An Ethnography of the Goodman Building: The Longest Rent Strike

“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.

 

Niccolo Caldararo is Lecturer in Anthropology at San Francisco State University, USA. In addition to academic work on medical anthropology, economic anthropology, and other fields, he is an active consultant in artifact conservation and analysis.