Public Intimacy in Neighbour Relationships and Complaints

Elizabeth Stokoe

Sociological Research Online, 2006, vol. 11, issue 3, 137-157

Abstract: This paper examines neighbour relationships as an example of non-familial intimacy. It focuses on the way disputes between neighbours often hinge on notions of obtrusive public intimacy, in which the sights and sounds of normatively private domestic lives become sources of complaint. The analyses are based on approximately 150 hours of naturally-occurring interaction with neighbours including telephone calls to mediation centres, environmental health departments and anti-social behaviour units, neighbour mediation interviews, police-suspect interrogations in neighbour crime, and neighbour issues broadcast on television and radio. It was found that while the neighbours maintain good relations at the edges of private spaces, the physical arrangements of domestic properties, with their shared boundaries, means that personal information can be transmitted and observed as a routine matter of course. Disputes often have their basis in the illegitimate breach of boundaries, and in the unwanted and unavoidable receipt of the sights and sounds of other people's intimate lives.

Keywords: Neighbour Relationships; Intimacy; Complaints; Disputes; Ethnomethodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:11:y:2006:i:3:p:137-157

DOI: 10.5153/sro.1383

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