Prologue

To write about the city in the mid-nineties is to write under pressure of ‘deepening crisis’ (in our present day economies and societies) (Braudel, 1985, III:625). For anthropology, to which nothing human is alien, the city encapsulated human achievement and destiny. If the motive of history is to explain the present and the obligation of anthropology to empathize reflexively with the other, the last frontier of time and culture is daring to ask what we have learnt in the city to save our grandchildren from ultimate destruction. The city concentrates the human experience and has taught some lessons although the future is not to be foretold. Braudel read clearly but broke off at the intractability of the social problem. We cannot hope that dominant groups will agree to hand over (Braudel, 1985, III:632). Marx dared to envisage a new human being, without whom his revolution could never succeed. If there is any new element in the situation it is the gravity of the crisis.

In his fascinating Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (1977) Braudel unwittingly summed up the anthropologists' view of the people in the city through the ages.