Writing the City in British Asian Diasporas
About this ebook
Writing the City in British Asian Diasporas takes a fresh look at such matters and will have multi-disciplinary resonance worldwide. The meaning and importance of local, multi-local and trans-local dynamics is explored through a devolved and regionally-accented comparison of five British Asian cities: Bradford, the East End of London, Manchester, Leicester and Birmingham. Analysing the ‘writing’ of these differently configured cities since the 1960s, its main focus is the significant discrepancies in representation between differently-positioned texts reflecting both dominant institutional discourses and everyday lived experiences of a locality. Part I offers a comprehensive, yet still highly contested, reading of each city’s archives. Part II examines how the arts and humanities fields of History, Religion, Gender and Literary/Cultural Studies have all written British Asian diasporas, and how their perspectives might complement the better-established agendas of the social sciences.
Providing an innovative analysis of South Asian communities and their multi-local identities in Britain today, this interdisciplinary book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies, Migration, Ethnic and Diaspora Studies, as well as Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography.
About the author
Seán McLoughlin is Senior Lecturer in Religions and Diasporas at the School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science, University of Leeds, UK. He is co-editor of European Muslims and the Secular State (2005) and Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities (2010).
William Gould is Professor of Indian History in the School of History, University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (2004); Bureaucracy, Community and Influence in India: Society and the State 1930s - 1960s (2010); and Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia (2011).
Ananya Jahanara Kabir is Professor of English Literature at King’s College London having previously lectured at the University of Leeds, UK. Her publications include Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (2009) and Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern South Asia (2013).
Emma Tomalin is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science, University of Leeds, UK. She is co-editor/author of books including Biodivinity and Biodiversity: The Limits to Religious Environmentalism (2009) Dowry: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice (2009);; and Religions and Development (2013).
