CONTENTS List of illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 The (dis) enchantments of urban encounters1 City publics: the (dis) enchantments of urban encounters 7 Constructing public space 11 Psychoanalytic accounts16 The book's outline 18 2 Symbolic spaces of difference: contesting the eruv in Barnet, London, and Tenafly, New Jersey 20 Constitution matters: the case of the Tenafly, New Jersey, eruv24 Planning and local government: English sites of conservatism and the Barnet eruv 28 Discourses of dissent34 Concluding reflections 38 Postscript 40 3 Nostalgia at work: living with difference in a London street market 41 Princess Street market 42 Nostalgia 49 Crime and safety 50 Cosmopolitanism and socio-economic decline 52 Being Anglophone55 Being Christian 5 7 Welfare chauvinism 59 Conclusion 61 Note 61 4 Risky space and money talks: the Hampstead ponds meet stateregulation 62 The Hampstead ponds 64 A question of money? 73 Conclusion 78 5 Disrobing in public: embodied differences in bathing sites 80 Steaming bodies - Turkish baths and the performance of difference81 Hampstead ponds93 Conclusion 99 Postscript 99 6 Invisible subjects: encounter, desire and association amongst older people100 Invisibility 101 The University of the Third Age (USA)101 Allotments106 Unsexy bodies 114 A state of fear 118 Conclusion121 7Children's publics123 Children and public space: a case study 128 Conclusion 156 8The (dis)enchantments of urban encounters: some concluding reflections 159 Public/private 159 Stranger danger 166 Risk169 Affect effect 170 Towards enchanted urban encounters170 Appendix: a summary of the primary research methods174 Bibliography 1 76 Index 186