Examine the argument that neighbourly relations are always characterised Essay

The requirement to be friendly but without undermining the privacy of others, different spaces where neighbouring takes place. For example if a neighbour is busy at the front garden might do a quick chat, but never thinking of knocking on their front door. People don’t normally sit in the front of their home because they see it to public, more like in the back garden. Like Kate Fox says refer it as the grey area In her book called Watching the English: The hidden rules of English Behaviour Fox wrote that in 2004, who is a social anthropologist. Some neighbours may pass one another and a have a quick hi, chat, and some don’t bother with each other. Most properties in the UK have distinct physical boundaries, for example, borders, hedges, fences or walls, most people respect these boundaries. We have them as a protection from others around us, so we can sit or sunbathe without onlookers, if someone were to pop their head over our fence this would, to most, be seen as intrusion. Many people have a relationship with their neighbours, most of them keeping a distance, not becoming too friendly, maybe borrowing a power tool or signing for a parcel and dropping it round when they finish work. Willmott, 1986, said neighbours are expected to have a ‘general disposition towards friendliness’ while, at the same time, respecting others ‘need for privacy and reserve’. This suggest the general feeling towards how a neighbour should be is friendly when seen but to respect the privacy and need for space. Identify the argument that neighbourly relations are characterised by friendly distance. Before I identify the argument that neighbourly relations are characterised by friendly distance, I want to explore what neighbourly relations are, their responsibilities, how and why they act in a particular but also whether it’s the same throughout the world. During the 1800s there was a rapid change in where people lived. In the first half of the century,  the population of England and Wales doubled from nearly 9 million to almost 18 million. Meanwhile the population living in large towns increased from1.5 million to 15million. England experienced the full force and development of urbanisation. These changes of where people live also influenced how people lived. The historian Briggs (1990) described heaving, industrial Manchester as the ‘shock city’ in the 1830s. Among all the changes experienced with urbanisation some of these changes included the intensity of people liv ing together ay greater densities than ever experienced in the countryside, people had new associations with boundaries and a different grasp of ‘public’ and ‘private’ space. But more importantly they had to learn how to be a neighbour in a city. The boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ are still evident in cities today. Kate Fox describes it as the ‘geography of neighbouring’. In every community there is an informal negotiation of space which establishes the daily functioning of the neighbourhood. Boundaries and communal junctions are places of interaction and for exchanges of pleasantries. Jovan Byford explains that most interactions occur over a boundary, a fence or in a public space like a street instead of in a personal private domain. Harris and Gale (2004) conducted a study to examine neighbourly relations and they found the trend that most interviewees explained that if they go out of the house and see other neighbours they will chat but do not necessarily go to each other’s houses.