“Etnografias urbanas: quando o campo é a cidade (2023)” [Urban ethnographies: when the field is the city] by José Guilherme Magnani et al. | Book
Abstract: “What is ethnography and how do you do urban ethnography? What are the research strategies “when the field is the city” and how is the process of immersion and dialog in the field? What are the characteristics of ethnographic writing? These questions, which often don’t have such straightforward answers, are part of the daily life of those who carry out projects inspired by ethnography, from beginners to those who already know the ins and outs of anthropological research.
Urban ethnographies: when the field is the city initially seeks to revisit classic and contemporary concepts and approaches, and then to describe research procedures and strategies. In addition, to stimulate the interest of students from different areas and disciplines, some collective research experiences carried out inside and outside universities are presented. Ethnographic experiments, carried out in different contexts, which demanded other ways of doing ethnography, new forms of approach, different care in dialog and the reworking of methodological strategies.
This is not an “ethnography manual”, defining a specific way of doing things. Ethnography is a method recognized for its flexibility and creative capacity in the face of situations that require it to be constantly updated based on the theoretical legacy of anthropology and its ways of observing, recording and analyzing the material collected.
The theoretical and practical discussion presented throughout the book is based on a diverse body of research – which has resulted in dissertations, theses, undergraduate research reports and projects requested from outside academia – carried out since 1988 by the Laboratory of Urban Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (LabNAU-USP). Although the starting point was the large metropolis of São Paulo, members of the center soon turned to other contexts – such as leisure and cultural institutions, Amazonian villages and cities and even regions hit by environmental disasters – revealing different ways of inhabiting the world, whether in the city, the countryside, the village or even in forms of online social interaction. From youth collectives on the outskirts of São Paulo to indigenous people in urban villages in Manaus, it covers topics such as religiosity, leisure, gender, appropriation of urban spaces and forms of mobility.
Urban ethnography: when the field is the city is, therefore, the result of a process of reflection based on the experiences of researchers with different backgrounds, degrees of training and topics of interest, whose common space of action was LabNAU-USP and the ethnographic method. This plurality of perspectives is also reflected in the collective authorship of this book, shared between five anthropologists who have worked as a collective – Argonautas Pesquisa Etnográfica [Argonauts Ethnographic Research] – outside the walls of the university.
Written for young anthropology students at the beginning of their studies and forays into the field, the book also aims to reach a wider audience, unfamiliar with the terminology of the discipline, but who should be introduced to both classic and current reference works. For this reason, it is also aimed at new and veteran researchers both in the related Social Sciences – Sociology, Political Science, Geography – and in other areas – Education, Architecture and Urbanism, Communication, Health Sciences – who are increasingly interested in the contribution of Anthropology in general and its research tools in particular.”
The book was written by 5 authors, namely Jose Guilherme Cantor Magnani, Enrico Spaggiari, Mariana Hangai Vaz Guimaraes Nogueira, Rodrigo Valentim Chiquetto and Yuri Bassichetto Tambucci, being published in 2023 by Editora Vozes. The book is available in Portuguese on Vozes’ website.
Photo: Diego3336 (CC BY 2.0)
ANO
2023
AUTORES
José Guilherme Magnani et al.
EDITORES
Vozes
