Pure anonymity is intolerable, so urban dwellers must know their strangers

Evidence

I shall argue that, given certain social psychological assumptions about human beings and given certain anthropological and historical evidence about nonurban peoples, there is very good reason to ask: how is city life possible? I shall argue that a situation of “pure” anonymity would be intolerable. I shall argue that humans can live in cities only because they, in fact, know a great deal about the strangers who surround them. And I shall argue that this knowledge-this sine qua non of urban living-is itself made possible by an “ordering” of the city’s populace such that appearances and locations provide relatively dependable clues to “identities.” — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 9

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core thesis and key term: appearances and locations “order” strangers into knowable identities.
• XREF: Directly frames the reader’s cross-reading on Cole’s flâneur—civil inattention’s epistemic basis in this ordering.