Urban ethnography has always been in the intersection between sociology and anthropology. Since Chicago School pioneer studies under the auspices of the sociologist Robert Park, connections with anthropologists who were, at that time, doing participant observation abroad in remote and ‘primitive’ places, to the ‘classic’ urban communities/neighborhoods studies are deeply valuated. Thinking of some of the most insightful views of urban life, based on direct contact with city dwellers, along 20th century, we cannot make up a clear distinction between these two disciplines, even though they still are separately in academic organization. As urban anthropologists and sociologists committed with the ethnographic knowledge of city life, based on our previous or ongoing fieldwork experience which is always theoretical at same time, held on Brazilian, French, Romanian, and Portuguese cities we propose to discuss how our particular insight from the bottom allows the researcher to better grasp: a) urban connections between management/administrative practices and everyday uses of spaces; b) life styles and public sociability in the urban realm, c) negotiations of place marketing, public imageries and label categories and its impacts on the social organization of the meaning in different urban scales; a) linkages between researcher own biography/personal insights and the building of their subjects of study within their ‘native’ cities; b) interdisciplinary vocation of urban ethnography, namely its strong connections with history and architecture/urban planning c) research impacts, ethics and urban activism

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Urban Ethnography