ABSTRACT
Compared with large cities, suburbs have few public places where strangers intermingle. For this reason alone, conflict between unacquainted people in Hampton tends to be rare. In addition, predatory behavior by strangers-such as burglary and muggingis quite infrequent. Even when individuals do encounter unknown offenders, they tend to avoid direct confrontation with them at all costs. The town’s larger pattern of moral minimalism finds expression, where strangers are concerned, in an extreme aversion to any personal exercise of social control. Rather, townspeople leave the business of dealing with strangers almost exclusively to officials, most notably the police, and involve themselves very little in the maintenance of public order.
