Neighbours, neighbouring and acquaintanceship: in dialogue with David Morgan
In 2012, David Morgan gave a talk titled ‘Neighbours, neighbouring and acquaintanceship: some further thoughts’ at the University of Turku, Finland. In this article we engage in dialogue with Morgan’s talk, as well as his 2009 book Acquaintances, in particular the observations he made about the simultaneous closeness and distance that characterises neighbouring relationships. We suggest that using the metaphors of elasticity and stickiness instead allows us to explore neighbouring relationships as more than inhabiting a space between intimates and strangers (), but as textured and messy everyday relationalities. We consider also how the ‘stickiness’ of this relationship as well as the significance of its ‘elasticity’ are likely to have been heightened during COVID-19 lockdowns, which have altered the usual configurations of intimate and stranger relationships. In doing so, our aim is to contribute further to Morgan’s theorising of the nature of neighbouring as a specific form of acquaintanceship.
-
Baines, D., Cunningham, I., Kgaphola, I. and Mthembu, S. (2020) Nonprofit care work as social glue: creating and sustaining social reproduction in the context of austerity/late neoliberalism, Affilia, 35(4): 449–65. doi: 10.1177/0886109920906787
-
BBC News (2020) Coronavirus: report ‘rule of six’ breaches, minister urges, 14 September, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54142699.
-
Becker, H.S. (1960) Notes on the concept of commitment, American Journal of Sociology, 66(1): 32–40. doi: 10.1086/222820
-
Bergson, H. (2001[1913]) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consiousness, F.L. Pogson (trans.) Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
-
Bowlby, S. (2011) Friendship, co-presence and care: neglected spaces, Social & Cultural Geography, 12(6): 605–22. doi: 10.1080/14649365.2011.601264.
-
Brownlie, J. and Anderson, S. (2017) Thinking sociologically about kindness: puncturing the blasé in the ordinary city, Sociology, 51(6): 1222–38. doi: 10.1177/0038038516661266
-
The Care Collective (2020) The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, London: Verso.
-
Choon, C. M. (2021) Complaints about noisy neighbours in South Korea spike amid COVID-19, The Straits Times, www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/complaints-about-noisy-neighbours-in-south-korea-spike-amid-covid-19.
-
Crow, G., Allan, G. and Summers, M. (2002) Neither busybodies nor nobodies: managing proximity and distance in neighbourly relations, Sociology, 36(1): 127–45. doi: 10.1177/0038038502036001007
-
Davies, K. (2018) ‘Sticky’ proximities: sibling relationships and education, Sociological Review, 67(1): 210–25. doi: 10.1177/0038026118784832
-
Deleuze, G. (1991) Bergsonism, H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (trans.) New York: Zone Books.
-
Doward, J. (2020) Good neighbours? No, UK’s community spirit fell in summer COVID lockdown, The Guardian, 7 November, www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/07/good-neighbours-no-uks-community-spirit-fell-in-summer-covid-lockdown.
-
Edwards, R. and Gillies, V. (2004) Support in parenting: values and consensus concerning who to turn to, Journal of Social Policy, 33(4): 627–47. doi: 10.1017/S0047279404008037
-
Fraser, N. (2016) Capitalism’s crisis of care, Dissent, Fall 2016, www.dissentmagazine.org/article/nancy-fraser-interview-capitalism-crisis-of-care.
-
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Eveyday Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
-
Goffman, E. (1963) Behaviour in Public Spaces: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings, New York: Free Press.
-
Gompertz, S. (2018) Moving home is becoming a rarity, BBC News, 27 March, www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43541990.
-
Gullestad, M. (1986) Symbolic ‘fences’ in urban Norwegian neighbourhoods, Ethnos, 51(1–2): 52–70. doi: 10.1080/00141844.1986.9981313
-
Hall, T. and Smith, R.J. (2015) Care and repair and the politics of urban kindness, Sociology, 49(1): 3–18, doi: 10.1177/0038038514546662.
-
Hughes, E.C. (1962) Good people and dirty work, Social Problems, 10(1): 3–11. doi: 10.2307/799402
-
Lewis, C. (2019) Listening to community: the aural dimensions of neighbouring, Sociological Review, 68(1): 94–109. doi: 10.1177/0038026119853944
-
Lofland, L.H. (1973) A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space, New York: Basic Books.
-
Lofland, L,H. (1998) The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Social Territory, New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction.
-
Kortteinen, M. (1982) Lähiö. Tutkimus Elämäntapojen Muutoksesta [Suburb. A study of lifestyle change], Helsinki: Otava.
-
Maalsen, S. (2020) Generation share: digitalised geographies of shared housing, Journal of Social and Cultural Geography, 21(1): 105–13. doi: 10.1080/14649365.2018.1466355
-
Massey, D. (2004) Geographies of responsibility, Geografiska Annaler B, 86(1): 5–18. doi: 10.1111/j.0435-3684.2004.00150.x
-
Mizen, P. and Ofosu-Kusi, Y. (2010) Asking, giving, receiving: friendship as survival strategy among Accra’s street children, Childhood, 17(4): 441–54. doi: 10.1177/0907568209350511
-
Morgan, D. (2009) Acquaintances: The Space between Intimates and Strangers, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
-
Morgan, D. (2012) ‘Neighbours, neighbouring and acquaintanceship: some further thoughts’, Unpublished paper presented at Neighbouring and Neighbour Disputes – Mapping Ongoing Research in Finland [workshop], 25 October, University of Turku.
-
Muldoon, M.S. (2006) Tricks of Time: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur in Search of Time, Self and Meaning, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
-
Nabity-Grover, T., Cheung, C.M.K. and Bennett Thatcher, C. (2020) Inside out and outside in: how the COVID-19 pandemic affects self-disclosure on social media, International Journal of Information Management, 55(December), 102188. doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102188
-
Pahl, R.E. (1984) Divisions of Labour, Oxford: Blackwell.
-
Pahl, R.E. (1991) The search for social cohesion: from Durkheim to the European Commission, European Journal of Sociology, 32(2): 345–60. doi: 10.1017/S0003975600006305
-
Popke, E.J. (2003) Poststructuralist ethics: subjectivity, responsibility and the space of community, Progress in Human Geography, 27(3): 298–316. doi: 10.1191/0309132503ph429oa
-
Putnam, R.D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York:, NY: Routledge.
-
Rebughini, P. (2011) Friendship dynamics between emotions and trials, Sociological Research Online, 16(1): 119–27, doi: https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.2239/.
-
Simmel, G. (1950[1908]) The stranger, in K.H. Woff (ed) The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York, NY: The Free Press, pp 402–08.
-
Skelton, T. (2000) ‘Nothing to do, nowhere to go?’ Teenage girls and ‘public’ space in the Rhondda Valleys, South Wales’, in S.L. Holloway and G. Valentine (eds) Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, London: Routledge, pp. 69–85.
-
Smart, C. (2007) Personal Life, Cambridge: Polity.
-
Spencer, L. and Pahl, R. (2006) Rethinking Friendship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
-
Stenning, A. (2005) Post-socialism and the changing geographies of the everyday in Poland, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(1): 113–27. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00155.x
-
Stenning, A. (2020) Play streets build community, Playing Out, 16 March, https://playingout.net/blog/play-streets-build-community/.
-
Stokoe, E. (2006) Public intimacy in neighbour relationships and complaints, Sociological Research Online, 11(3), www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/stokoe.html. doi: 10.5153/sro.1383
-
Tait, A. (2020) Pandemic shaming: is it helping us keep our distance?, The Guardian, 4 April, www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/04/pandemic-shaming-is-it-helping-us-keep-our-distance.
-
Townsend, M. (2020) Shock new figures fuel fears of more lockdown domestic abuse killings in UK, The Observer, 15 November, www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/15/shock-new-figures-fuel-fears-of-more-lockdown-domestic-abuse-killings-in-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other.
-
Twigg, J. (2006) The Body in Health and Social Care, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Wellman, B. (1990) The place of kinfolk in personal community networks, Marriage & Family Review, 15(1/2): 195–228. doi: 10.1300/J002v15n01_10
| May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 137 | 137 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 109 | 109 | 1 |
| PDF Downloads | 79 | 79 | 2 |
We are a leading social science publisher
committed to making a difference.
Bristol University Press and
Policy Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk