After the Cosmopolitan? argues that both racial divisions and intercultural dialogue can only be understood in the context of the urbanism through which they are realized.
All the key debates in ...cultural theory and urban studies are covered in detail:
the growth of cultural industries and the marketing of cities
social exclusion and violence
the nature of the ghetto
the cross-disciplinary conceptualization of cultural hybridity
the politics of third-way social policy.
In considering the ways in which race is played out in the world's most eminent cities, Michael Keith shows that neither the utopian naiveté of some invocations of cosmopolitan democracy, nor the pessimism of multicultural hell can adequately make sense of the changing nature of contemporary metropolitan life.
Authoritative and informative, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers of anthropology, cultural studies, geography, politics and sociology.
1. Introduction: Globalisation, Urbanism and Cosmopolitanism Fever 2. The Mirage at the Heart of the Myth? Thinking About the White City 3. After the Cosmopolitan? The Limits of the Multicultural City and the Mutability of Racism 4. The Ghetto: Knowing your Place and the Performative Cartographies of Racial Subordination 5. Ethnic Entrepreneurs and Street Rebels: Looking Inside the Inner City 6. The Street: Street Sensibility? 7. The Cultural Quarter: Globalization, Hybridity and Curating Exotica. 8. Tagging the City: Graffiti Practice and Transcultural Communication 9. The Cartographies of Community Safety. Mapping Danger and Rumours of Risk 10. The Plan Knowing Urbanism: Between the Allure of the Cosmopolitan and the Horror of the Postcolony
Public opinion in recent years has soured on multiculturalism, due in large part to fears of radical Islam. In Multiculturalism without Culture, Anne Phillips contends that critics misrepresent ...culture as the explanation of everything individuals from minority and non-Western groups do. She puts forward a defense of multiculturalism that dispenses with notions of culture, instead placing individuals themselves at its core. Multiculturalism has been blamed for encouraging the oppression of women--forced marriages, female genital cutting, school girls wearing the hijab. Many critics opportunistically deploy gender equality to justify the retreat from multiculturalism, hijacking the equality agenda to perpetuate cultural stereotypes. Phillips informs her argument with the feminist insistence on recognizing women as agents, and defends her position using an unusually broad range of literature, including political theory, philosophy, feminist theory, law, and anthropology. She argues that critics and proponents alike exaggerate the unity, distinctness, and intractability of cultures, thereby encouraging a perception of men and women as dupes constrained by cultural dictates.
This book discusses the role of cultural practices and policy for sustainable development in West Africa across different artistic disciplines, including performance, video, theatre, community arts ...and cultural heritage. Based on ethnographic field research in local communities, the book presents findings on current debates of cultural sustainability in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Benin. It provides a unique perspective connecting cultural studies, conflict studies and practical peacebuilding approaches through the arts. The first part pays particular attention to aspects of social cohesion and the circumstances of internally displaced persons e. g. caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria. The second part focuses on cultural policy issues and challenges in the context of sustainable development, investigating participatory approaches and bottom-up processes, the role of governments and civil society, as well as performing arts organizations and universities in policy making and implementation processes. Performing Sustainability in West Africa presents research results and new methods on the role of artistic and cultural practices in conflict situations as well as current debates in cultural policy for researchers, academics, NGOs and students in cultural studies, sustainable development studies and African studies.
A highly original and readily accessible examination of the cultural dimension of international politics, this book provides a sophisticated and nuanced account of the relevance of cultural ...categories for the analysis of world politics.
The book's analytical focus is on plural and pluralist civilizations. Civilizations exist in the plural within one civilization of modernity; and they are internally pluralist rather than unitary. The existence of plural and pluralist civilizations is reflected in transcivilizational engagements, intercivilizational encounters and, only occasionally, in civilizational clashes. Drawing on the work of Eisenstadt, Collins and Elias, Katzenstein's introduction provides a cogent and detailed alternative to Huntington's. This perspective is then developed and explored through six outstanding case studies written by leading experts in their fields. Combining contemporary and historical perspectives while addressing the civilizational politics of America, Europe, China, Japan, India and Islam, the book draws these discussions together in Patrick Jackson's theoretically informed, thematic conclusion.
Featuring an exceptional line-up and representing a diversity of theoretical views within one integrative perspective, this work will be of interest to all scholars and students of international relations, sociology and political science.
In theory, republican orthodoxy does not acknowledge the political dignity of any intermediary body between free and equal individuals, stripped of all particularism, and the sovereign nation. This ...is why, right up to the present, the French public debate has been marked by an entrenched suspicion towards all forms of «communitarism», and by the proscription of the very concept of multicultural politics. But have the policies actually pursued by republican France been consistent with the proclaimed principles? Is it genuinely possible to claim that cultural identities have never been publicly «recognised»? This multidisciplinary investigation proposes to address the ambiguous relations between theory and practice in the Republican management of cultural pluralism.
In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared that every human being, without "distinction of any kind," possesses a set of ...morally authoritative rights and fundamental freedoms that ought to be socially guaranteed. Since that time, human rights have arguably become the cross-cultural moral concept and evaluative tool to measure the performance-and even legitimacy-of domestic regimes. Yet questions remain that challenge their universal validity and theoretical bases. Some theorists are "maximalist" in their insistence that human rights must be grounded religiously, while an opposing camp attempts to justify these rights in "minimalist" fashion without any necessary recourse to religion, metaphysics, or essentialism. InGrounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World, Grace Kao critically examines the strengths and weaknesses of these contending interpretations while also exploring the political liberalism of John Rawls and the Capability Approach as proposed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum. By retrieving insights from a variety of approaches, Kao defends an account of human rights that straddles the minimalist-maximalist divide, one that links human rights to a conception of our common humanity and to the notion that ethical realism gives the most satisfying account of our commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings.
We are currently witnessing the global diffusion of multiculturalism, both as a political discourse and as a set of international legal norms. States today are under increasing international scrutiny ...regarding their treatment of ethnocultural groups, and are expected to meet evolving international standards regarding the rights of indigenous peoples, national minorities, and immigrants. This phenomenon represents a veritable revolution in international relations, yet has received little public or scholarly attention. In this book, Kymlicka examines the factors underlying this change, and the challenges it raises. Against those critics who argue that multiculturalism is a threat to universal human rights, Kymlicka shows that the sort of multiculturalism that is being globalized is inspired and constrained by the human rights revolution, and embedded in a framework of liberal-democratic values. However, the formulation and implementation of these international norms has generated a number of dilemmas. The policies adopted by international organizations to deal with ethnic diversity are driven by conflicting impulses. Pessimism about the destabilizing consequences of ethnic politics alternates with optimism about the prospects for a peaceful and democratic form of multicultural politics. The result is often an unstable mix of paralyzing fear and naive hope, rooted in conflicting imperatives of security and justice. Moreover, given the enormous differences in the characteristics of minorities (eg., their size, territorial concentration, cultural markers, historic relationship to the state), it is difficult to formulate standards that apply to all groups. Yet attempts to formulate more targeted norms that apply only to specific categories of minorities (eg., “indigenous peoples” or “national minorities”) have proven controversial and unstable. Kymlicka examines these dilemmas as they have played out in both the theory and practice of international minority rights protection, including recent developments regarding the rights of national minorities in Europe, the rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as emerging debates on multiculturalism in Asia and Africa.
What should be the place of Shari'a--Islamic religious law--in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and ...sustainable role for Shari'a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
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