Since 2007 · Universidade de São Paulo
Reading the city, one field site at a time.
Ponto Urbe is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of urban anthropology published by the Urban Anthropology Nucleus at the University of São Paulo. We publish articles, thematic dossiers, translations, interviews, and ethnographic essays.
What we publish
Five sections, one discipline
Articles
Original research grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in cities across Brazil and abroad.
Thematic dossiers
Curated collections of essays exploring a single urban question from multiple ethnographic angles.
Translations
Rare or contemporary texts made available in Portuguese for the first time.
Interviews
Conversations with senior researchers who have shaped Brazilian urban anthropology.
Ethnographic essays
Cir-kula: shorter, image-rich pieces documenting fieldwork observation as it happens.
Editorial notes
Introductions to each issue situating its contributions within current debates.
From the blog
Notes on urban anthropology
Ten Classic Texts in Urban Anthropology, Revisited
A short, opinionated starting point for readers new to the field — and a refresher for those returning to it.
Graffiti, Street Art, and Urban Visual Culture
Walls are never neutral surfaces. Reading what gets written and painted on them is its own ethnographic practice.
Food Markets as Ethnographic Sites
A public market compresses a city's economy, migration history, and social hierarchy into a single, walkable space.
Urban Peripheries and the Politics of Waiting
Waiting — for a bus, a benefit, a document, a call back — is not empty time. It is a structured, unequally distributed experience.
Editorial mission
A space for unpublished scholarship in urban anthropology
Ponto Urbe exists to circulate original academic work by researchers at every career stage, from every region, in dialogue with the wider field of anthropology. Since our first issue in 2007, we have remained free to read and free to publish in.