Patterns of neighbouring

communicate personal recognition and, second, to convey the impression that the other is considered a friendly neighbor. In other words, the parochial version of a greeting requires a focused, individual effort that pays tribute to the special bond that exists between neighbors via their shared territory and community membership.

Here are the four key principles Lofland identifies as enabling smooth interaction (or non-interaction) among strangers in public spaces:

1. Civil Inattention

• Definition : The practice of acknowledging the presence of others while deliberately avoiding sustained attention or intrusion.


• Example : Making brief eye contact with someone walking past

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Clark’s rule specifying the need to occasionally claim sympathy (1997:174ff.) also applies to neighborly help, even though gratitude and the extension of unsolicited favors can make up for a lack of true reciprocity.

, neighborhood associations frequently prompt active members to interact with other residents, for instance, to recruit volunteers while distributing fliers and newsletters, thus leading to many informal and spontaneous acts of neighboring

n the giv-ing end, all study participants seemed willing to aid a neighbor who approached them for help, and most recounted examples of assisting others in the past.

Proactive intervention, like extended helpfulness, has a signal function. It indi-cates to locals the type of neighbors one has and the kind of neighborhood one lives in.

In local communities, residents are much less prone to ignore any threat or dis-comfort a neighbor might experience. Instead, locals are more willing to get in-volved on an assumed victim’s behalf, especially when the neighbor is absent or somehow unaware of what is going on.

four distinct practices indi-viduals enact to treat each other “as neighbors”: friendly recognition, parochial help-fulness, proactive intervention, and embracing and contest ing diversity.

We protect each other. . . . Do we socialize? No. But we’re neighbors! And we’ll help each other if we need to help each other.