ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND THE STUDY OF URBANIZATION:
AN EXAMPLE FROM MEXICO*
Robert V. Kemper
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
Examination of anthropological studies of urban life suggests that
fieldworkers, predisposed to specific types of research, use only a
limited number of the many available methods and techniques to study
urbanization. Rural-urban migration has been a particular interest of
anthropologists at work in developing countries. The author's survey
of the literature on urbanism and urbanization in Mexico, and his ex-
periences among Tzintzuntzan migrants in Mexico City, have shown the
need for a general methodological and theoretical framework for urban
anthropological research.
[fieldwork, methodology, Mexico, rural-urban migration, Tzintzuntzan,
urbanism, urbanization.]
In the social sciences, the term "urbanization" is used to describe
a variety of demographic, geographic, economic, and socio-cultural
processes which operate in complex societies. To demographers, urban-
ization denotes the ratio of population concentration in large cities,
to geographers, shifts in urban hierarchies and settlement patterns, to
economists, redistribution of labor and market forces. To most anthro-
pologists, urbanization indicates the appearance of "urban" traits in
the populations we study.
1
Anthropologists have been interested in the diffusion of city
influences to rural hinterlands for a long time. This tradition
reflects the essentially rural basis of most anthropological research;
it persists in contemporary investigations of peasant villages in de-
veloping countries. We are also concerned, however, with people's
assimilation and adaptation to what Wirth (1938) called "urbanism as
a way of life." As Beals (1951) observed over twenty years ago, this
way of looking at urbanization is closely associated with the accultur-
ation studies anthropologists have been doing since the 1920s. In fact,
despite our growing interest in a wide variety of urban topics, other
social scientists still believe that "the acculturation of migrants
to the city (or the 'deculturation' of migrants from the country)" rep-
resents a "leading subject" for anthropological study (Schnore and
Lampard 1968:31).
URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN MEXICO
Urban fieldwork in Mexico provides a good example of the range of
research and theory generated by anthropologists interested in urban-
ization.1 However, much of this urban research says little about
urbanization as "adaptation to urban life." Instead, most descriptions
of urban society remain synchronic and pattern-oriented.
Urban research in Mexico falls into four broad categories: (1)
holistic urban studies; (2) studies of residential units within cities;
(3) investigations of specific urban groups; and (4) studies of rural-
urban migrants.
Several attempts have been made to describe the socio-economic
structure of whole cities or towns (Whiteford 1964; Pi-Sunyer 1967;
2
Bonfil Batalla 1967; Pozas Arciniega 1958; Price 1968). These studies
often perpetuate traditional conceptual categories by failing to dis-
tinguish urban from universal characteristics of cities. Furthermore,
as Leeds (1968:31) has argued,
such studies have, as far as the city aspect is concerned,
tended to be non-generalizable, not related to generalizable
theory, models, or hypotheses, and hence not generative of
broader theory as to cities, urban society, or the social
evolution of urbanized societies.
These descriptions of entire Mexican cities notably treat small to
middle-sized communities rather than metropolises (Mexico City,
Monterrey, Guadalajara).
In a second research category, anthropologists have investigated
urban residential units, such as apartment-houses (vecindades) (Lewis
1959, 1969), neighborhoods (barrios and colonias) (Higgins 1971;
Spitzer 1958; Valencia 1967), or squatter settlements (colonias pro-
letarias) (Butterworth 1971; Chance 1971; Foster 1971). This "neigh-
borhood" tradition, associated with Lewis and his students, appeals
particularly to ethnographers who want to carry out small-scale com-
munity research in urban environments. These researchers assume an
urban residential zone can be treated as a relatively self-contained
and autonomous segment of the total urban system.   However, "this
cannot be assumed a priori as these studies have tended to do. Rather,
the fact that it is a community must be empirically shown, and the
mechanisms which create and maintain the boundaries of that community
as over and against the rest of the city empirically analyzed in de-
tail as part of the total social process (Leeds 1968; 31-32)."
Third, urban population groups have been investigated on the
basis of selected, predetermined traits. Ethnographic surveys have
3
been made of beggars (Fabrega 1971), tramps (Pozas Arciniega 1968),
Spanish expatriates (Kenny 1962), bureaucrats (Jimeenez 1955), working
class families (Olive Negrete, Cesar and Pinia Chan 1962), and middle
class families (Olive Negrete, Ce'sar and Pina Chan 1960).   Unfortunately
such studies often remain synchronic and anecdotal, and contribute
little to the construction of general theories about urbanization
processes.
Finally, a number of investigations have been made of rural-urban
migrants and their adaptation to the urban environment. (Although
the other approaches sometimes discuss migration as a subordinate
topic, their principal aim is the description of urban structure
rather than assimilation of peasants or small-town dwellers to metro-
politan life.) A focus on migration can serve to bridge the gap
between the two predominant anthropological perspectives on urbaniza-
tion: the influence of cities on hinterland areas and the appearance
of urban traits in specific populations.
Despite the potential importance of migration research, anthro-
pologists generally study only a small range of the total rural-urban
migration phenomena in Mexico. Their research designs can be placed
in a national framework which varies on one axis from a single rural
community to all the nation's villages, and on the other from a single
city to all urban areas.
Each of these approaches to cityward migration implies specific
assumptions, and produces specific results. First, to study migration
at the national level, requires data on all migrants to all cities.
Such projects rely on census analysis and yield macro-level results.
4
Behind this approach is the assumption that the total pattern of city-
ward population movement must be understood before small-scale research
can be begun. The work of demographers, economists, and geographers
(Ball 1967; Cabrera 1967, 1970; Stevens 1966; Tabah and Cosfo 1970;
Whetten and Burnight 1958) displays this orientation, which treats
migration as mass behavior rather than as the experiences of individual
migrants.
Total migration to a single city can be investigated by combining
census analysis with sample survey techniques. Despite the large
sample sizes involved (usually, N = 2,000 to 10,000), the focus remains
on the migration phenomenon, not the migrants themselves. In Mexico,
studies of this kind have been undertaken in all the major cities
(Balfan 1968; Browning and Geindt 1968, 1969; Carnelius n.d.; Mufioz
Garcia, Oliveira and Stern 1971).
Research has also been carried out among emigrants from a single
rural point of origin, regardless of their urban destination. This
approach, relying on survey and ethnographic techniques, assumes that
out-migration from a single community sheds light on national urbani-
zation patterns, and measures urban influences on specific hinterland
areas. Such investigations (Barkin 1971; Butterworth 1969; Rollwagen
1971; Stoltman and Ball 1971; Wiest 1971) understandably yield signif-
icant information on individual migrants as well as on the general
relationship between rural-urban migration and urbanization. Anthro-
pologists often adopt this research design as an extension of field-
work in peasant villages, few of which have not experienced significant
emigration to the cities.
5
Finally, migration research can be limited to a single rural commun-
ity of origin and a single urban destination. Ethnographic case study
methods predominate, in this research design, with the result that indi-
vidual migrant adaptation may receive greater attention than the overall
migration process. Projects of this kind are generally carried out in
two stages: first, the anthropologist conducts an ethnography in the
rural community; subsequently he follows a small group of emigrants to a
specific city (Ashton 1967; Butterworth 1962; Lewis 1952).
Predictably, these alternative research designs lead to different
conclusions about the relationship of cityward migration to the urban-
ization process.  Of course, fieldworkers can--and often do-- shift their
tactics, either intentionally or as the situation warrants. Oscar Lewis'
migration research provides a good example: after studying Tepoztlan
migrants to Mexico City, he shifted his attention to migrants from other
regions, and finally investigated the capital's slum residents without
regard to their origins (i.e., whether they were migrants or urban
natives).
TZINTZUNTZAN MIGRANTS IN MEXICO CITY
The urbanization of peasant migrants from Tzintzuntzan, Michoac9n
(1970 population, 2,250) to Mexico City2 offers an illustration of one
category of migration research. For at least two reasons, Tzintzuntzan
emigrants to the capital are especially suitable as a focus of study.
Well known ethnographically through the work of George M. Foster and
Gabriel Ospina (1948) who made a thorough study of the community during
the period 1944-1946, the Tzintzuntzenos have been the object of Foster's
continuing study since 1958, including complete censuses in 1960 and
6
1970. The censuses provide important supplemental data on out-migration
and lend historical depth to fieldwork I did in Mexico City between April
of 1969 and August of 1970.
In addition, Mexico City is the principal destination of Tzintzuntzan
emigrants, as it is for a vast number of Mexican peasants drawn from the
more slowly developing countryside to the city's relatively open labor
market. Balan (1969:18) estimates that migrants represent about half the
population of the capital; most demographers agree that its formidable
social growth (i.e., the natural increase plus the effects of migration)
is primarily due to exceptionally high rates of immigration.
Because I had access to Foster's vast store of Tzintzuntzan data, I
could concentrate on the second part of what would otherwise have been a
two-stage study. Consequently, nearly all my time was spent in Mexico
City among the migrants. My research design was similar in many ways
to that of Lewis (1952) and Butterworth (1962), who also investigated
migrant groups in the capital.
When I arrived in Mexico City with a list of less than twenty
migrant names and only two current addresses, I did not expect to find
more than 100-200 Tzintzuntzefio emigrants, based on the experiences of
Lewis and Butterworth. My initial plan was to survey the entire migrant
population, then to conduct a series of in-depth family studies. In
fact, I was aware that I might be able to test Lewis' suggestions about
migrant participation in the "culture of poverty." However, I found the
Tzintzuntzan migrant population much larger than I expected (although this
realization came rather slowly, because the geographic and social distance
between migrant households in Mexico City prevented a rapid census
survey).
7
My initial expectations about the size of the migrant population
were also influenced by Foster's 1960 census data, which showed barely
200 village emigrants. Even in the mid-1960s, "Tzintzuntzan [had] not
yet begun to feel a major pull from urban centers. Nevertheless,
although percentages are still small, increasing numbers of emigrants
move to cities, and particularly to Mexico City. . . .it (Foster 1967:273).
Neither of us anticipated the dramatic increase in cityward emigration
in the later 1960s, coincident with the termination of the bracero labor
program. Apparently, when this economic opportunity was closed in 1964,
rural-urban migration became the only available alternative to village
life. The limited lands and fragile tourist-oriented crafts industry of
the TzintzuntzenKos were increasingly unable to support the village's
rapidly expanding population.
The large size of the migrant group (which totaled nearly 500
persons, including spouses and children born outside the village) forced
me to abandon my original plan of study almost entirely. Instead, I
had to devote the first seven months of fieldwork to the task of
locating Tzintzuntzenos in the city.   I found more than sixty migrant
households plus nearly twenty young Tzintzuntzenos studying at the
capital's secondary schools or universities.
The Tzintzuntzan migrant households were not concentrated in a
single zone of the city, but were spread among some forty neighborhoods.
In interviewing the Tzintzuntze'nos I traveled nearly 9,000 miles by
car, bus, taxi, and subway--and still failed to survey the entire migrant
population. My research progressed as I built up a series of overlapping
social relationships within the migrant group. The first family I met
took me to meet two more families, these in turn acquainted me with
8
several more, and in this way my social network expanded concentrically.
This experience may have had more than methodological significance;
eventually I realized that informants took me to meet only fellow
migrants of approximately equal social status. Because I first met a
middle-class family, their social preferences temporarily prejudiced my
view of the migrant group. Not until my fieldwork was considerably ad-
vanced did I accidentally encounter a migrant of low socio-economic
status. Through him, I was introduced to another world: the world of
the great majority of working-class Tzintzuntzenos, with whom the smaller
number of middle class families had virtually no contact.
The difficulties I encountered during my fieldwork substantially
altered my original view of the relation of rural-urban migration to
nationwide urbanization processes in Mexico. Confronted by a migrant
population scattered over a wide area of Mexico City, whose social
relations were determined by a combination of geographical, socio-economic,
and consanguineal variables, I had to abandon my synchronic, homogenous
view of a migrant "community" and admit the mobility, diffuseness, and
"looseness" of actual relations among Tzintzuntze'nos in Mexico City.
Further, my experiences with Tzintzuntzan migrants to Mexico City show
the intimate relationship between research design, fieldwork techniques,
and theory-construction. Adequate urban ethnographies depend not only
on the collection and analysis of data, but also on the anthropologist's
awareness of the constraints generated by particular fieldwork
situations.
Urban ethnographers must adjust their styles and techniques to the
particular urban situation, just as earlier fieldworkers developed
9
methods appropriate to the conditions they found in tribal and peasant
villages. Furthermore, urban anthropologists must discover a general
theoretical posture in which the holistic and comparative components
of anthropology can play a more significant role. Otherwise, as Beals
(1951) cautioned long ago, "if anthropologists keep on as they have begun
in the study of modern culture, they will in time reinvent sociology,
but unfortunately it will be at least fifty years behind the rest of the
field."
10
NOTES
*
The research for this article was supported by a Traineeship in
Anthropology (Grant No. GM-1224) from the Division of General Medical
Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. Special thanks for en-
couragement in the research and writing are due George M. Foster, who
kindly provided me access to the Tzintzuntzan village census data. A
slightly different version of this paper was first presented in the
Experimental Symposium on Rural-Urban Migration, Urbanization and Urban
Life in Mexico at the 1971 AAA Meetings in New York City.
'Mexico has been the site of a very large number of anthropological
studies of urbanism and urbanization, at least in comparison with other
Latin American countries. A survey of the literature (cf. Kemper 1971)
shows that, of 265 citations for the period 1940-1970, Mexico had 64,
followed by Peru with 52, Brazil with 33, and Guatemala with 15. In
addition, two of the major perspectives on urbanization--i.e., Redfield's
"folk-urban continuum" and Lewis' "culture of poverty"--have emerged
from Mexican studies.
2For details on the urbanization experiences of the Tzintzuntzan
migrants in Mexico City, see Kemper 1971a.
11
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17