Lily Kong – författare

While global cities have mostly been characterized as sites of intensive and extensive economic activity, the quest for global city status also increasingly rests on the creative production and consumption of culture and the arts. Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities examines such ambitions and projects undertaken in five major cities in Asia: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore.

Providing a thorough comparison of their urban imaging strategies and attempts to harness arts and culture, as well as more organically evolved arts activities and spaces, this book analyses the relative successes and failures of these cities. Offering rich ethnographic detail drawn from extensive fieldwork, the authors challenge city strategies and existing urban theories about cultural and creative clusters and reveal the many complexities in the art of city-making.

This noteworthy study will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as academics from a variety of disciplines ranging from urban and cultural geography to Asian studies. Arts and cultural policy makers and artists will also find this a fascinating read.

Contents: 1. Arts spaces, New Urban Landscapes and Global Cultural Cities PART I 2. The National Grand Theatre in a City of Monuments: Discourse and Reality in the Construction of Beijing''s New Cultural Space 3. Rivalling Beijing and the World: Realizing Shanghai''s Ambitions through Cultural Infrastructure 4. Hong Kong''s Dilemmas and the Changing Fates of West Kowloon Cultural District 5. The Making of a ''Renaissance City'': Building Cultural Monuments in Singapore 6. In Search of New Homes: The Absent New Cultural Monument in Taipei PART II 7. Cultural Creativity, Clustering and the State in Beijing 8. Remaking Shanghai''s Old Industrial Spaces: The Growth and Growth of Creative Precincts 9. Factories and Animal Depots: The ''New'' Old Spaces for the Arts in Hong Kong 10. Reusing Old Factory Spaces in Taipei: The Challenges of Developing Cultural Parks 11. From Education to Enterprise in Singapore: Converting Old Schools to New Artistic and Aesthetic Use 12. Culture, Globalization and Urban Landscapes References Index

This Handbook departs from conventional modes of analysing creativity by industry, region or sector, and instead identifies key themes that thread through shifting contexts of the creative, namely creativity as imaginary, locality, mobility, labour, culture, intervention and method. By tracing the myriad spatialities of creativity, the chapters map its inherently paradoxical features: reinforcing persistent conditions of inequality even as it opens avenues for imagining and enacting more equitable futures.

The conceptual framework proposed for critically appraising present debates and articulating future directions for creative and cultural industries will be useful for scholars and academics researching culture, media and design. Policy makers and professionals working in creative and cultural industries (CCIs) will find the wide range of case studies in this Handbook an essential tool for further understanding the field.

Contributors include: S.T. Allison, S. Baker, J. Banfield, D. Bennett, S. Black, C. Brennan-Horley, A.R. Brown, P. Carter, S. Ching-Kiu Chan, K. Connell, A. de Dios, S. de Leeuw, O. Efthimiou, C. Gibson, S. Hannon, H. Hawkins, M. Keane, L. Kong, D. Leslie, S. Luckman, H. McLean, S. McQuire, J. O''Connor, N. Papastergiadis, J. Peck, N.M. Rantisi, A. Rogers, J. Smith, J. Wang, S. Warren, D. Wyatt, C. Veal, A. Yue, L. Zhang

This international and interdisciplinary handbook offers a comprehensive and an in-depth overview of contemporary research, theory, and practice in the geographies of religion in various parts of the world and with different populations. The book showcases the major theoretical interventions in the field and the debates about the existential constitution of sacred space and what this means for secularization. It outlines the most significant geographical themes related to these new developments, with their implications for how to think about landscapes, space, bodies, and worlds. The book also discusses the future of the field, especially in the realms of encounters and ethics, economies and markets, institutions and organisations, movements and migrations, and media and mediums. It also offers views from disciplines outside of geography, including from sociology, anthropology, religious studies, and media and communications, which demonstrates the contributions of geographers of religion to wider intellectual conversations and debates.

This unique collection highlights the importance of landscape, politics and piety to our understandings of religion and place. The geographies of religion have developed rapidly in the last couple of decades and this book provides both a conceptual framing of the key issues and debates involved, and rich illustrations through empirical case studies. The chapters span the discipline of human geography and cover contexts as diverse as veiling in Turkey, religious landscapes in rural Peru, and refugees and faith in South Africa. A number of prominent scholars and emerging researchers examine topical themes in each engaging chapter with significant foci being: religious transnationalism and religious landscapes; gendering of religious identities and contexts; fashion, faith and the body; identity, resistance and belief; immigrant identities, citizenship and spaces of belief; alternative spiritualities and places of retreat and enchantment. Together they make a series of important contributions that illuminate the central role of geography to the meaning and implications of lived religion, public piety and religious embodiment. As such, this collection will be of much interest to researchers and students working on topics relating to religion and place, including human geographers, sociologists, religious studies and religious education scholars.