of the African “reservations,” the
educationally based “Master Farmer” efforts, and recent technologically sophisticated
irrigation farming schemes, Weinrich intricately builds to the conclusion that maximum
production simply cannot be obtained in social circumstances of oppression and inequality.
Weinrich has shown that regardless of modernizing complex technological innovations and
approaches, the external imposition of inferior social position and limitation of life potential
has its results in lowered production levels which arise either as tacit protest against
inequality or as the result of inhibitions against freedom of individual action.
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 427
Similarly, Whisson’s ethnography of the “coloured” fishermen of Kalk Bay, Union of
South Africa ( in Urban Man in Southern Africa), describes changing economic patterns and
intergroup relations in a village whose traditional isolation has been threatened by
incorporation into the greater Cape Town metropolitan area and a government decision to
remove the area’s colored population. The long tradition of good relations between the
village colored and white population, albeit based upon the acceptance of inferior status by
coloreds, cemented by close coresidence and’ the common isolation from surrounding
communities created by the peculiar demands of fishing life has been steadily undermined in
recent years by incorporation into the larger society. The formalized identity established by
racial registration and the greater tendency for village people to seek work in factories and
offices has driven a wedge between the two populations and placed each into an enforced
and somewhat resented alliance with outside whites and coloreds. Although as Whisson
demonstrates, few whites who have spent most of their life in Kalk Bay favor the removal of
its colored population, the latter now seem locked into a progressive loss of freedom and
personal integrity as they are urbanized into colored caste status.
The elaboration of systems of achieved, or class, stratification in cities has also been
central to a great deal of urban anthropological research (Ames 1969; Bopegamage and
Veeraraghavan 1967; Dore 1958; Evers 1975; Jacobson 1968; Little 1974; Whiteford 1960).
RiviBre, in Mutations Sociales en Guinde, chronicles the social changes brought about by
Sekou Toure’s revolutionary dictatorship and severance of ties with France and the West.
Efforts t o improve the standard of living have met with failure as evidenced by the departure
of perhaps 500,000 Guineans of a total population of slightly over four million to work in
neighboring countries. Government attempts to revolutionize the social fabric by sub-
stituting nationalism in place of tribal divisions, by improving the lot of women, by
encouraging political involvement among youth, and by encouraging a “modern,” scientific
view of the world have apparently been somewhat more successful. In view of the
government’s continued inability to cope with the nation’s economic problems, however,
Riviire suggests that this modernization may well serve more to provide the framework for
the emergence of a future class-based society than the socialist nation envisioned by TourB.
Teaford in The Municipal Reuolution in America traces the transplantation of English
systems of urban governance to America and their shift from oligarchic, corporate entities
almost entirely concerned with t.rade and commerce to those of modern, popularly governed
cities whose chief interests have shifted toward providing education, protection, and other
social services to all citizens. One obvious problem with discussions.of class is whether or not
class divisions are real in the sense that they exist in the minds of the city’s inhabitants
themselves or only in the formulations of those who study them (Hutchinson 1963; Nakane
1970; Williamson 1962, 1968). This issue is especially acute when dealing with lower-class
populations which often appear to have only vague conceptions of their position in the
urban hierarchy. Michael Whiteford’s essay, “Neighbors at a Distance: Life in a Low-Income
Colombian Bamo” (in LACJR), makes a significant contribution to class research by
illustrating that his lower class informants have a strong sense of their subordinate social
position and the power which the elite holds over them but are prevented from mobilizing
themselves in terms of common class concerns by their distrust and suspicion of each other
and their respect and admiration for those members of the elite whom they know
personally. As Whiteford indicates, their attitudes and behavior suggest that “they are
saying: ‘Oligarchs are exploitative people, and we would be very much better off without
them. Nevertheless, I have never met one whom I did not like and admire’ ” (p. 171).

URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY

The most basic problem for urban anthropologists has always been that of applying the
two techniques central to the anthropological perspective-participant observation and
428 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977J

holistic grasp of the culture at hand-to urban studies. Clearly the size and diversity of even
the smallest city makes it impossible to study each of its inhabitants except in the most
superficial manner and casts doubt upon the researcher’s ability to extrapolate knowledge
gained from intensive study of a few informants to the city’s whole. Many anthropologists
have responded to this dilemma by restricting the topical scope of their inquiry. Others have
sacrificed holism in favor of microlevel traditional ethnographies of clearly segmented urban
populations (Hippler 1974; Liebow 1967) or formal (Agar 1973;Spradley 1972),while
some researchers have attempted to trace and analyze urban interactional networks (Bott
1957;Mitchell 1969). Still other anthropologists have given up the intimacy of research
based wholly upon participant observation of a small portion of the urban population for
macrolevel ethnographies of entire cities which merge ethnographic, historical, and social
survey techniques (Banton 1957;Pons 1969;Warner 1963). Finally, urban anthropologists
have found that the problems of scale are not limited to ethnography itself but seem even
more difficult to grapple with at the comparative, ethnological level (Fox 1972;Moore
1975; Nagata 1974; Rollwagen 1972). It should be borne in mind, however, that the
methodological problems faced by urban anthropologists are not unique to the study of
cities. The city merely makes them more starkly apparent and difficult t o ignore.
The Man in the Principal’s Office: An Ethnography is urban microethnography at its
best. In focusing upon a single occupation among the thousands upon which American
society is based, Wolcott provides an intensive view of the world of a primary school
principal, illustrating through careful observation of the principal’s day and his formal and
informal encounters the meeting of a man and the expectations of his social role. Wolcott’s
research demonstrates the value which exhaustive analysis of any occupation can have in
highlighting the assumptions of a society as a whole and as such stands as a model for the
heretofore under-used technique of approaching the study of urban society through careful
analysis of the fusion of individual goals and identity with the behavioral expectations
appropriate t o their occupations.
Spradley and Mann have also chosen to focus upon close analysis of an occupational role,
that of The Cocktail Waitress, in hope that examination of the waitress’ position and
interaction with other (female) waitresses, (male) bartenders, and customers might provide
cia small window on the world of female and male roles” (p. 144)and on the well-grounded
assumption that answers t o questions as to what constitutes basic American male and female
role stereotypes can best be sought in ordinary situations in which “manhood and
womanhood are defined in the process of social interaction” (p. 145;emphasis in original).
Particularly interesting and valuable is the authors’ use of formal-and what for lack of a
better term might be called “semiformal”-analysis to unearth interactional rules from
within one’s own society. This and the authors’ skillful presentation of the lessons to be
gained from ethnographic research in a normal situation within one’s own culture are
supplemented by a methodological approach in which Mann entered the world of the
cocktail waitress as a participant observer and Spradley stood back as a more detached
observer ready to place the primary researcher herself in the role of informant, to avoid as
much as possible “an important phenomenon that happens to every participant observer.
Before many weeks have passed the ethnographer knows more than she cun tell” (p. 13;
emphasis in original), a problem made more acute by the fact that she is herself a member of
the wider culture of which the “bar culture” forms a segment. The authors’ style and the
readily recognizable setting in which the book is placed recommend it strongly both to
introductory and urban anthropology courses where students will respond to the intellectual
stimulation of an easy-to-digest and deceptively sophisticated excursion into the application
of ethnographic methodology t o study male-female relations in American society.
Equally as impressive as Wolcott’s microethnographic approach to urban anthropological
research is Skinner’s macrostudy of Ouagadougou, the capital of Upper Volta. Through long
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 429

residence in the capital both as anthropologist and American ambassador, Skinner has been
able to amass detailed ethnographic and historical information on seemingly every aspect of
Ouagadougou life and each segment of the community. In approaching the city holistically
he inevitably glosses over certain topics with which he is undoubtedly familiar and subsumes
concern with theoretical explanation and problem orientation to description and inclu-
siveness. Surprisingly, however, he has produced a book which gives the reader both a
holistic perspective and a sense of the quality of life in Ouagadougou. As such, African
Urban Life: The Transformation o f Ouagadougou, should serve both as an excellent
reference book for other researchers in Ouagadougou and elsewhere in Africa and an
interesting introduction to African urban life for the non-Africanist.
Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics o f Lagos provides a highly particular and
exhaustive historical account of political evolution in Lagos. Taking as his departure point
the assertion that
Few Africans view their societies, let alone understand them, as they are depicted in the
monographs of social scientists, many of whom have supposedly spent several years
doing field work in the chosen areas. The lack of comprehension on the part of the
African is not due to low intelligence, but rather to the rarified ways in which such
studies are written; which leaves a feeling that western social scientists are engaged in a
culturally determined, private intellectual game [p. ix 1,
Cole attempts to interpret Lagos’ history as the actual participants might have perceived it.
Given the concern with particularistic events not anchored in unifying generalization which
this approach requires, it is difficult both to assess his success in meeting his goal and to
determine what audience might profit from reading the book. In its own way such an
approach is even more “rarified” than traditional Western ones, as its utility seems limited to
Nigerian scholars.
Diffusion of Innovations in S i e m Leone, West AFica is an undergraduate research report
on the characteristics of adopters and nonadopters of rice farming with water control on
inland valley swamps introduced by a Peace Corps extension worker. Haas’ conclusions are
hardly surprising-adopters, for example, are younger and more likely to grow rice for sale
than nonadopters-but his research seems particularly well-conceived and conducted for an
undergraduate project and could well stand as a benchmark against which to measure the
analytic knowledge and technique of other students.
Between the extremes of ethnographic scale exemplified by the studies of Wolcott and
Skinner we find a middle level of analysis, usually known as the community study,
represented in Kornblum’s Blue Collar Community and Sugarman’s Daytop Village: A
Thempeutic Community. The character of their communities and their approach to them
are, however, quite different. Daytop Village offers a somewhat limited ethnography of a
community for drug addicts based upon two months participant observation in a well-known
Staten Island facility. The work’s limitations are not primarily a result of the short duration
of the research, as the author is no novice to therapeutic communities, but rather lie in its
uncritical acceptance of the highlyatructured belief system of the community. The almost
religious character of the “Concept” and its enforcement through rewarding responsible
social acts and shaming those who deviate often produces impressive results. Unfortunately,
such an approach seems limited in its utility by its demand of a zealous commitment for
success-one which occupies a great deal of time and requires a long-term attachment to the
group-and the fact that such community approaches may provide more suitable enclaves for
addicts than prisons or hospitals but are expensive and their long-term benefits uncertain.
Sugarman, as have many anthropologists in foreign countries who have accepted severe
government restrictions upon their research, has written a “house ethnography” which
essentially accepts unchallenged the official premises of the community he has studied. This,
paradoxically, is both the weakness and the strength of Daytop Village, as it is an interesting
430 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977]

and persuasive addition t o the genre of “house ethnographies” which could serve to generate
a good deal of student debate if used as a supplemental text.
Kornblum’s study of the steel community of South Chicago, Blue Collar Community,
blends participant observationincluding a period as a subforeman in a steel factory-with a
revival of the theoretical approach of the Chicago ecological school of sociology.Although
Kornblum concentrates his focus upon ethnic succession from Eastern Europeans to the
increasing importance of blacks in the factory and in unions and of Mexicans in union and
ward politics, his most interesting contribution rests in his analysis of the social “ecology” of
the steel factory itself. Age and racial differences divide the workers between a younger,
recently-hired group which is primarily black, and a white group of older laborers and
supervisory personnel. Through close analysis of the nature of particular tasks in the mill
Kornblum illustrates that the general laborers remain divided among themselves as the
organization of their work
. . . hampers the emergence of strong personal ties in their work group. No sooner are
friendships formed than they are broken by changes in work assignments. Foremen and
other supervisory personnel regard the young black laborers as a homogeneous group and
attribute collective solidarity to them, but in fact this is not the case. As newcomers to
the steel mill, and strangers t o each other, the young black workers’ groups are no more
cohesive than an equivalent group of white workers would be . . . [p. 481,
while relations between mill hands “allows men of differing ethnicity and race to work on
.
quite amicable terms; . .at the same time the development of deeper friendships among
men may be inhibited in the work process” (p. 46), which requires concentrated effort as
they work the hot bars and where the high noise levels often require hand signals to
communicate. Steel loaders, on the other hand, often develop quite close relations with each
other as loaders work in small groups under the supervision of a chief loader and foreman. In
order to fulfill the loaders’ primary task of meeting shipping orders in an area of maximum
uncertainty created by frequent delays in truck and railroad schedules, the chief loader must
forge a cohesive work group based upon primary ties which are often maintained outside the
plant and are “the source of friendships which bridge ethnic and residential bamers, such as
between groups of Mexican and Italian workers” (p. 65). This skillful use of small group
dynamics and its intensive study of ward and union politics makes Blue Collar Community a
particularly impressive addition to our body of community studies.

CONCLUSIONS

The rise of interest among anthropologists in the study of urban and complex societies
represents a natural extension of anthropological research into a milieu which is not
qualitatively different from more traditional venues of research. Nevertheless, it serves to
highlight certain essentials of human culture and society which have sometimes escaped
notice in the study of smallerwale communities. The research of anthropologists, who bring
with them broad, cross-cultural approaches to the study of human communities, has already
contributed greatly to our knowledge of aties. Indeed, they have added a crucial
comparative dimension to urban work which perceives cities not as unique entities which can
be approached in isolation, but merely as one of the most recent forms of human
organization.
The contribution of urban anthropology, however, has scarcely been a unidirectional one
in which only urbanists have profited from the anthropologist’s broader perspective on
human society. Urban research quickly alters the meaning of the concept of “culture” for
the urban anthropologist. The plethora of behavioral patterns and explanations for behavior
which he immediately encounters make it obvious that the relatively monolithic idea of ‘‘a
people’s culture” conceived by early anthropologists-together with the more refined notion
Basham and DeGroot] URBAN AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES 431

of modal cultural patterns+ inadequate t o describe the realities of urban life. One reason
for the apparent disintegration of the utility of the traditional culture concept among highly
urbanized populations is the tremendous variety of discrete social roles which characterize
all cities and the fact that the complexity of role juxtapositions make it extremely unlikely
that significantly large segments of the community will occupy the same roles and have the
same understandings of their positions to give even the idea of a modal cultural pattern
consistent utility. Coupled with this is the fact that, unlike the situation which appeors to
pertain to smaller communities, individual role diversity is not truly overcome by common
adherence to a cognitive map of the whole.
The realization that no urban man wholly knows “his” culture leads us to a clearer
recognition of what many anthropologists have known all along: that all men operate with a
kind of microculture which only exists as an imperfect replication of those of their fellows.
These microcultures invariably contain a conception of an “official culture” which most
espouse, often without real belief or commitment, to facilitate social interaction, and which
tends to be an effective enough behavioral guide, especially in situations where the
proximity of strangers is most likely to call official cultural patterns forth. Exposure to the
vaned behavioral and belief systems of others-and, especially, of those of different ethnic
backgroundsserves both to expand our repertoire of knowledge and life-strategies and to
cast doubt on the correctness of our personal microcultures or identities. This is true of all
human groups although urban societies-and especially those of today where m a s
communications have greatly expanded the knowledge of alien lifeways-have served to
enhance the potential for distantiation of every man’s microculture from that of his fellows.
As research on kinship, individual adaptation and adjustment, and ethnicity and social
stratification in the city has shown, many of the constraints of official cultures have become
more optional for urbanites as group consensus as to what constitutes correct cultural
behavior becomes less certain. The maximization of behavioral flexibility, however, seems to
come at the cost of increasing transfer of the principal locus of identity from the group to
the individual, a transfer which provokes a troubling anxiety in many and causes them to
seek out or attempt to renew a collective identity.
The problem of what to do with “culture” in a context whose immensity seems to
preclude more than a cloak of ideological and behavioral uniformity provides a reflection of
the dilemmas which confront urban anthropologists. Most relinquish any attempt to
characterize the city as a whole, devoting themselves instead to particular topical issues, to
microethnographies of occupational roles, or t o community studies of groups with relatively
firm boundaries. There is not yet, and there probably will not be, any agreement as to how
to conduct anthropology in cities. There is no “Notes and Queries” to guide those who
choose to become urban ethnographers and there probably should not be. Nevertheless,
urban anthropology is no longer in its infancy and it needs some attempt to provide order
and coherence to it to acknowledge this fact. We hope that this effort to review the
literature and place some recent contributions to it in context will lead those who are
already urban anthropologists to reconsider the field and will attract others to its challenges.

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Submitted 6 October 1976

Accepted 19 November 1976