Edge of Empire

Edge of Empire examines struggles over urban space in four contemporary first world cities: two sites in London and two sites in the Australian cities of Perth and Brisbane. Through these examples the spatialised cultural politics of a number of 'postcolonial' processes are unravelled: the imperial nostalgias of the one-time heart of empire, the City of London; the struggle of diasporic groups to make a homespace in the old imperial heartlands; the unsettling presence of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city; and the emergence of hybrid spaces in the contemporary city. This book is about the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present. This is a 'global geography of the local'. The book is distinctive in that it takes theories of colonialism and postcolonialism to the space of the city - it gives real space to the spatial metaphors of much contemporary social theory. If the contemporary city is a postmodern space it has not-so-hidden geographies of imperialism and postcolonialism. The global reach of the book - its focus of two poles of one trajectory of British imperialism - provides a global assemblage which form a basis for understanding the unruly fortunes of imperialism over space and time. This is not simply a material geography of territory, it is also an imaginative geography of desire and memory.

(Bookdata)

Bli först med att recensera och betygsätt boken Edge of Empire - du kan vinna 200 kr varje månad i tävlingen "Månadens recension".

1. Travels on the edge of empire: Real Space; Itineraries; Talking out of Place; The Journey. 2. Imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism and space: Colonialism and Imperialism; Imperialism and space; The limits of the postcolonial; Postmodern space and the (post)colonial; Identity, the past and city space 3. Negotiating the heart - place and identity in the postimperial city of London: Difference gathered in the City of London; Making monuments; Picturing the empire; Pleasures of the hearth; Imperial illusions; Continental entanglements; Colonial returns 4. Eastern trading - diasporas, dwelling and place: Urban imperialisms; Land unoccupied; Hogarth and sag gosht; Developing nostalgias; Trading in community; Re-inventing home 5. Urban dreamings - the aboriginal sacred in the city: Ordering the urban; Visioning development; Urban nomadism; The erotic city; Brewery dreamings; Placing the Waugal; back to the nature; Preserving the Crown; Fringe dwelling 6. Authentically yours - de-touring the map: Nature, culture, colonialism; Imperial touring; Indigenous tourings; Re-mapping the colonial 7. Conclusion: Geographical encounters; unruly imperialism; Postcolonial possibilities.

(Bookdata)