ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores ethnographically varied enough to reflect the diverse complexity of anthropological research in urban settings. It demonstrates the unique contribution that anthropological analysis has to offer to our understanding specific and comparative of the listed problems. The book explains urban anthropology would jeopardize, not necessarily explicitly but perhaps forcibly, the disciplinary dominance of research done elsewhere. It examines the ramifications of deaths that acquire special significance as they occur in a highly problematic conflict area. The book defines how political value becomes attached to such deaths through carefully articulated manipulations of the circumstances of death and burial. It contextualizes urban anthropological research in the broader context arguing that such research plays a significant role in understanding the dynamics that mark the contemporary geopolitical situation.
