Martin Lundsteen - Böcker

While Convivencia is a specific historical term that has come to represent an idea of peaceful co-existence, Convivencia: Urban Space and Migration in a Small Catalan Town complicates this simplistic vision. Instead, it shows how convivencia has been and is indeed always conflict-ridden by scrutinising the relations between cultural diversity and social conflicts and considering why some social conflicts are said to be inherently cultural. It does this through a multi-scalar extended case study of a small town in Northern Catalonia, Spain. Starting from an ethnography, it sheds light on the multiple local-global processes inherent to the social construction of the “migrant problem” and its solutions.The book analyzes the simultaneously local-global transformation of migration and societies, connecting the local processes of space- and place-making in Salt with the more extensive processes of migration, economic crisis and social transformation, and finally, the responses to these changes from the local society, institutions, and NGOs.This work allows for a deeper understanding of the complex web of urban, social, and political transformation in which migration as a phenomenon takes part. Focusing mainly on the interaction between mobility and settlement and the socio-cultural processes at different scales through the vectors of production and reproduction of space, it advances findings on the “new social question in Europe.”

In The Mosque Conflict in Catalonia: Space, Culture, and Capitalism, Martin Lundsteen examines two paradigms around mosque conflicts—one of an analytical nature and the other of a political-technical nature. Lundsteen argues that both paradigms interpret conflicts culturally, as originating primarily in the symbolic realm. Though racism and xenophobia are certainly at the core of the issue, Lundsteen shows through the study of the conflict surrounding the mosque project in Premià de Mar (Barcelona) that other dimensions of utmost importance lurk behind these interpretations. This book constitutes an anthropological approach to the intersection of local-global processes of contemporary capitalism and emphasizes the understudied socio-spatial dimension of these conflicts.

In The Mosque Conflict in Catalonia: Space, Culture, and Capitalism, Martin Lundsteen examines two paradigms around mosque conflicts—one of an analytical nature and the other of a political-technical nature. Lundsteen argues that both paradigms interpret conflicts culturally, as originating primarily in the symbolic realm. Though racism and xenophobia are certainly at the core of the issue, Lundsteen shows through the study of the conflict surrounding the mosque project in Premià de Mar (Barcelona) that other dimensions of utmost importance lurk behind these interpretations. This book constitutes an anthropological approach to the intersection of local-global processes of contemporary capitalism and emphasizes the understudied socio-spatial dimension of these conflicts.