This article discusses a problem central to urban ethnography: the delimitation of a field of research that, in the final analysis, is little more than the delimitation of the object of study. The first part traces the history of this issue, from the Chicago School to the institutionalization of urban anthropology in the U.S. in the 1970s, and the second part provides examples with ethnographic clippings from past investigations. The relationship between the part of the city that is ethnographically understood and the city as a whole is also analyzed using intermediate notions and levels of analysis put forward by some authors as creative possibilities of urban analysis that open windows onto the city, and help to describe it and reflect on it from an ethnographic point of view.

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Urban ethnography; Relational city; Micro and macro levels; Neighborhoods; Sociability