Urban Anthropology

Christoph Brumann
Head of Research Group

The development of urban anthropology as a disciplinary subfield is still lagging somewhat behind the dynamism of contemporary cities which attract ever larger shares of the world's population and resources. Urban complexity does present special methodological challenges to ethnographic research but Eurasian societies must be explored also in the cities and with an explicit focus on urbanism, given that many of the largest and most influential cities past and present are located here. The focus group is exploring the interplay between tradition and urban modernity in two research groups:

• "The Global Political Economy of Cultural Heritage" (launched in 2011 and with an added focus on international organisations)

• "Buddhist Temple Economies in Urban Asia" (launched in 2014)

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