ggests simple solutions (such as allowing entrepreneurial activities on the street) to a variety of social problems (e.g. homelessness and poverty), rather than just focusing on the problems themselves. Duneier sees the people who live and work on the sidewalk of Sixth Avenue in a positive light. Their lives are portrayed and their stories told with a belief in 'the good in humanity'. Duneier claims that "what is most important is that I try to help the reader recognize the lens through which the reality is refracted" (14), and this he has accomplished. It is obvious that Duneier has developed a strong attachment to the people on Sixth Avenue, and that this affects the way in which he sees their existence. In keeping with the reflexivity of the book, Duneier does not try to hide this. Rather than taking away from the fieldwork and research of this ethnographic account, this acknowledgement does the opposite. It is refreshing and uplifting. As Duneier states, "there will always be people who, faced with dispiriting social conditions, give up. The people we see working on Sixth Avenue are persevering. They are trying not to give up hope. We should honour that in them" (317).
             Duneier applies sound ethnographic methodology to carry out his research, beginning with initial conversations and observations in 1992, and then moving into extensive participant-observation and interviewing (both unstructured and semi-structured) through to 1999, when his research came to an end. "...[P]articipant observation consists of a single researcher spending an extended period of time (usually at least one year) living among the people he or she is studying, participating in their daily lives in order to gain as complete an understanding as possible of the cultural meanings and social structures of the group and how these are interrelated" (Davies 67). Duneier does just this as he spends extended periods building re...