Social conflict and the neoliberal city: a case of Hindu–Muslim violence in India

In an era of globalisation the 'global' is very much implicated in the 'local'. Local events like conflicts therefore need to be understood in the context of the dynamics of globalisation. This paper argues that neoliberal globalisation undergoes a thorough grounding in accordance with the pre-existing socio-cultural and economic specificities of places, which impact upon inter-community alienation and conflict. Using four case studies from a Hindu–Muslim conflict in a neoliberalising city, Ahmedabad, India, this paper illustrates how open market policies are implicated in local industrial restructuring and urban renewal that simultaneously utilise place-specific ethnocentrism to exclude and fragment the poor.     

Notes on women in the global city: Chicago

As the organizers of an event on women in the global city, we wanted to create a forum exploring the intersections of class, gender and other forms of inequality that fracture ‘global Chicago’. In the panelists' discussion of the intersections of struggles relating to housing, education and environmental justice in Chicago's particular version of the global city, we found evidence of lives disrupted by neoliberal trends, as well as possible sites to contest these disruptions. These struggles reverberate to shape a new urban vision, as the academics and activists assembled for our panel aim not just to work on the local issues of specific women, but to create a city in which work is well compensated, housing is affordable for everyone, schools educate all children well, all neighborhoods are safe both from crime and environmental pollutants, and everyone has the time to fully engage as active citizens of the city.     

Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian,Jewish, and Muslim women in the high middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the topic of ‘Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages’. Despite the fact that both interfaith relations and women's history are now well established subdisciplines within the field of medieval studies, the question of how medieval women themselves established cross-sectarian relations has rarely been explored. Documenting women's history is almost always problematic because of limited source materials, but this essay suggests that much can be learned by looking at areas where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women shared certain facets of their lives: either by reason of social relations tied to religion and ethnicity (money-lending being a common bond between Jewish and Christian women, slavery between Christian women and Muslims) or by reason of events that connected them due to their shared sex and gender (childbirth, caring for the dead, even cosmetics). By actively looking for ‘spaces’ where women would be found, we can begin to hear the dialogues that passed among women across religious lines.     

Masculinity, Identity and Labour Market Change: Some Reflections on the Implications of Thinking Relationally About Difference and the Politics of Inclusion

Abstract In this paper I want to address the connections between the three areas of work: first, the theorisation of identity as relational; second, the significance of difference and diversity in thinking about inequality, labour market restructuring and the social construction of multiple masculinities; and finally, the political implications of taking diversity into account in arguing for a participatory democracy based on ideas about inclusion, respect and responsibility. I want to illustrate these connections in the specific context of a case study about young men in contemporary Britain. In the sections that follow, I focus on each of these areas or concepts in turn, but attempt to demonstrate the connections between the substantive debates in each of the sections. In my conclusion I raise some of the policy implications for building wider social inclusion in democracies by connecting notions of difference and diversity to structural inequalities, or what is sometimes referred to by geographers as ‘the cultural’ and ‘the economic’ dimensions of difference.     

Historicizing Edai Siabo: a Contemporary Argument about the Pre‐colonial Past among the Motu‐Koita of Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT In the 1970s the Motu‐Koita, traditional inhabitants of what is now the National Capital District of Papua New Guinea, inaugurated a yearly cultural festival thematically based on traditional coastal trading voyages known as hiri. Contestation over the location and commercialization of the festival in the capital city developed in the new century as one distant village claimed to ‘own’ the hiri. The Motu‐Koita view of their past and their identity has been affected by their encounter with Christianity, colonialism and its aftermath, and the rhetoric of the villagers’ claims drew on criteria of authenticity, cultural purity, and exclusiveness which are arguably contemporary rather than ‘traditional’. This article reviews Motu‐Koita history, the story of the origin of the hiri, and the local politics of the cultural festival. It attempts to understand the way the past, which was formerly mythopoeically invoked, is being historicized and thereby fixed in new local discourses of cultural and heritage rights and ownership, as Melanesians come to terms with the effects of global processes on their traditions and other resources.     

The birth of a united Europe: on why the EU has generated a ‘non‐emotional’ identity

ABSTRACT. In several respects, the European Union (EU) represents both a novel system of quasi‐supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a relatively fragile construction: it remains a community still in the making with an incipient sense of identity, within which powerful forces are at work. This article has three main aims. Firstly, to analyse the reasons and key ideas that prompted a selected elite to construct a set of institutions and treaties destined to unite European nations in such a way that the mere idea of a ‘civil war’ among them would become impossible. Secondly, to examine the specific top‐down processes that led to the emergence of a united Europe and the subsequent emergence of the EU, thus emphasising the constant distance between the elites and the masses in the development of the European project. Finally, to explain why the EU has generated what I call a ‘non‐emotional’ identity, radically different from the emotionally charged and still prevailing national identities present in its member states.     

危机与认同：中国民族溯源研究——以清末民国时期中学本国史教科书为中心

对中国人种起源的探讨,是20世纪上半期广泛关注的话题,经历了一个从"西来说"到"土著说"的过程.这一转变,考古发现是个重要原因,但其中蕴含了一点民族情感,二者共同促成了"土著说"的确立.从民族主义立场来看,"西来说"与"土著说"是一脉相承的,都是建构民族认同的努力.在中国近代民族危机中出现的民族溯源,其发生与变化反映了20世纪上半期中国民族主义的曲折发展.