Tearing down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy

Jeff Ferrell

ISBN 10: 0312233353 / ISBN 13: 9780312233358

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

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Item in acceptable condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00078379106

Bibliographic Details

Title: Tearing down the Streets: Adventures in ...

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2002

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis:

From New York to San Francisco, Times Square to the Tenderloin, local police clash with graffiti artists, disorderly young people, radical environmentalists, and the homeless on city streets in an attempt to create a sense of urban order and safety. Pundits talk about "quality of life crime" opponents talk about the "Disneyfication" of America's cities. Drawing on Jeff Ferrell's ongoing field research in a variety of cities, including Denver, San Francisco, New York, Phoenix, and Flagstaff, this lively account of Ferrell's adventures as a participant and researcher inside the worlds of street musicians, homeless punks, militant bicycle activists, high risk "BASE jump" parachustists, skateboarders, outlaw radio operators, and hip hop graffiti artists, explores the contested day-to-day dynamics of public life and public space. Along the way the book takes on a remarkable range of contemporary public controversies involving these underground groups, documenting the ways in which their on-the-street anarchist politics and cultural self-invention shape resistance to new forms of spacial and legal control, and tracing the roots of this resistance through a subversive past that stretches from the Paris commune of 1871 to the punks of the 1970s. This look at extreme urban culture asks "whose city is it?" and argues that a disorderly urban culture is a better alternative than the Disneyfied city.

Product Description:

From New York to San Francisco, Times Square to the Tenderloin, graffiti artists, young people, radical environmentalists, and the homeless clash with police on city streets in an attempt take back urban spaces from the developers and "disneyfiers". Drawing on more than a decade of first-hand research, this lively account goes inside the worlds of street musicians, homeless punks, militant bicycle activists, high-risk "BASE jump" parachutists, skateboarders, outlaw radio operators, and hip hop graffiti artists, to explore the day-to-day skirmishes in the struggle over public life and public space.