Being in Public: The Threat and Promise of Stranger Contact

Davina Cooper (d.s.cooper@kent.ac.uk) is Professor of Law and Political Theory at the University of Kent, and Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender & Sexuality. She is the author of Sexing the City (1994), Power in the Struggle (1995), Governing Out of Order (1998), and Challenging Diversity (2004). I want to thank Jon Goldberg-Hiller, Emily Grabham, Didi Herman, Martha-Marie Kleinhans, Laura Beth Nielsen, and the two anonymous LSI referees for their helpful feedback and comments on earlier drafts, my thanks also to Suhraiya Jivraj for her excellent research assistance. The second half of this essay draws on research funded by the Leverhulme Foundation and the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality.