La gentrification è "buona da pensare"? Note sugli studi urbani e l'antropologia della contemporaneità

For anthropology, studying the city has always meant problematising the boundary between the modern and the non-modern, which has long been at the heart of the discipline's definition. However, it has never been easy to take into account the forms of popular culture that exist within a capitalist society that is seen as inherently homologising and inauthentic. The problem may recur in contemporary urban studies in relation to 'critical' perspectives (which also have considerable merits in consolidating this interdisciplinary field of study). Starting from a critique of capitalist society sometimes runs the risk of reducing ethnography to anecdotal observation in the service of pre-established theses, and of encouraging researchers to consider the point of view of social actors only when it is congenial to their own. This essay discusses the problem in relation to the notion of gentrification, arguing for the usefulness of a certain methodological relativism and distrust of grand narratives. In fact, not assuming the inevitable and totally negative character of the gentrification phenomenon can help to grasp the agency of social actors, the specificity of their points of view and contexts, and the way all this changes over time.