Attlee, J. (2007). Isolarion: a different Oxford journey. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
This book is an example of a study of a single street, the Cowley Road. The style is informal and eclectic, drawing on a range of sources and inspirations including conversations, observations, and library and archival sources. The author is not an academic but rather a local resident of the Cowley Road who works in art publishing and took on the project of exploring the Cowley Road in the spirit of a pilgrimage or urban exploration--much in the same style as Ian Sinclair's psychogeographies of London--and the methods are not justified in sociological or anthropological terms, but the author adopts loosely ethnographic methods to explore and interrogate the various shops, churches, organisations, activities, politics and residents along the long and diverse Cowley Road. Each chapter is devoted to a different theme, often centred around a particular shop, event, or 'piece' of the Cowley Road. Although the book is not conventionally academic, the author demonstrates considerable depth of analysis of political and social issues, including ideas of diversity, multiculturalism and ethnic divisions; ideas of belonging and nostalgia for older times; notions of historical layers embedded within the road in terms of collective identity and symbolic meaning; local resistance to neighbourhood re-branding; and the idea of community and locality in a relatively deprived area within the larger context of an old university city. Overall, this is a refreshing in-depth study focused on a single road in Oxford, which serves as the 'boundary' for community but in fact is a very large and diverse spatial 'container' for the study. Two other examples of single road studies, both in London, are Hall* and Miller*.