some tasks were simple enough to be done by me as the occasion
warranted.

Much of my data gathering among these urbanites took place during
interviews, many of them quite informal, and others more structured.
Interviews proved comfortable for almost everyone whom I approached,
because it cast them, as well as me, into familiar roles. I often asked the
men and women I interviewed to tell me how they came to be part of the
activity at which I met them. This storytelling format that put events into
a sequence felt natural to both parties. It gave the talker a sense of making
something known to me in an orderly fashion, gave me a good way to sort
out what I was hearing, and made it easy to backtrack later to ask for more
information on points already introduced. Because I always had my pad
in hand, and took copious notes, the interviewees also could reread what
they had said. On occasion they found this reassuring, because they could
see that I had written things down in their words and conveyed their
expressions and sentiments accurately.

Fortunately, the curiosity of anthropologists can tap the willingness and
sometimes eagerness of would-be informants to reach out and teach others
how their world looks to them. This is what makes our task truly collab-
orative, because the interviewees, who have the insiders' expert knowl-
edge, want to help us get an accurate and full picture. I was the frequent
beneficiary of just this kind of mutuality of interest.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped me in this
research, and who made it enormously enjoyable. Since I have promised
one and all that their names will not be used and that they will not be
identified, I hope that they will accept these anonymous words of thanks.
I have given the sections of the manuscript to all the groups in those places
where I carried out interviews and spent any considerable time, and have
invited them to comment on what I have written. Of course I have listened
to their commentaries with care and incorporated them as best I could.

In order to ensure as much anonymity as possible, I have also used
pseudonyms for people and places, except when I quote persons who
spoke at public meetings or published their thoughts. For instance, I
interviewed no individual gardeners in Boston, but had access to the
published newsletters of the community garden group, known as BUG
(Boston Urban Gardeners).

The Washingtonians who are portrayed in these pages are as much a
part of the web of life in the nation's capital as are the lawmakers and the
civil servants and the many others who make the wheels of government
go round. They represent the other face of Washington, a face many
sightseers are not looking for. But they go about their lives in tandem with

-xii-