Laurier, E., A. Whyte, et al. (2002). "Neighbouring as an occasioned activity : "Finding a lost cat" " Space and Culture 5(4): 346-367.
This article challenges the common idea about social and cultural commentators that suburban neighbourhoods lack a sense of community. The article brings together ideas of neighbourhood and community to examine a more nuanced and grounded understanding of suburban living. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a UK suburb, the authors draw on insights from ethnomethodology and other studies of social practice to offer therapeutic descriptions of neighbouring. Through focusing on the incident of the search for a lost cat, the ethnographic research 'shows how everyday talk formulates places and is formulated by its location in the ongoing occasioned activities of neighbours'. (p. 346) The authors argue, in contrast with other studies which depict suburbia as lacking in neighbourly relations, that there are rules of good neighbouring within a suburban community, including specific and local moral commitments as well as forms of social distancing between neighbours. These research findings resonate with Concoran and Gray*'s study of suburban affiliations in Ireland.