Contested Mediterranean Spaces: Ethnographic Essays in Honour of Charles Tilly (Space and Place, 4) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857451324 ISBN 13: 9780857451323

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2011

Synopsis

The contributors in this volume, which is inspired and dedicated to Charles Tilly, deal with the manner in which particular Mediterranean spaces (at regional, state, and neighbourhood levels) are being reconfigured in the light of struggles over rights, resources and identities. Political processes driven from the 'top' (of state and municipal political hierarchies, for example) and processes of resistance from the 'bottom' (in the shape of environmental movements, popular artistic and decorative events and expressions, for example) are described in such a way that challenge any simple assumption about the nature and constitution of political power in the region. Our authors have approached their field sites from the viewpoint of an intellectual tradition generated by Charles Tilly and others: a tradition that we might term in shorthand the political economy of cultural geography. From this viewpoint the contested reworking and renegotiation of Mediterranean spaces and political landscapes becomes a matter not only of the activities and rhetorical/bureaucratic announcements from state or EU authorities, but also of the increasingly potent agency of a variety of other actors and institutions. These include environmental activists in Malta, cultural entrepreneurs in Crete, producers of posters and graffiti in Beirut, as well as globally affiliated cross border social and political interest groups mobilising in the streets and communities of Ciutat de Mallorca, Bethlehem, Ferrara, and Istanbul and, from there across the region and beyond.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"It is well known that Charles Tilly left scholars of big structures, large processes, and huge comparisons a tall research agenda. It is less acknowledged that he also left political ethnographers an impressive and provocative set of tools. In the skilled hands of the contributors to this insightful volume, the 'Tilly toolbox' is put to good work in the service of a theory-driven and empirically-grounded exploration of Mediterranean contentious landscapes." · Javier Auyero, University of Texas, Austin; Editor, Qualitative Sociology

"Contested Mediterranean Spaces rescues a cultural geography from the essentialist circularities to which it was once often reduced. These authors examine how circum-Mediterranean identities, at every level from the clan to the nation-state, exhibit the complex impact of ideological and political manipulation. They show how this hothouse of Europe's self-ascribed cultural origins has been characteristically prey to spatial cleansing, gentrification, and bigotry; they also document a regional activism that seeks more tolerant and environmentally benign futures. By problematizing the political and intellectual manipulations as well as the ideological tensions that inform such revivals of the Mediterranean as category and concept, they persuasively refurbish a tired regionalism with refreshing critical and comparative interest." · Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University; Author of Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Rome

About the Author

David Clark completed his doctoral work at London Metropolitan University. He is on the editorial committee of Exiled Writers Ink, a magazine devoted to the writings of refugee writers currently living in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

Edition details

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0857451324
• ISBN 13: 9780857451323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330
• Editor: Kousis Maria, Selwyn Tom, Clark David