Familiar Strangers

Abstract

Much has been written about boarding and lodging in late-nineteenthcentury North America. Modell and Hareven 1977 provides a benchmark study of boarding in East Coast urban centers in the United States. For Canada, Medjuck 1980; Katz 1975; Katz et al. 1982; Harney 1978; Bradbury 1984, 1993; and Harris 1992, 1994, and 1996 shed light on aspects of boarding in various Canadian urban communities from the 1850s to the 1950s. In general these studies emphasize the importance of family cycles and economic circumstance for an understanding of the boarding process (see also Robinson 1993; Shergold 1982). Some point to the similarity in social and class background of boarders and boardinghouse keepers (Harney 1978;Medjuck 1980; Modell and Hareven 1977; Harris 1992). Literature on boardinghouse keeping has focused generally, however, on the economic rather than the social or cultural importance of boarding. Even when cultural implications are explored, the unit of analysis is that of community or region or, as in the literature on the acculturation of newcomers, on sojourners and immigrants only