[...]... for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth Here we face, 16 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space. .. incidents, and arrests recently reported In addition to these increasing physical intimidation tactics by the state, a concomitant ideological battle is being fought over the meaning and continued vitality of notions of public space and the freedom of peaceful assembly 26 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space * * * An appropriate place to undertake a theoretical analysis of anarchy and ecology... part of the political and economic system of the state whether it wants to be or not Further, individual members themselves have been reared in the cultural traditions and values of that state and have only the greatest difficulty divesting themselves of their deleterious effects Nor can the commune easily shield the young or any others from the formidable ‘attractions’ of the outside [F]rom the start,... from the rapidly gentrifying downtown area, or to conceal the intention of commercial enterprises to “take back” the public spaces of the city from the street people who were constrained to pass the days there By this time I had already made the connection between the people on the streets and those involved in the anarchist community experiments I had been considering, such as the Rainbow Family of. .. human experience Of course, all of this accords with the epistemological implications of anarchism (see Koch 1993), which eschews "laws" and "causation" and "validity" in favor of a voluntary morality, a holistic world-view, and the kind of dialogue that makes communities embodying these ideals appear on the horizon of possibility 18 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space Transformative... here is the notion that research can be micro, macro, both, neither, or (at different points along the way) all of the above The rest is up to the reader in terms of deciding what the implications are for grander theorizing and wider application 20 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space As a final word on methods, it should be noted that my personal encounters, experiences, and friendships... transient identity and a subversive ideology raises issues of agency and volition that are especially relevant in the face of diminishing privacy rights and the decline of public space Such issues bear further on the question of whether utopian imaginaries can still be relevant in promoting social 6 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space transformation, or represent mere romantic longings... public space as a means of analyzing concepts such as the nature of moral ordering, norms of conduct, presentations of self, and spatial arrangements (Goffman 1963, 1971; see also Adler 1994:384, Lofland 1998:2-3) Following Goffman, Lyn Lofland “employed a mixture of intentional and serendipitous research strategies” (Adler 1994:384) to explore the spatial and social features of the public realm (Lofland... no longer be the mark of absolute reality, because the measured object could never be completely separated from the measuring subject the measured and the measurer, the verified and the verifier, at this (quantum) level, are one and the same The texture of reality is one in which the observer and the event, the subject and the object, the knower and the known, are not separable.” Moral Implications... and public spaces The discussion here will provide a framework for locating and interpreting the balance of the work, which essentially weaves together elements of all of these spheres in its investigation of homelessness, public space, criminalization, and resistance Anarchist Spaces: Property, Community, Ecology The central tension in perhaps all social theory is that between the individual and the . and regulations; (iii) the material and ideological erosion of public space; (iv) emerging forces of resistance to these trends; and (v) 2 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space. series of events in the summer of 1998 moved the work to a new level, when the City of Tempe announced plans to adopt an ordinance 4 Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space . configurations of inequality and injustice. Together, the mix of erudition and outrage, the conflation of case study method and on -the -street involvement, make Street People a model of engaged,