5 - Beyond Urban Socio-anthropology

Abstract

The Management of Urban Development in Zambia by Emmanuel Mutale. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 2004, xv + 268 pp., ISBN 0 7546 3596 1

Zambia is said to be one of the most urbanized countries in Africa and is known in the social sciences as one of the main research sites for the study of urbanization. Anthropologists, for example, recognize the research conducted on the Copperbelt in the colonial period as being on par with that produced by the Chicago school of urban anthropology. Mutale's study however does not build on that colonial tradition directly. This book is not very sociological and pays little attention to the pioneering ethnographic studies of James Clyde Mitchell, A.L Epstein or any of the other anthropologists who worked on the Copperbelt. Mutale's field is classified as urban management and his book is one of Ashgate's International Land Management series. It provides a fresh way of looking at the urbanization process - one that encompasses "...a range of traditional disciplines, for example, town planning; civil engineering, architecture, surveying, economics, law, sociology, public administration, management and others." (p.3) But is it possible for one researcher to employ all these different analytic frameworks and disciplinary skills? Can urban policy ignore urban anthropology? Mutale's book suggests that the answer to both questions is possibly yes...