Muslim Spaces of Hope: Geographies As Possibility in Britain and the West

Debates about contemporary Islam and Muslims in the West have taken some negative turns in the depressing atmosphere of the war on terror and its aftermath. This book argues that we have been too preoccupied with problems, not enough with solutions.

The increased mobilisation and scrutiny of Muslim identities has taken place in the context of a more general recasting of racial ideas and racism: a shift from overtly racial to ostensibly ethnic and cultural including religious categories within discourses of social difference. The targeting of Muslims has been associated with new forms of an older phenomenon: imperialism. New divisions between Muslims and others echo colonial binaries of black and white, colonised and coloniser, within practices of divide and rule.

This book speaks to others who have been marginalised and colonised, and to wider debates about social difference, oppression and liberation.

Jane Pollard's research interests embrace geographies of money and finance and their intersection with regional economic development. Recent work explores the role of different financial intermediaries in regional economic development, entrepreneurs' construction and navigation of their financial networks and the diversity of financial and other knowledges that generate economic co-ordination in different social, cultural, religious and demographic contexts. Over the last decade she has published articles in journals such as Antipode, Area, the Journal of Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Geoforum, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Urban Studies. Her recent book chapters include pieces in Pike et al. (2010) Handbook of local and regional economic development, Phillips (2009) Spaces of hope for Muslims (Zed Books) and Fuller et al. (2009) Interrogating alterity (Ashgate). She sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Economic Geography, Geography Compass and Growth and Change.

Cheryl McEwan's main research interests include the geographies of citizenship, democracy and transformation in South Africa, the lived experiences of postcoloniality in the global North and South, and the role of postcolonial theory within social science research. Recent work explores the potentially productive engagement between postcolonial theory and development studies, and the role of ethical trade in transforming working conditions and engendering empowerment in South Africa's wine industry. She is author of Gender, Geography and Empire (Ashgate, 2000) and Postcolonialism and Development (Routledge, 2008), and is co-editor of Postcolonial Geographies (Continuum, 2002). She has published numerous articles in a wide range of journals in geography and the social sciences. She is currently Editor (Development Section) of Geography Compass and sits of the Editorial Board of the RGS-IBG/Blackwell Book Series.

Alex Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at Newcastle University in the UK. Her research focuses on commodity chains, ethical trade and the spatiality of corporate responsibility practised through supply chains. She has written on the dynamics of ethical codes in the Kenyan horticultural industry, the corporate strategies adopted by UK and US retailers with respect to the responsible management of their supply chains and the knowledge economies constructing ethical learning in this sector. She is co-editor (with Suzanne Reimer) of Geographies of Commodity Chains (2004).