ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents an engaged urban anthropology that draws upon a history of critical engagement with the city and a commitment to social justice and transformation through the intersection of ethnography and politically informed action. It describes the environmental, political, economical and social crises facing cities as well as the opportunities urban life holds for creativity, resistance, imagination and generativity. The book highlights how marginalized young people employ the practices of "crafting" as a specific performance to gain attention, "waiting" and "accelerating" to deal with the temporal dimensions of limited opportunities, "harvesting" to recuperate waste and, more importantly, "precarious detachment" to deal with their own sense of expendability. It shows that for protest anthropology, playing a central role in a movement by organizing and planning activities and commitment to the political work is of foremost importance.
