Trust Google Images to present something that illustrates the cutting edge of socio-legal theory. Hmm. Or, actually, trust me to hastily argue that a silly picture is worth 111 pages of words. This is, of course, a great underestimation of Blomley's work and I guarantee (if I have any remaining credibility, that is) that arguments like the foregoing--tenuous at best, based on cursory research--are not to be found in the book of which this review takes as its subject. Additionally, and unlike that last sentence, Blomley's writing is lucid. Though his book is about something as pedestrian as, well, the pedestrianist logic that forms the foundation of the sidewalk, he makes his argument interesting and his prose playful.
Through his analysis, Blomley seeks to demonstrate how his choice to conceptualize space in terms of "civic humanism" in his past work "blackboxed" the processes that enabled the oppressive regulation of minorities (among other things). According to Blomley, socio-legal theorists and civil rights rhetoricians conceive of the sidewalk as a part of a Habermasian public sphere in which people should ideally be allowed to exercise their rights of free speech. However, by inquiring into the processes and logics that inform the material construction of the sidewalk (historically, municipally, judicially and legislatively) Blomley finds that its central purpose is to allow pedestrians' free, unobstructed circulation. Thus, sidewalks are constructed by civil engineers with a view to minimizing obstructions (human and non-human alike) to pedestrian flow. Hence, Blomley's provocative article title, "How to Turn a Beggar into a Bus Stop," and the google image of the anthropomorphized sign above; using the logic of pedestrianism, all barriers to foot traffic are equal, and we can objectify beggars, crowds of people waiting at a bus stop, and a street sign marking the bus stop in the same way. Judges and legislators conceive of these spaces similarly, viewing sidewalks' principal purpose as facilitating people's movement; people's right to speech are secondary in this context and should minimally impair people's (constitutionally entrenched, at least in Canada) right to mobility. Moreover, decisionmakers can assure themselves that they are not discriminaing when they pass laws against panhandling or find that people should not be able to sleep on the sidewalk if they are insulating themselves from the cold concrete by laying out newspaper (a.k.a. "a structure"); as anyone, regardless of class, is entitled to freely pass down these municipally tended tracks these decisions are in the public interest. Blomley concludes that human rights activists will continue to be frustrated and disappointed by the regulation of the sidewalk so long as they keep arguing in terms of the public sphere. He closes by suggesting we look beyond arguments about equal rights, by rejecting this idea that we are one people all stumbling around, bumping into, obstructing each other under the blanket of law. He seems to be arguing that instead of looking to the courts to determine how the sidewalk should be administered, justice will be done by having municipalities think more critically about the sidewalk. For Blomley, it's not a question of their bad faith, but the continued reliance on logics that structure human environments and behavioural possibilities that are indifferent and occasionally offensive to social justice.
As you can probably tell from the long summary of its contents, I really enjoyed this book. For one, it was informed by Blomley's work (of course), Riles, Valverde, and ANT. I wrote a paper in which I sought to account for "the how" and the space of Canadian law in one of the more influential graduate courses I took. It was especially exciting to see how someone else employed drew on these sources in their analysis. Second, I have recently been preoccupied by the practical realities and possible political and ethical implications of a street vendor program in Vancouver, so I am happy to have the work of a locally engaged academic from which to draw.
Fin.
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