Balconies have barely been mentioned since, except in passing in ethnographic texts. Yet surprisingly, balconies in all their forms are everywhere around us. When you stop to notice, they stick out like a sore Malinowskian thumb, as exterior protuberances hanging over human life unfolding in streets below, enclosing and embracing the dwellers within, or looking out stoically towards horizons beyond Dalakoglou's roads (2016). Whether open/closed/glazed, inside or outside, balconies are also prolific in drama settings, novels, fine art paintings, theatrical plays, political speeches and royal marriages. 

For the moment, we can only find four key texts where a balcony is the key character: in anthropology, Farha Ghannam on gender and class on balconies (2002); in sociology, Amrita Pande (2012) on ‘balcony talk’ and Lakshmi Srinivas (2010) on gender and cinematic balcony seating; and in history, Alexander Cowan's (2011) lovely study of urban gossip from balconies in 15th-18th century Venice. Occasionally, someone looks out of a window, such as Lefebvre’s (1991) personal essay ‘Seen from the window’. Otherwise Radikha Chopra’s single sentence of male domestic works locked on balconies (2006: 158) is an example of the briefness of balconies  in anthropology. When you stop to think about it, existing theories easily jump to mind and promise limitless application, such as Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘the world turned inside out’, Ortner's inside:outside spheres and nature:culture theses (1972), Heidegger’s (1971) notion of dwelling, Turner's (1967) betwixt and between or Paul Rabinow’s March 1982 interview of Michel Foucault on architecture - we could apply almost everything to balconies. Yet there is no actual body or 'thick description' of balconies to analytically play with.