"An Ethnography of the Goodman Building vividly incorporates a wide
variety of methods to tell the story of class struggle in a building,
neighborhood, and city that is replicated globally. I read it as a
number of boxes inside each other opened in the course of reading.
Caldararo recounts the building's personal "biography" to convey not
only the "facts about," but the "feelings about" the flesh and blood of
the building and its surrounding neighborhood." --Jerome Krase, Brooklyn
College of The City University of New York, USA
"This unique contribution to the field of urban and regional studies
counteracts current trends in the ethnographies of urban movements by
offering, with great hindsight, an analysis from a physical space, and
from first-hand experience. The focal point is one building, and the
author is a former tenant. This perspective is appealing, especially in
an era of global connections where macro social movements are on the
front line of urban life and research." --Nathalie Boucher, Director and
Researcher, Respire, and Affiliated Professor Assistant, Department of
Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada.
Through in-depth analysis and narrative investigation of an actual
building occupation, Niccolo Caldararo seeks to not only offer an
historical account of the Goodman Building in San Francisco, but also
focus on the active resistance tactics of its residents from the 1960s
to the 1980s. Taking as its focal point the building itself, the volume
weaves in and out of every life involved and the struggles that surround
it--San Francisco's urban renewal, ethnic clearing, gentrification, and
municipal governance at a time of booming urban growth. Caldararo, a
tenant at the center of its strikes and activities, provides a unique
perspective that counteracts current trends in ethnographies of urban
movements by grounding its analysis in physical and tangible space.
