Space, culture and power

Large cities in both North and South are caught in the contradictory logics of globalization and localization. This book looks at how ethnic minorities, tribal groupings and marginalised subcultures in urban areas appropriate contemporary discourses - of consumerism, Islam, human rights - to voice new cultural alternatives. Through a variety of cities, including Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul, Manila and Singapore, it explores how social and cultural boundaries are renegotiated as new social networks of global trade and finance create new opportunity spaces. In doing so, the authors demonstrate how the global is translated by different groups of urban actors into practices which transform the physical as well as social and cultural spaces of the city.